She was already walking towards the door when the bell rang, with a protesting Jacob glued to her hip and sounds of the opening refrain from Thomas the Tank Engine echoing from the sitting room.

'Mine too,' said Harry, with a look in his eyes that she was getting used to, when Jacob pointed and said trains, after she'd explained that it was Jacob's favourite.

Plonking Jacob back on the pile of cushions that littered the floor and with Harry having said yes please that he'd like a cup of coffee and was more than happy to keep an eye on him, Ruth retreated into the kitchen to put the kettle on and to ponder lunch. The fact that she had nothing that constituted lunch, that didn't come out of a jar or a tin or got eaten with a spoon, couldn't be helped. She'd shopped for her and Jacob, but Harry's last-minute suggestion that he'd come over in the morning so that they could continue their chat, had caught her on the hop. It was baked beans or spaghetti hoops, neither of which seemed adequate.

With a mug of coffee in her hand she opened the door, expecting to find Harry, bored to death by Thomas, James and Percy, who were chugging their way towards the sidings, where a huffing and puffing Gordon was about to give them a bollocking, for something innocuous and totally beyond her interest. Harry it appeared had no such reservations as he sat completely relaxed, his hands behind his head and his demeanour totally at odds with how he'd described his ability to cope with children. He certainly wasn't pretending, because he hadn't even realised that she was standing there watching him, as Jacob clapped his hands in time with the music and giggled at the prospect of the impending train crash.

'Riveting is it?' she suggested, amusement now evident in her voice, handing him his coffee and explaining about lunch, as he grinned back at her and said that whatever she gave him would be fine. Such was the innuendo in his voice, that even with her back to him when she crossed the room in the direction of the door, she was more than sure that Harry had lost any interest in trains.

Lunch as in beans on toast and in their case a pot of tea, was for Harry a close as it came to domesticity as he could remember. Ruth on the other hand, although enjoying it as much as he was, knew that at the end of the meal and when she'd put Jacob down for his nap, that there were some questions that had to be addressed. Namely what is it about you that gives Juliet the power to blackmail you and what do you do for a living? Both of which might see her losing Harry as a client and what else, she couldn't quite define? She'd read his file that had been supplied by his previous solicitor, so she already knew that he was seventeen years older than she was. That in itself wasn't a problem if he was her client, but if he was looking for more, which she suspected he was, then could she let herself get involved with someone who had once been so involved with a woman, that eighteen years later, still had the ability to blackmail him? It really came back to Malcolm who had pushed Harry in her direction, but why? It wasn't as though she'd really elaborated about her work, although she could recall the evening not long after Malcolm's mother had died, that he'd sought her company and had invited her for a drink. A couple of lost and lonely souls together they'd joked, as they'd sat in the corner of a quiet pub and worked their way through a bottle of wine. Was Harry a lost and lonely soul as well, was this what this was about? Maybe she should have asked Malcolm more questions than she had done? With what had happened recently, she was already emotionally struggling with her own problems and she didn't know if she had the strength to take on someone else's as well, other than as his solicitor, although in her heart she'd already crossed that boundary. She glanced at the clock.

'Right young man time for your nap,' she said to Jacob, 'I won't be a moment,' to Harry.

'What exactly is it that you and Malcolm do?' she asked him tentatively, as she sat down opposite Harry and reluctantly changed rolls with her solicitors hat teetering perilously on the side of her head, with every sign of toppling off.

'Hasn't he told you?'

'Yes, but I don't buy it Harry, not now that I've spent some time with you, so I need to hear your version,' and it slipped even further.

'Why?'

'This need that you have to protect the people that you get close too, it sticks out a mile and it seems excessive,' and she was back to the script, well almost.

'What do you mean?'

'See you're doing it now, by avoiding my question,' and Harry was the one that was losing the inner struggle.

'If I tell you it will take you to a place that I'd rather you didn't have to go,' he told her, looking into eyes that reminded him of a sky that was clearing after a thunderstorm and heavy rain. Intense and boring into his, but with a backdrop of compassion, that made it impossible for him to look away. 'Is it so important that you need to know?' Was a question to which he already knew the answer.

'It's vital Harry,' was as predictable as it was terrifying, as he battled with his conscience and come up with something less shocking than I'm a spy.

'And when were you going to tell me, after you'd got me into bed, and your name, is it even Harry?' She heard herself saying, as her thoughts fast forwarded to her mouth before she had time to stop them. 'And why am I bloody well apologising to you?' she continued, having said sorry, as Harry stood up, looking stricken that she thought that his only motive in coming here that morning was that he would be crass enough to make a move on her, so soon after they'd met. Now assuming that his only option was to leave, Harry turned towards the door, only to be halted when he heard Ruth clear her throat.

'I'll make us some more tea and then if you want me to continue as your solicitor, I need you to tell me exactly what it is that makes Juliet feel confident enough to blackmail you Harry,' and she'd landed him with another problem that had lain simmering for years. But at least she hadn't thrown him out.

He didn't have long to wait before Ruth came back and apologised again, for what she described as a 'not at all like her and uncalled for remark,' the energy that she'd shown before seemingly gone and presumably prepared to listen, as she handed him his tea and sat directly across the room from him.

