Same Disclaimer as before

Chapter 13

December 2008, Hong Kong

Just before Christmas 2008, Horace came to Hong Kong and as usual, took Ruth out for dinner. Ruth had not seen very much of Horace during that year since he had been tied up with security work related to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That event was a logistical nightmare for the Chinese Secret Service. All of a sudden, China had to open its doors to hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world, many of them foreign spooks masquerading as athletes, coaches, games officials, reporters and tourists. All of their credentials had to be checked out and processed. In addition, all real or potential threats of terrorist attacks, either from domestic pressure groups or from foreign sources, also had to be checked out and neutralised. Horace must have accumulated enough frequent flyer miles during 2007 and 2008 to be able to fly round the world, free, at least three times. Ruth was glad when Horace finally called and announced that he was in town.

As always, they had a pleasant dinner in one of those "private kitchen" restaurants which seemed to have sprung up all over town in the last 10 years. These were restaurants located not on street level but in one of the upper floors of an old commercial building. The chef in some of these places was usually someone who had retired from one of the bigger, more well known restaurants but who was still interested in cooking in a less stressful environment, or they were operated by exceptionally good amateurs who were passionate about fine dining. All of these 'restaurants' relied on word of mouth for publicity. Not all of them were properly licensed to operate as a restaurant since it usually took forever to line up all the right licences. These operators tended to jump the gun and open for business first and worry about bureaucratic red tape later. None of them had a liquor licence so they encouraged customers to bring their own wine and usually refrained from charging a corkage.

Seating at these places was often limited in order to circumvent Fire Department regulations. Ruth liked these places because it gave her a chance to sample different types of cuisine and get out of the university for a couple of hours. Ruth felt sorry for these establishments because every time she went to one with Horace, she noticed that they were the only ones there. She wondered how they could survive on such meagre income. She did not know that whenever Horace took her to one of these places, he would always book out the whole restaurant in order to make sure that they were the only diners that evening. Horace liked these places because it meant that he could have a private conversation with his dinner companion without being worried that someone sitting at the next table could listen in.

After dinner, Horace drove Ruth back to her apartment on campus. Horace never asked to go up to Ruth's apartment for a nightcap or anything else. Just before Ruth left the car, Horace took a flash drive out of his jacket pocket. These things were so small these days that Ruth did not immediately recognize it for what it was.

"Ruth, I have something for you," said Horace when he handed over the flash drive to Ruth. Ruth liked the way Horace continued to use her old name instead of her new name.

"Oh, a Christmas present. You shouldn't have, Horace, " Ruth teased. The way Horace handed over the flash drive to her and how she found the item landing in her open palm reminded her of that time, half a lifetime ago, when she had to give a flash drive to Harry on the bus one evening. She quickly pushed that thought away. Ruth knew that it was not a present since it was not gift wrapped. She became immediately curious about what the drive contained. Ooh, more photos of Harry, I hope.

"I'm really not sure whether you should see what's on this drive. But if you find out at a later date that I had known about this situation and neglected to tell you, you might be mad at me. Then again, you might be mad at me anyway for giving you this information. Remember, I'm only the messenger, if I can be described as such, so please don't hate me for doing this. I better get going now. Have a happy Christmas, Ruth." Horace winced when those last words left his lips, since he suspected that Ruth was unlikely to have a happy Christmas after she saw what was on the flash drive.

Ruth thought that Horace had been behaving in a very odd manner all evening. She had never seen Horace so unsure or conflicted about anything before. As soon as he was gone, Ruth went back to her apartment and straight to her computer to run the flash drive through a number of antivirus software. Even though Horace had promised her that her apartment and computers were not bugged, Ruth was always cautious and wanted to make sure that the drive did not have any malicious software which might have been piggybacked on whatever it was that Horace wanted her to see. After clicking on the new drive image, she saw that it was a series of JPEG files, i.e. photos. On her Mac, iPhoto started immediately and asked if she wanted to import those photos. She clicked yes. When she saw the images lined up in the viewing panel, her world came crashing down around her.

The first photo showed Harry and a woman leaving some West End theatre, both laughing like they really enjoyed each other's company. Another photo showed Harry with his hand on the small of this woman's back, ushering her into a waiting car. There was one photo which showed Harry walking away from what looked like the woman's house, with the woman still standing in the doorway. Given the time of night that photo was taken and the way the two of them were dressed, Ruth did not need to think too hard to imagine what they must have been doing earlier that evening. Was there another photo which showed Harry kissing this woman goodnight by the front door? If there was, Ruth knew that Horace must have done some judicious editing and left it out of the collection. In fact, Ruth noticed that Horace seemed to have omitted all photos of Harry kissing this woman in public.

