Beth's first week as a proper spook turned out to be a bit of a nightmare, in the end. Elevator assassinations and Columbian hit men splattered all over the safehouse, a shootout with some Nigerians, and then, to cap it all off, she'd been fired and re-hired in the space of a few hours. Her head was reeling, by the time she stumbled home after the Westhouse debacle.
But after just one week, this job had sunk its teeth into Beth.
She'd made good money, working for herself, but she'd grown tired of the routine. Grown tired of surrounding herself with shady characters, everyone working their own angle, not a one of them interested in anything other than themselves. She told Harry she wanted to get clean, and she meant it. This week she'd rubbed shoulders with a different caliber of spy, with people like Harry and Ruth and Dimitri and Lucas, people who believed so strongly in what they were doing, who gave everything they had to something greater than themselves. And that experience had changed her.
Acting in the service of a noble cause had never been in Beth Bailey's repertoire, and she was fairly certain she didn't belong here. There had been a moment, just a moment, when she had genuinely considering leaving with Chapman, running away from MI-5 and queen and country and heading straight back into her old life. But she'd gotten a taste of something better, and in the end it was duty that motivated her, rather than self-interest. She felt a duty to protect these people; she had jumped into the line of fire to save Harry without thinking. The person she'd been a month ago never would have done that.
The flat was empty when Beth got home, so she poured herself a glass of wine, turned on the telly, and flopped onto the couch in the sitting room. She'd decided to wait up for Ruth, who had stayed behind to finish up some paperwork related to the Westhouse op. It wasn't necessary, really, but after everything that had happened, Beth very much wanted a few minutes alone with her flatmate. Just a few minutes, to speak to her and reassure her that Beth was in this for the long haul. If their roles were reversed, Beth was fairly certain she'd chuck her traitorous flatmate out on her ear, and she wanted the chance to at least try to smooth things over with Ruth before that happened. With one and thing and another there had been no time to even begin searching for a new flat, and Beth didn't fancy being homeless.
By the time Ruth finally did come stumbling in the door, Beth was perilously close to falling asleep. She rallied when she heard the key in the lock, however, dragging herself to her feet and giving a little shake of her head. Ruth offered her a wan little smile as she passed, and Beth couldn't help but notice how pale and exhausted her friend looked. She kept those thoughts to herself, however, as she followed Ruth into the kitchen.
"Ruth," Beth started, shoving her hands in her pockets. Ruth held up her hand, signaling Beth to be quiet. Beth watched her lean back against the counter and run a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes lightly before speaking.
"Do you feel badly, about how you handled things?" Ruth asked.
"Yes, God, I-"
"Will you ever do anything like this ever again?" Ruth interrupted her.
She responded immediately, and honestly. "No."
Ruth nodded. "Ok, then." She pushed back from the counter and made to leave the kitchen. "Have a good night, Beth."
"Wait, that's it?" Beth asked, incredulous. She knew she really should have kept her mouth shut, should have been grateful to have been let off so easily, but she was so bloody tired and the words just spilled out.
"Listen, Beth," Ruth said, not unkindly, "we all make mistakes. We all have things in our past we're not proud of, things we'd rather not face. It's your first week, and though it started off a bit rough, you ended on a good note. You…" Ruth had started to breathe a little heavier, as she spoke, and her eyes had gone sort of glassy. Beth recognized the signs at the last moment, and lunged across the kitchen just in time to catch Ruth around the middle and slow her descent as the dark-haired woman's eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness. Carefully she eased Ruth to the ground, rolling her on her side and into the recovery position. Satisfied that Ruth was breathing steadily and not convulsing or anything, Beth left her there and dashed across the kitchen, looking for the sugar bowl hidden in one of the cupboards.
They'd only really worked together for a week, but Beth had begun to notice little things about Ruth, and one of those things was that Ruth almost never ate like she was supposed to. Beth had been out of the office for most of the day, but she was willing to bet that Ruth had skipped lunch and dinner both, worked straight through, and then come home and collapsed in her kitchen because her blood sugar had dropped too low. Beth's father had been diabetic, and though he had mostly been good about keeping an eye on his condition, there had been a few times when he had found himself in a similar state. Her mother had always put sugar under his tongue, to bring him round quicker, and that was exactly what Beth intended to do now. If she didn't have Ruth conscious in the next minute she was going to call an ambulance, but she knew that Ruth would absolutely hate the idea of going to hospital. She'd try this first.
Next to the moments she'd spent in the elevator playing dead while a hailstorm of bullets rained around her, it was the longest sixty seconds of her life. What a week.
Ruth's eyelids fluttered open, and Beth breathed a sigh of relief.
