Once again, Ruth found herself sitting at Harry's kitchen table. This time he had elected not to cook, stopping instead on their way home to pick up a Chinese takeaway. She picked at her food disinterestedly, watching the silent man sitting across the table from her and wondering what on earth was going through his mind.
Things hadn't exactly gone to plan today, and though she knew Harry wasn't cross with her, she could still sense his frustration and his fear. The names she'd rattled off in his office had been weighing heavily on her mind ever since she'd spoken them; Harry never liked to be reminded of betrayal, and they had never really discussed what happened with Tessa, or Connie, or Juliet. Oh, he'd given her the salient details, but he'd hidden his emotions away, refused to comment on the effect their actions had on him personally. She knew him well enough by now to recognize the look that had flickered across his face when she said their names, Juliet especially. It was pain she saw in his eyes, and that pain haunted her.
"Harry," she said softly.
"I don't want to talk about work," he replied, refusing to look at her. These days he didn't even need to see her face to read her thoughts.
Ruth sighed, and gave up any pretense of eating. "Harry," she said again, "we can't ignore it. We can't just come home and pretend that nothing happened. I only wanted to say I'm sorry, for what I said to you and how I said it. You didn't deserve that."
"Don't apologize. I needed to hear it," he said gruffly.
Stubborn old man, she thought fondly.
"You never talk about it, Harry. What happened with Juliet, I mean." She spoke in a low voice, not wanting to incite him to anger but wanting answers, anyway; she'd been longing to have this conversation with him ever since her return from Cyprus. Before that, if she were being honest with herself. She'd known from the moment Juliet first stepped onto the Grid that there was something between the pair of them, and time had proved her right. For years she had watched them going round and round, and wondered if perhaps the past wasn't as buried as Harry would like to pretend it was.
And then she'd left, and come home to find that Juliet had turned traitor, nearly killing both Ros and Harry in the process. This unspoken, unexplained history between Harry and Juliet had always weighed heavy on Ruth's mind; what sort of man would cheat on his wife with the likes of Juliet Shaw? Was Juliet the kind of woman he preferred, devious and ambitious, sharp-tongued and glamorous? Ruth knew she was none of those things, and when she'd first met Juliet, she'd become convinced that Harry would never look at her twice, not with that she-devil around. Juliet was long gone now, but the anxiety she'd inspired in Ruth had yet to abate.
"Perhaps I don't want to talk about it, Ruth," Harry answered, his voice as quiet as her own had been. "I don't have a lot of fond memories, where Juliet is concerned."
"Don't you?" The words were out before she could stop them, and Ruth blushed furiously at her own boldness. She wasn't trying to goad him, but she was growing tired of his constant deflections.
For his part, Harry seemed as shocked by her question as she was, and he looked up at her sharply, his face dark and unreadable.
"What is it you want, Ruth? Are you asking me about Yalta, or is there something else you want to know?"
Everything, she thought sadly, I want to know everything about you.
"Harry-"
"Yes, I slept with her, Ruth. Yes, I was married at the time. There's an official reprimand in my file, I'm sure you could dig it up, if you were so inclined."
Ruth stayed quiet, not wanting him to know that she had already perused his file at great length.
"It was a long time ago, when I was young and foolish, and Juliet wasn't quite as…hard as she became later in life. I needed someone who understood what I was going through and my wife…" his voice trailed off and he dropped his gaze from her face.
Ruth was holding her breath. Juliet Shaw had given her no end of grief, but it was nothing compared to the way she felt about the mysterious Jane. The mother of Harry's children, the woman who had been his wife, blonde and tall and elegant and as different in appearance to Ruth as the sun to the moon. Harry had proposed to Ruth once (well twice, technically, she realized with a start), had offered himself to her freely and without reservation, but he had done the same for Jane, and where was she now?
"Jane is a good woman," Harry said after a time, as if he'd read her thoughts and knew what direction they had taken. "Yes, she can be vain, and bitter, but in her heart she's still that girl I knew at Oxford. We weren't well-suited, she and I. She didn't want to know what I was doing, with work, and she resented me for being gone all the time, for not helping with the children. Every problem Graham's ever had she's blamed me for. I'm not saying I don't deserve part of that blame, just maybe not all of it." He cleared his throat. "And as for Juliet, well, you have her to thank, for my asking you to dinner in the first place."
Ruth's mind was racing; she was so busy trying to refrain from asking questions about his falling out with Jane and about Grahams "problems" that Harry's last sentence caught her quite unawares, and she fumbled around for a moment, trying to find the words.
"What?" she asked inanely.
Harry gave her a sad little smile. "I went to visit Juliet in hospital, after Jocelyn Meyers and his cronies blew up her car. She asked me straight out if I was in love with you."
"But that was weeks before you asked me!" Ruth protested weakly. Juliet had asked if he was in love with her? Perhaps once upon a time Juliet had believed, as Ruth did now, that she could read him like a book. Perhaps Juliet had enjoyed the same closeness with him, the same quiet understanding that Ruth had always treasured. Perhaps Ruth's relationship with Harry wasn't all that special, after all. Her heart sank lower with each passing second.