'Juliet and I were paired together on a mission and one evening we ended up, well you can guess where,' he said, trying to maintain eye contact with Ruth, but failing to do so. 'Graham hadn't settled at boarding school and with me now out of the marital home, he and I were barely on speaking terms. I'd gone to the bathroom when he rang and left me a message, pleading with me to call him. Juliet heard it and switched off my phone, so it wasn't until the next morning that I picked it up, by which time Graham had attempted to take his own life, or that's how it appeared. He was thirteen for Christ's sake Ruth, a young and frightened child and I failed him,' he pleaded, with such a passion that Ruth knew he wasn't lying. 'He's fine now and living in Manchester with his girlfriend, but at a time when he most needed me I wasn't there. Jane and I, well we pulled together for as long as it took for the furore to settle down. But if Juliet tells either of my children where I was that night, then I couldn't begin to describe the fallout.'

Ruth needed a moment to adjust and to think. Juliet's proposed action bordered on criminal, or did it?

'But it would be your word against hers Harry, she was the one who switched off the phone.' She finally suggested.

'Yes she did, but I've got no way of proving that. My relationship with my children is still hanging by the tiniest of threads Ruth, so the slightest thing to suggest that I didn't care back then and there will be no way back, not this time.'

'Then the answer is simple Harry. Let Juliet have what she wants Harry, or at least let her think that she's got it.'

'Then what?'

'Find a way to stop her Harry, your the spook, I'm only your solicitor.'

Any chance of Harry daring to comment that she was already more than that was brought to a halt by a wide - awake Jacob, who had navigated the decent of the stairs on his bum, which posed the question as to now what?

'I usually take him out for a walk about now,' had Harry bundling Jacob's pushchair into his car as Ruth strapped him into his car seat. With very little encouragement from Harry, the fact that Ruth had been Jacob's babysitter from the moment that he'd been born, her relationship with Alex and Sylvie and her intention to keep the company running by finding another solicitor who was willing to buy in, took up the best part of an hour of their walk, by which time they'd cleared the air and he knew virtually everything there was to know about Ruth Evershed. Maybe it was his own honesty or that he'd told her that a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, that made her open up about herself. He didn't know and he didn't care. He didn't even mind the fact that he'd walked further than he'd walked in years. In fact he was so confident as to how things were going that he was just about to ask her if they could finish the day together, by him buying a takeaway to share at hers, when he looked up, to where no more than fifty metres in front of them, Adam and Fiona were walking towards them with Wes swinging between them.

He was cornered from the moment that Wes spotted him and shouted Uncle Harry, leaving Adam and Fiona in his wake and racing towards him. The fact that he was pushing Jacob in his pushchair was not a sense of amusement to Wes, but as Adam and Fiona approached him, he was done for. The grin on Adam's face and the knowing look that Fiona was sporting said everything.

'This is Ruth, she's my solicitor,' he offered, as they all shook hands, the look on Fiona's face continuing to say 'yes of course she is.'

'What's his name?' asked Wes after a while, pointing to Jacob, who up until then had been ignored, apart from Adam who had been looking at Jacob and pondering the fact that after what amounted to little more than a week, that Harry was already on pushing a pushchair terms with his solicitor, who apparently had a child.

'He's called Jacob, Harry's helping me babysit,' Ruth said, completely unaware that she was talking to two more spies, both of whom were thinking along the same lines, that went something like who are you kidding, as was Harry who was painfully aware as to what was going through their minds. He was saved any further misery as Jacob decided that he'd had enough of being in one place and started to get agitated, at which point Ruth suggested that perhaps they ought to get moving.

'Right then, I hope that we'll all have a chance to catch up again soon,' said Fiona, smiling between Ruth and Harry, as Wes protested that he wanted to stay with his Uncle Harry as they said their goodbyes.

'More spies?' asked Ruth as a joke, only to be told yes.

'Do you actually know anyone who isn't?' Resulted in a shrug of his shoulders and a response of 'only you and my children.'

While Ruth gave Jacob his bath and then tucked him up in bed, Harry got his wish and was heading towards the nearest takeaway in Ruth's part of London. All in all, he'd come out of the day pretty much unscathed and mercifully with his relationship with Ruth still intact. That Adam and Fiona had read more into him being with Ruth away from her office, was in a way an advantage. In the current situation with Juliet, he needed allies and Ruth wouldn't be able to help him when he was on the grid. That they'd seen him in a different light wasn't such a bad thing was it?' He was human after all, vulnerable as the next man when it came to relationships and if he couldn't trust Adam and Fiona, then who could he trust? He had a long road ahead of him if he was going to be able to maintain his control over Juliet, but in the short term, if he went with Ruth's suggestion, then surely the threat she posed would disappear? What happened after that was in the lap of the God's and a good deal of help from Ruth to make his divorce a painless one. After that, well he hoped that he knew what path he'd be allowed to take, although that presented him with a problem that Ruth had already highlighted, his need to protect people he cared about, which now included her and by extension Jacob. Not only was she a bloody good solicitor, she was perceptive in every sense and despite her initial reaction when he'd confessed what he did, she'd not baulked at the idea of him working in a world that was completely alien to her. An S24 was the next step, but not until Juliet was out of sight on the top floor with more to worry about than who he was or wasn't seeing.