Harry's text message tone had sounded soon after he'd woken on Monday morning. He'd been in that elusive, not-quite-awake state, thinking of Ruth, and how she appeared to be softening towards him. He'd hoped the message had been from her - something conciliatory, something soothing, a balm offering him some small shred of hope.

But the message hadn't been from Ruth. It had been blunt, just five words - I need to see you - and the name at the end of the message had belonged to a dead woman. He'd sat up in bed, stunned and in shock, instantly awake. His instinct had been to reply to the message with a call, but had it been her - or not - the call would have gone unanswered, so he'd replied in the tone of the spy he is.

How do I know you're who you claim to be? he'd written, pressing Send before he'd had a chance to change his mind. Having sent the message he'd contemplated the dubious wisdom of rising to the bait.

He was in the shower when he again heard his message tone, so he quickly rinsed his hair, and turned off the water. He'd dried himself before flinging on his dressing gown, not bothering to close it, hurrying to his bedside table to read the message.

Ruth regards me as the one responsible for her having to go into exile.

Harry had considered how many people knew this, and he could count them on the fingers of one hand. Most of those who knew this were dead, but not all. He typed a quick reply.

So tell me something else, something only you would know, and then he waited. The reply took so long that he gave up waiting and dressed for the day, checking that his keys were in his pocket. He was about to slide his phone into the pocket of his jacket when again he heard the message tone.

Only you know that I was grooming Andrew. We both needed to know the truth about his connection with Nightingale.

Harry reads the message for the third time before he sends off a brief reply. Very well. What next?

Even then, he hadn't expected the person on the other end of his electronic conversation to be Ros. He'd deemed it impossible that she had survived the bombing.

Ruth listens while he relates the story of his contact with a woman they'd both believed had died, a woman whose funeral they had attended together. He tells her of how Ros had tried to get Andrew to safety, but he'd been paralysed, so at the last minute she had left him, choosing instead to burst through the door to the fire escape, a decision which had saved her life, but had left her badly injured, and still in recovery.

"Had she stayed with Andrew for even another few seconds she would have died along with him."

"But ..." Ruth says, having difficulty absorbing the information, "wasn't her body found next to his?"

"It was assumed the other body belonged to Ros. There were a couple of people - one a woman - who'd not heard the alarm, and had only entered the hallway just before the bomb detonated."

"I thought the remains were DNA tested."

"I suspect that was another cover up." Harry reaches out to take back his phone before he again turns it off. "Or maybe it was an oversight. Things were ... chaotic in the aftermath. Ros has little idea how she got out. She remembers taking the steps of the fire escape three or four at a time, and her next memory is of waking up in an ambulance bound for The North Middlesex University Hospital."

Ruth is frustrated by the sketchiness of Harry's information. As usual, she wants details. "You know I'm going to ask why take her all the way to North London."

Harry sighs heavily. He barely knows why himself. "She was taken by a couple of Six operatives who were at the scene. Keep in mind that whatever happened to her, it was on the far side of the hotel, and so there were no witnesses from our section."

Ruth nods. Silently, she wonders how long Ros had been planning her escape to Six, and whether it had even been her idea. She suspects not. She glances up to see Harry watching her, his eyes soft. How does he do that - flipping from business to the personal in a matter of seconds?

"I'm glad you're here," he says quietly.

"What happens now?"

Business-like again, Harry sits up, leaning his forearms on the edge of the table, while with the fingers of one hand he fiddles with the handle of his coffee mug. Ruth has only seen him take one mouthful of his drink. "You'll need to stay over for at least one night," he says, watching her carefully.

"Where?"

"There's a spare room in this apartment. I have -"

"So all along this has been a ruse to get me on your own, away from London."

"I'm afraid I hadn't considered that possibility, Ruth, but had I, even I would be shocked by my own level of deception. No, that's not why I needed you here. Ros wishes to speak to you."

"Me .. why? She and I were never friends."

"She didn't share the reason with me."

"And if I don't see her?"

"I've no idea, but I'm sure she'll get over it."

"Where is she?" Ruth asks, admitting to herself that she's rather curious about the strange reemergence of Ros Myers.

"At a farmhouse on the edge of the saltmarsh. It's around five miles from here. Since she's not going anywhere any time soon, I thought we could go there tomorrow. I've been visiting her each day. She has physiotherapy each morning, leaving her afternoons free."

"Who is with her ... in this farmhouse?" Ruth asks.

"The house belongs to a couple I only know as Howard and Gail. As well as being farmers, they are assets. There's an indoor pool, and Ros spends part of each morning swimming laps. She shared with me that after she leaves there she may never want to swim again."

"You've been there every day since you left London?" Harry nods. "That's a lot of talking."

"She took a while to tell me ... what she told me."

Clearly, there is a secret surrounding Ros - where's she's been for the past few months, why she was spared, and by whom. "Very well," Ruth says, taking her eyes from Harry. "I'll see her."

Ruth is relieved that she'd thought to bring extra clothes, just in case she had to stay over. She retrieves the pool car from the lane beside the pub, parking it in the yard behind the Fisherman's Rest. While Harry goes out to pick up a takeaway meal from the Bombay Kitchen, the Indian restaurant across the square, Ruth puts in a quick call to Lucas.

"Is he alright?" Lucas asks, sounding genuinely concerned. "Not flipped his lid or anything?"

"Harry's fine. This is not related to any current operation, so ... he won't be reporting it to the Grid. It's to do with someone from his past."