"I know," Harry smiled, blind to the turmoil that gripped her. "She could see right through me, though, she always could. I didn't answer her, of course, not directly. My feelings for you were never any of her concern. But then she said the strangest thing. She said she's in love with you."
She said what? Ruth wondered, horrified at the very prospect of Juliet Shaw knowing the darkest secrets of her heart.
"And then she said don't let this opportunity pass you by. I'm not in the habit of taking personal advice from Juliet, but in this one instance, I think she was correct. If I hadn't had that conversation with her, I might never have had the courage to ask you to dinner. Before that moment, I'd never considered the possibility that my feelings for you might have been reciprocated."
At the end of Harry's little speech Ruth was left feeling rather light-headed and off-balance. She remembered all too well that period in their lives, when Harry would offer her a lift home at least once a week and she would decline every single time, when they would stand to close, stare too long, when her heart would pound at his proximity, and break at the thought that he could never possibly want her the way she wanted him. And yet here they sat, all these years later, and Ruth was pregnant with his child, and he was telling her in a shy little voice that he had possessed the same fears, back then, that had paralyzed her so.
"Juliet bloody Shaw," she said in a despairing, faintly admiring tone of voice.
"Indeed," Harry agreed ruefully.
Ruth was saved having to come up with some sort of reply by the ringing of Harry's mobile. He fished it out of his jacket pocket, and answered it curtly. After a moment his face softened, and Ruth wondered who he could possibly be talking to, to inspire such a reaction. She got her answer only a moment later.
"I'd love to, darling," Harry was saying. "I'll just have to ask her. Could you hold on for a moment?"
He held the phone against his chest, and spoke to Ruth. "Catherine will be in London, in a few weeks, and she wanted to know if we could have dinner with her then."
Ruth nodded, dumbstruck. It was a given that she'd meet Harry's children at some point, but so far she had only really thought about it in the abstract. Setting a date and a time and a place made it real, and she felt faintly nauseous at the very idea. What must Catherine think of her, this woman so much younger than he, who had come along and usurped her mother's place? Would Catherine hate her? What would Harry do, if she did?
"Ruth says yes, absolutely," Harry said, shooting her a faintly accusatory glance, as if he was cross that she hadn't been more enthusiastic. "Just let us know when you get here, and we can set a time." He was quiet for a few moments, smiling as he listened to his daughter speak. "I will. I love you," he said, and then he ended the call.
"Catherine said to give you her best," he told her, returning to his supper with gusto.
"That's very kind of her," Ruth answered softly, not knowing what else to say. What was the protocol, in this situation?
"You've nothing to be worried about," Harry assured her. "You've piqued her interest. She was always a curious girl."
God help me, Ruth thought dejectedly, briefly imagining herself being interrogated by a smaller, female version of Harry.
"I've been wondering," Harry said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, "when you thought you might like to move in."
The conversation had veered back to their current predicament, and Ruth felt much more comfortable talking about their plans for the peanut, as opposed to Harry's daughter or his nefarious former lover.
"I'd like to be settled in, before she gets here. Maybe once I'm eight months gone."
Harry's eyes grew distant for a moment as he did the math. "Six weeks," he said, once he'd come up with the answer.
"Not so long now," Ruth agreed quietly, running one hand absently over her belly. They had two and a half months left. She couldn't quite believe how quickly the time had gone, though given the fact that it was already June, she imagined that the last few months of her pregnancy would drag along, as her stomach grew and the heat index rose.
"Have you thought any more about names?" he asked.
"I've been leaning towards Emma, recently. Emma Rose," she added, smiling just a little.
Harry did not say anything, but the edges of his mouth turned down in the ghost of a frown.
"You don't like it," Ruth observed. "Are you still stuck on Sophia?"
He didn't answer, but he had slipped into that adorable little pout that made her want to lean across the table and kiss him senseless.
"We'll get there, Harry. Maybe we should just wait until we see her, to decide what to call her."
Ruth thought it was a very sensible suggestion, but Harry disagreed. "I'd like to have it worked out before she gets here. I don't want us to have a row in the delivery room."
She laughed. "I'm sure we won't, Harry. She'll have a name, something we both like."
He nodded in agreement, and then rose, beginning to clear away their plates. Ruth followed suit, standing beside him at the sink as he washed the dishes and then handed them off to her to dry. They worked in a blissful, domestic sort of silence for a time, but then the job was done and Ruth was feeling a bit unsure as to what to do next. She lingered by the sink, taking longer than was necessary to dry the last plate, wondering what she ought to say. It was getting late, and she'd only asked him to have dinner with her, and she hadn't properly moved into the house yet, and it was his house anyway, and it wasn't her place to say whether she should stay or go.
Harry made up her mind for her. He gave her a gentle little smile and pulled the plate out of her fidgeting hands and deposited it in the cupboard. He turned and wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned in to kiss her neck.
"Stay with me," he murmured, his lips brushing against her skin as he spoke.
"Yes," she sighed, running her fingers through his short hair. "Yes."
