Birchington-on-Sea – Thursday 15th August 2013:
Harry's first sight of Ruth in the twenty-two months since he'd last seen her was at once both unremarkable and unforgettable.
He had gone into work early, arranging for Erin to take over for him for a couple of days.
"Calum has already told me about Ruth," Erin had said with a rare smile. "I'm … very happy for you both."
"It might be a little early for congratulations, Erin. I have no idea if she'll want to see me, but I'd never sleep again if I didn't at least try to see her."
So he had given Erin his meetings to attend – one with the JIC, and the other with the Section Head of Secton A. "He has some beef about Section D not acknowledging the role of his officers when there was that dustup outside Grosvenor House. You'll have to flatter him a little, Erin. We might need them again one day soon."
"Politics," Erin had replied, wrinkling her nose. "Just what I need."
By the time Harry had driven out of the underground car park, and into the afternoon traffic, he began to feel a lightness of being the likes of which he'd not experienced since the night he and Ruth had made love. When he points his car southwards, he knows that he must do this. There is no alternative. When he reaches Birchington-on-Sea he books into his B&B, and then walks back along Alpha Road to Station Road. There he waits at a table outside the cake shop, his eyes on the coffee shop across the road.
Harry almost misses the moment when Ruth leaves her place of work. He had been staring along the road, watching a young woman struggling to fit a folded pram into the boot of her car, wondering should he offer to help, when he senses rather than sees movement from across the road. It is definitely Ruth. He knows no-one else who walks with that degree of purpose. His plan had been to meet her as she stepped out of the coffee shop, but he'd already missed that moment. Malcolm has also told him that she works Saturday mornings at the dry cleaners, close to where he is sitting. Such mundane jobs for a clever woman like Ruth, but he is sure there is a reason for her choices.
When he notices her heading off along the pavement towards Alpha Road, Harry quickly crosses the street, and walks briskly to catch up with her.
"Anne …." he calls at last. She stops still, not turning, and very slowly Harry moves until he is right behind her right shoulder. "Anne?" he says again, and this time she turns – as if in slow motion – until she faces him, and looks into his eyes.
Harry cannot take his eyes from her. He feels himself sinking into the same eyes he'd believed had closed forever. Only the evening before he had visited her grave. Does she even know she is believed to be dead? "Ruth," he breathes, hoping he has communicated to her how difficult this moment is for him.
Ruth drops her eyes, something she'd always done when the air between them had become this heavily charged with responses unspoken. "You'd better come with me," she says quickly, briefly looking up at him, "and until we're inside it's best you call me Anne."
Nothing more is said until they enter Ruth's flat – one half of the downstairs of what once must have been a fine seaside home. Once inside, Ruth visibly relaxes, and after she hangs her coat over a hook just inside the door, she smiles at Harry, and indicates with her hand that he should follow her as she leads him to the back of her flat, to a small, but modern kitchen.
"Tea?" she asks, and Harry nods, sitting at the small table in the chair she indicates.
Harry watches her silently as she makes a pot of tea. He could do with something stronger, but perhaps it is too early in their reacquaintance for alcohol. He is just relieved to have been allowed into her home.
"I'm assuming you're here for at least the night, Harry." He nods his assent. "We can have fish and chips for supper from the fish shop on the corner. I'll have to order them myself, because I get special treatment. I think Enzo is sweet on me." Ruth looks up at Harry and smiles as she pours tea into his cup. When Ruth eventually sits in the chair opposite Harry, she sugars and milks her tea, stirs it with a spoon, and then looks up at the man opposite her. "I'm assuming you have a few things to say to me."
"I do." Harry places his cup carefully in the saucer, hoping that he has successfully hidden the trembling in his fingers. "This time yesterday I left work early to visit your grave. I sat on a bench nearby, and contemplated what could have been ….. should have been." Feeling his composure slipping, Harry sighs heavily, and stops speaking.
"I'm ….. very sorry you have had to endure that, Harry. I knew you'd be ….."
"I've been devastated, Ruth. For almost two years I've grieved your death, while all the time you've been -"
"Working for the CIA."
"What?"
"In a nutshell, Harry, once it was clear that I would recover from my injury, I was flown to the US, and I worked for the CIA …... under heavy electronic surveillance and restrictions."
"Ruth …... why? Why did they take you?"
"Do you mean that you have no idea why you were not extradited to the US? Did you not ask someone why? Where was your curiosity?"
"Towers said that the CIA had changed their minds."
"Harry …. they considered capturing me and putting me to work for them as an analyst of far more value than grabbing you and throwing you in a cell to rot for the rest of your days."
Her words hit Harry like a punch directed firmly at his solar plexus. He sits back in his chair as though slapped. "Jesus," is all he is able to say, the word sliding into the air between them.