"An old girlfriend, then."

"No. An operative from years ago who requires his ... expertise." Harry had made it clear to her that the truth about Ros must not trickle through to the Grid. "I'm staying for a day or so to help him through it ..." Lucas meets her news with silence. Ruth can imagine what is passing through the man's mind. ".. as his analyst," she adds, then closes her eyes, wishing she'd kept the last three words to herself. Still, Lucas is the one who had sent her to this place, and what he thinks of her and Harry being here together is hardly any of his business.

Harry has already shown her to her room, a roomy bedroom with three single beds.

"I think this is meant to be a kids' room," Harry had explained, as he'd stood awkwardly in the doorway, while Ruth had glanced around the room, wondering which bed would be the most comfortable.

"It's a good thing there's a spare room," she'd said, perhaps unnecessarily.

"I'll leave you to get comfortable," he'd replied, leaving in rather a hurry.

Once they've eaten, they take their wine, and sit on comfortable armchairs in the living area. Harry asks about the Grid, and Ruth briefs him on the events of the week so far. Even though they are only a little over an hour's drive from London, Ruth feels like she's stepped into a different dimension. Here she is with Harry, sharing a space with him, while only a few miles away Ros Myers is alive, and about to embark on another phase of the life they'd both - until now - believed had ended.

"I feel strange," Ruth says aloud.

"How do you mean?"

She'd like to say that it feels strange to be sitting across from Harry, with him being soft and gentle, and even lost for words. While she'd known him to have a gentler side, he'd never been short of clever remarks; he normally had one for almost every occasion.

"Us here, and Ros not far away. I'm having difficulty absorbing it. And this village is about as different from London as it's possible to be."

This time he lifts his eyes to watch her, while Ruth gazes at his hands as they cradle his glass of red wine, wondering (dangerously, perhaps) how it would feel to have those hands caressing the bare skin of her stomach. It is when she imagines his fingers sliding down her stomach until they reach her pubic hair that she glances up to see a soft knowing in his own eyes.

"Don't expect goblins and fairies, Ruth. Landsby is just a village which time forgot, other than the takeaway, which does a decent tandoori."

Ruth hopes Harry hadn't noticed the flush which had moved up from her neck to her cheeks when he'd caught her staring at his hands. Hopefully she has bluffed her way through that, and for the remainder of their time here she can maintain at least the pretense of professionalism.

"I think I might turn in," she says at last.

"But it's only nine-thirty."

"I brought a book, and I'm rather enjoying it."

Harry nods, but she's sure he appears disappointed. Little does he know that the book is a dry tome on analysing voices and sentence construction, including the unconscious choice of words. Rather than wanting to read it, Ruth needs to read it, professional development being important to her.

"Goodnight, Harry," she says on her way through the living room from the bathroom. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Goodnight, Ruth."

Straight after lunch the next day they drive to the farm beside the saltmarsh. The house of two storeys is constructed from the same pale grey stone as many of the shops and houses in the village. Behind the farmhouse are several outbuildings, one of which stands out as having been constructed in the twenty-first century, a sturdy, low shed of concrete and steel.

Harry parks his car at the side of the house, "That's Howard's", he says, nodding towards a battered Land Rover parked beside his car. "That means he's inside having lunch."

"What do they do here," Ruth asks, glancing across at him, "apart from rehabilitating injured spies?"

"Goats."

"What? Breed them?"

"I suppose they do a bit of that, but mostly they milk them, then make cheese. This farm is known for it's goats' milk and goats' cheese." He then turns to her and watches her for a few seconds. "Whatever you do, Ruth, don't ask Howard about his goats. He'll bore you silly with details you have no need to know."

Ruth nods. "Understood," she says.

They are shown inside by a slightly built woman of around Ruth's age, whom Harry introduces as Gail.

"Your girl is in the conservatory," Gail says, pointing towards the back of the house. "She's just finishing her lunch."

As they walk down a long passageway towards the back of the house, Ruth turns towards Harry. "Gail called Ros a girl. I doubt she was ever a girl."

She watches Harry's face as he lifts one side of his mouth before turning towards her. "I'll see her for a minute first, Ruth, while you wait in here."

He has led her to a large room where all four walls are lined with bookshelves. A narrow beam of autumn light shines through one narrow window which runs the length of one wall above the bookshelves. "You can read about the joys of keeping goats," he says, leaning so close to her that a whiff of his cologne tickles her nostrils. She notices that his attention is on her mouth, so she turns her head away from him, although she can still feel the heat from his body, so close to her own. His hand grasps her elbow, preventing her from moving away. Even had she wanted to, and she doesn't, escape is impossible.

"Well," says a familiar voice from behind them, "I see nothing much has changed."

Harry drops his hand from her elbow, and they both turn to see a wheelchair blocking the doorway. With her mouth set in a half-smile, and one eyebrow lifted, Ros Myers looks from Ruth to Harry, and then back to Ruth.

"Sorry if I interrupted anything," she says smoothly, "but this thing hasn't a working warning device."

"Ros -" Harry begins, taking a step towards her.

Ros holds up her hand, effectively stopping him from coming any closer. "Harry, why don't you brush up on goat husbandry while Ruth and I have a chat."

And so Ruth steps forward to follow Ros and her wheelchair into the conservatory. As she leaves the library, Ruth glances over her shoulder to see Harry standing in the middle of the room with his mouth open, having once more been brought to his knees by Ros Myers.