"Morning Ruth. Good week off?"
"Fine thanks, Beth."
"Oh, and by the way, I appreciate you giving me a little time to myself."
"No problem. I'll be back tomorrow night, if that's okay?"
"Course," replied Ruth though she really couldn't think that far ahead.
"Where's Harry?"
"Home Secretary."
Ruth nodded and turned to her desk.
Harry wasn't listening. Towers had repeated himself twice already and was losing patience.
"So, of course that would mean the end of Five."
Harry nodded sagely.
"Section D would be disbanded"
Harry nodded.
"And you would be hung, drawn and quartered."
Harry nodded again.
Towers stopped.
Harry realised that there was no more noise for him nod at.
"Sorry, Home Secretary, you were saying?"
"Get out, Harry. I don't know what's wrong with you today, but you're bloody useless."
"Yes, Home Secretary."
Harry walked onto the grid. She was there, at her desk. She was radiant. She was looking at him. Looking right at him. Not at her feet, not at the floor, not pretending to be engrossed in paperwork but looking at him.
Ruth watched him walk onto the grid. She realised how much she'd missed him. How much she'd missed his face, his walk, his smile.
"Good morning, Ruth. Rested and fit for duty?"
"Rested, yes. Fit for anything, we'll see."
He wanted to tell her he'd missed her, but he didn't.
She wanted to tell him, well, there was so much she didn't know where to start. So she said nothing.
They merely smiled briefly at each other and turned away.
Her workload was heavy. No one seemed to get through as much as Ruth and her absence had caused a backlog. Even though she felt the weight of the files that lay beside her she couldn't quite concentrate. She found herself gazing at Harry. He was working through his own tome of paperwork and had barely moved for about an hour.
Harry had a file open in front of him. It was a report of a bomb blast in Korea. There were case photos of the scene. Carnage. Carnage and bodies. And amidst it all stood a small boy, three or four years of age who looked, not upset, but confused. Harry had looked at it for an hour or more. He didn't see the carnage, or the bodies, he just saw the boy.
And he felt disappointed.
Ruth knew Harry had regrets, he regretted the consequences of decisions he'd made, he regretted the deaths of members of his team, he regretted the appearance of Dimitri at the window of his car! The thing she knew he regretted most was his failure as a father. He wouldn't want to go there again, revisit the failure. She wasn't even sure he liked children that much. In fact the last time she'd spoken to him when she mentioned the christening he'd shown little interest and gone back to reading his files. He would probably be filled with horror at the thought of being a father now, at his age. She could almost imagine the stricken look on his face. Him a father, she thought.
Harry a father.
A father to her child.
Their child, inside her.