"You didn't know?"
"Ruth …... I had no idea. I didn't question Towers' reasons. I wasn't seeing anything clearly at the time. You'd just died – or so I believed – and nothing in my world made any sense. Had he said the CIA wanted me to dance for the President I wouldn't have questioned it."
"But surely you'd have questioned the President's tastes."
Seeing a smile on Ruth's face, Harry smiles back. Then as quickly as it reaches his features, the smile disappears. "It happened again, didn't it?"
"It?"
"You, Ruth. You sacrificed yourself so that I could continue working for MI5." Harry passes one palm down his face in a gesture of shame and defeat.
"Apart from me not having a lot of choice in the matter, yes, that is what happened."
Harry sits in his chair and looks across the small kitchen table towards this woman whom he has thought of many times daily since he'd believed her to have died. How is it possible for one small woman to have sacrificed herself – by faking her death twice – so that he could continue to fight the good fight, which he has known for some time is not as good as he'd once believed it was. Ruth has spent close to five years of her precious and valuable life in saving his arse. It should never have happened the first time, and so the fact that it has happened all over again, and this time without his knowledge, is almost too much for him to bear. He leans forward, his forehead resting on one hand, so that his face is hidden from Ruth. Were he not to do that he'd surely have to at the very least punch a wall.
"I'm so sorry, Harry."
He looks up at her, his eyes blazing. "You're sorry! Jesus Christ, Ruth, were William Towers not already a sick man, I'd look him up and tear out his heart …... assuming he has one."
"Yes, well …... I'm not sure William had much say in the matter. He was already over a barrel with the PM, and the CIA representatives in London were jumping up and down wanting your neck on a block. Towers agreed to them taking me in your stead because he'd already been bragging to anyone who'd listen at Grosvenor House about my skills. My tenure with them was only ever going to be temporary, and my task was not open-ended." Ruth takes a sip of her tea. "Of course I knew none of this at the time, due to my being unconscious."
"Why didn't you at least contact me once you got to the US?"
"Every one of my electronic communications was monitored. I find it hard to believe they had people monitoring my communications both in and out of my office and my home – if a tiny one-bedroom flat could be termed a home. I was free to leave, but as soon as I did so, they'd have arrested you, and I couldn't allow that." Ruth hesitates while Harry again passes a hand across his face. "I wanted to contact you, but …... I also didn't want to put you in danger. To keep you free, I had to …... let you go."
Again Harry sits back in his chair, feeling worse and worse with each sentence Ruth speaks.
"You wanted to know, Harry. I'm just telling it the way it was."
"I know. How long have you been back in the UK?"
"Around three months. I was let go in late March, and I arrived back in London in mid May, after wending my way through Europe. It took me a while to ... learn again how it feels to be free." She hesitates, looking up at him. Harry has barely touched his tea. "If I had something stronger, Harry, I'd get it out right now, because you may not want to hear what I have to say next."
"You've met someone …... is that what you're saying?"
"No. I haven't. Let me tell you about my first night back in London. On leaving the US I was given a rather healthy pay cheque. I hadn't expected them to pay me, but I wasn't about to complain about it. Among other things, I helped them isolate and identify a Russian cell in central Washington, which was the chief reason they were after my skills. They'd not been able to discover how so much of what went on in the White House was getting back to Moscow. For some reason no-one else had even suspected the Russians had infiltrated several business contractors which served the White House. Once I reached London, I booked myself into a hotel, and then at around the time I thought you'd be getting home from work, I drove my rental car to your house, parked across the road, and waited."
"Why didn't you telephone me? Surely you remembered by mobile phone number. You could have rung me at work."
Ruth watched his face for a long few seconds, waiting for him to remember. "Eventually you came home. It was late ….. after 10.30. I thought how dedicated you still were, and I felt this surge of pride in you. I watched as you got out of your car, and then I watched as you helped a woman out of the passenger side, and then I watched as you both went inside. I waited outside for her to leave, but a little before midnight, I watched as the downstairs lights were turned off, and your bedroom light turned on."
"Ruth -"
"I hadn't expected you'd move on so quickly, Harry. While I was working for the CIA, all I could think about was you, and when they'd finished with me, I'd be able to get back to you."
"Ruth."
"What? It looked quite clear to me, Harry. You took a woman home to your house, and you then took her upstairs to the same bed in which you and I had made love." Ruth then notices the wretched look on Harry's face.
"Ruth …... I believed you to be dead. I hadn't wanted anyone else. I still don't. But I needed comfort, human contact, companionship, and to be honest, I also needed sex." Harry is aware he is getting worked up, but as soon as he speaks the next sentence, he wishes he could take it back. "At least now you know how I felt when you came back from Cyprus with a lover in tow."