"Stay right there," she said, going to the fridge and pulling out a small bottle of apple juice. She poured a measure into a cup and then brought it back to Ruth, carefully helping her into a sitting position with her back braced against the cupboard.
"Drink this," Beth ordered, keeping one hand on the cup and the other on the back of Ruth's head. When the apple juice was gone, Beth sat down and leaned back against the cupboard beside her. Beth's heart was still hammering in her chest; all she could think was how cross Harry would be if something happened to Ruth on her watch.
"What happened?" Ruth asked, twisting her hands together in her lap.
Beth studied her face. Over the last few weeks, Beth had begun to notice things, little things, about Ruth that were sort of…off. She'd never been particularly in tune to other people's health or habits, but some things were simply too obvious to be ignored, and if Ruth wasn't going to face it, then Beth decided she would force the issue.
"You fainted," Beth told her, gauging her reaction.
"I've never done that before," Ruth said, sounding slightly surprised.
"Can I ask you a sort of personal question, Ruth?" Nothing for it now, Bailey, she told herself firmly. Just say it.
Ruth turned her head, still leaned up against the cupboard, and fixed Beth with a questioning gaze.
"Please don't be cross," Beth soldiered on. "Is there… is there any chance you might be pregnant?"
Ruth laughed out loud, raising her hands to run her fingers through her hair. "I'm sure it's nothing that dramatic, Beth, I just forgot to eat today, that's all."
Beth nodded. She'd expected to encounter resistance to the idea at first, but she had quite a bit of evidence she'd been holding in reserve.
"Maybe," she said. "But I've been living in this flat for three weeks, and in that time you've been ill in the morning on at least six separate occasions. And on the Grid on Tuesday you were cross with Tariq because you said the smell of his lunch was turning your stomach. You've been exhausted, you suddenly can't stand the taste of wine, you-"
"I'm going to be sick," Ruth interrupted, and launched herself to her feet, rushing out of the room and down the hall towards the bathroom.
Beth eased herself to her feet in the wake of Ruth's departure. She had every intention of going after her, but she didn't want to be anywhere near that room if Ruth really was ill. After a moment, she got confirmation that waiting had been a good idea as she heard Ruth retching, yet again. She gave it another minute or two, shifting uneasily on her feet.
This was a bit of an awkward position for Beth to find herself in. She didn't have many women friends, and she had only known Ruth for such a short while, and she had proven herself to be less than trustworthy with her behavior earlier in the week. Apart from not really knowing how to comfort a friend in this situation, Beth was concerned that perhaps Ruth didn't want to be comforted by her. But if Ruth really was pregnant, she needed to know, and it seemed to Beth that the only way they could find out for sure was if she continued to press the issue. Taking a deep breath and retrieving the empty cup from the floor, Beth steeled herself and followed Ruth's path into the bathroom.
Inside, she found Ruth sat back against the wall, knees drawn up against her chest, weeping just like she had on Beth's first night in the flat. Without saying a word Beth filled the empty cup with water and passed it down to her. Ruth accepted it with shaking hands, taking a few sips while she tried to bring her breathing back under control. Beth leaned against the sink and waited patiently for Ruth to break the silence.
"It's been almost six weeks," Ruth said finally, her voice rough and unsteady. Beth sat down on the floor beside her, determined to let her talk, determined to listen and be a friend, if she could. "This is insane," Ruth added, turning the full force of her huge, pleading blue eyes on Beth, who held her gaze without responding. "I'll be thirty-nine on my next birthday. I can't possibly be…" her voice trailed off and her gaze grew distant, as if she'd just remembered something.
"How sure are you about that?" Beth prodded gently. From where Beth was sitting, it didn't just seem possible; it seemed incredibly likely.
"I'm so bloody stupid," Ruth whispered, burying her face in her hands once again.
Beth leaned back against the wall, keeping quiet for now. Ruth didn't really seem like the sort of person who had mad, stupid nights, and Beth couldn't help but think of the conversation she'd overheard between Ruth and Harry three weeks ago. She recalled something about Harry having no regrets and moving on from this. A very unpleasant suspicion had taken root in Beth's mind, but she knew better than to say anything about it. The situation was delicate enough already; she had no intentions of making things worse by digging around for answers to questions she had no right to ask.
"Wait right here, ok?" Beth said after it became obvious that Ruth wasn't going to offer any more information. She heaved herself to her feet and below her Ruth just nodded; she probably couldn't have gone anywhere in this state, even if she wanted to.
Ruth sat on the floor, hugging her knees and praying Beth was wrong. In the year since George had died, the only person she'd slept with was Harry. Just Harry, God only knew how many times across two beautiful, horrible weeks when the very foundations of the life that they'd built came crumbling down around their ears. Two weeks when she'd needed him so badly that she gave no thought to consequences; as she sat on the floor and tried to keep a tight rein on the tears that threatened to overtake her again, she dug through her memories of of each glorious, fragile moment they'd spent in each others' arms, and tried to recall if either of them had ever, even for a moment, stopped to think about the consequences.
The answer to that question was a resounding no. Each encounter between them had been so impulsive, so urgent, so lovely in its own way that they had hardly spoken at all, beyond gentle sighs and fervent moans and whispers of one another's names.
How could she have been so unbelievably stupid?
Perhaps part of the cause of her laxity, when it came to birth control, was her very sense of self; she felt so much older than she was, so much more weary than she had any right to be, and she was so certain that a family of her own was beyond her reach that somewhere in the darkest part of her heart she believed the universe itself agreed. After all, fate had stepped in once before, when she'd come back from Cyprus.
God, but she hadn't thought about that in such a long time. She shivered as she sat on the cold tile floor, hugged her knees, and remembered.
The day before Mani's agents had arrived on her front doorstep, turning her sanctuary into a deathtrap, she'd taken a pregnancy test, and she'd sat and stared at it for a long time after, wondering what in the bloody hell she was going to do. Having a baby had never been part of her plan, even though at the time she was convinced that she was safe from her old enemies. George would have been overjoyed, she knew, but all she felt, upon discovering that she was carrying his child, was dismay. What would Harry say? She'd asked herself, and cried for hours, while George was at work and Nico was at school, and she was alone with her grief and her fear.
And then her whole world had turned upside down, and they'd been forced to flee before she had the chance to tell George. In all the chaos surrounding her return to London, finding a bolt-hole and contacting Malcolm and feeling like a real spook again, she'd almost forgotten about it, until Mani marched her into that room, and sat her down in a chair across from Harry.
She had gazed into his eyes and felt certain that he knew, that with just one look he could take in the truth of her, and see that she was carrying another man's child. It had horrified her, and she'd been flooded with shame at her reaction to seeing him again. She couldn't help but feel that she'd betrayed them both somehow, betrayed Harry by being with George in the first place, betrayed George by falling into his bed when her heart belonged to another. There were eyes everywhere, and she could not speak to Harry properly, could not fling herself at him and explain everything she'd been through, without him, could not tell him that she'd found peace in someone else's arms but that all the while, she'd been thinking of him.
So she kept her secret to herself, then, and when he asked her how she felt about George, all she could say was I feel very…guilty.
And Christ, but she felt guilty, knowing that she'd put George in danger, put his child – both of his children – in danger, simply by being who she was, simply by being the one person Harry could count on, no matter what, always.
After George died, some nameless agent had driven her to another little flat, where Nico sat, scared and alone. That had been one of the most terrible moments of her entire life - worse even than watching the bullet pierce George's skull, watching his lifeless body fall to his knees – telling that sweet little boy that his father would never, ever be coming home. She couldn't tell him the truth, couldn't explain about the uranium and the tired man with beautiful eyes who looked at her like she contained every star in the universe within her flesh. She could only tell him that his father was gone, that he would be going home alone, and then hold him while he cried.
The very next day, at his aunt's insistence, Nico boarded a plane to go back to Greece, and Ruth refused to get out of bed until the cramps in her belly grew too painful to be ignored, and she stumbled into the bathroom to find herself covered in blood. There was only one person she could call, in her moment of distress, and so she did, and Jo came and collected her and drove her to hospital and held her hand while the doctor said words like trauma and spontaneous abortion. It was stress, they said; she wasn't very far gone and her body had entered fight or flight mode, dispensing with the pregnancy in a desperate, animal attempt to save itself.
She had always believed she wasn't meant to have children of her own, and that horrible night had seemed like nothing so much as proof of that fact. Her very body had betrayed her, had acted as selfishly as she had, and despite the fact that she'd had no control over it, still she felt guilty. Worse than guilty. We've forfeited the chance for that sort of life, she'd told Harry so many months later, thinking of George and Nico and the baby that wasn't, thinking of Harry's ex-wife and his son and his daughter. They had chosen their path, and family wasn't a part of it.
Losing that baby had broken her heart, but she had taken some solace in the fact that she would never have to explain George's death to another child. She had believed she could go on being Ruth, quiet, bookish Ruth, just Ruth, and never have to touch on those feelings again.
Now here she was, and as she added up all the evidence Beth had supplied her, she came to the same conclusion; she was pregnant. She felt the same way now that she had then, before she left Cyprus, and that absolutely bloody terrified her. What the hell was she going to tell Harry? What would he say? What would happen if she told him, and then lost this baby, too? What would break him more completely, having a child with her, or almost having a child with her?
By the time Beth came back into the bathroom, she was very nearly hysterical again.