The other photos were more of the same and from the background and the clothes they wore, Ruth knew that the photos had been taken over a period of time. There could be any number of reasons for Harry to be photographed with this woman, Ruth told herself. Perhaps he was just escorting her to some formal function. But no, judging by the way they were dressed, and the number of different places they were photographed in, it was clear to Ruth that Harry had been out with this woman in a private capacity. She has to be Harry's new love interest. Ruth stopped breathing for a few seconds.

She considered briefly whether the photos had been 'photoshopped". After all, digital images could be manipulated in any number of ways these days with the right software. But Horace had given her a flash drive containing these images. Ruth remembered that when Horace first gave her those photos of Harry in January 2007, he only let her have hard copies. Ruth had to scan those images before she could import them into her computer for use as desktop and screensaver images. This time, she was given soft copies. This could only mean that Horace wanted her to know that nothing had been done to the photos, that they were genuine. In any case, she could not see why anyone would send her doctored photos of Harry with another woman.

Ruth clicked through the photos again. She stared at the image of a happy Harry smiling at his new girlfriend. Did Harry ever look at me in that way? Ruth could not remember. Photographs could be misleading, since they only caught the behaviour of a person in a split second and might not be truly representative of how that person felt at the time. Harry could be smiling at someone in one instance, only to be yelling at that person in the next second; the photographer might not have caught the second image.

Ruth then examined the woman in those photos. She was attractive and stylishly dressed in all of the pictures. She looked like the kind of woman that Harry would take to an embassy ball, if Harry attended functions of that nature; in other words, a woman that a man would be proud to have on his arm in public and at official functions. Ruth did not know whether she had the qualities to be some man's arm candy. That was something that had never bothered her before, but at this moment, it did.

The woman's expression in one photo caused Ruth particular distress. She was looking at Harry with unabashed adoration. This was a look Ruth was familiar with. More than once, she had given that look to Harry though it seemed that Harry never acknowledged it, not till that day on the Thames House roof when Harry abruptly changed the subject and asked her out to dinner. Ruth knew then that Harry was aware of her feelings and was ready to reciprocate. She was so happy about this that she accepted his dinner invitation without hesitation, even though it was rather presumptuous of Harry to have booked a table first before he asked her out. Looking at this photo, Ruth knew that this woman was clearly in love with Harry.

A mixture of jealousy and anguish welled up inside her and that was when the tears started, and once it started, she could not stop crying. It felt worst than a death in the family. It felt like some part of her had died. As far as relationships go, she and Harry never even started to have a proper one. Even so, she was hurt by the sight of the new woman in Harry's life. For the first time in years, she questioned whether she did the right thing in faking her own death in order to save Harry and his career. She did it without expectation of any show of gratitude on Harry's part, but still, somewhere at the back of her mind, she was hoping for … Truth be told, Ruth did not know what she was hoping for. During the long, lonely nights since she left London, Ruth would often wake up in the middle of the night and then find it hard to go back to sleep. There were a variety of things which usually kept her awake, the main one was whether she was doomed to this new existence forever. She would try and make herself go back to sleep by dreaming about the day when Harry would come and get her. It was only a dream, one which she knew would not come true. The difference was, she now knew for certain that Harry was not coming, in fact, nobody was coming for her.

She told herself that she had no right to expect that Harry would remain unattached, since there was no prospect that they would ever be together again. When they parted, there was no promise that each would seek the other out eventually for a reunion. In fact, she stopped Harry from telling her 'something he should have told her a long time ago'. How did she expect Harry to react to her departure? I should have known that this day would come, that Harry would move on. But knowing that something was not yours was not quite the same as being confronted with concrete evidence that that something would be denied you forever. The finality of the situation hit Ruth hard.

Ruth did not blame Horace for sending her the latest batch of Harry photos. In a way, she was glad that he did, since she would not have known otherwise. This was not the sort of information she could glean from the internet. Ruth was grateful that she had received the photos at the start of the Christmas holiday break, which meant that she could be holed up in her apartment for three or four days without her being missed by any one. Dalane became quite worried about Ruth during that time. Ruth did not eat or drink very much. She simply shut herself in her study for days on end. She did not even let Nikoo into the study until he meowed incessantly outside the door in protest. Dalane had no idea what had happened and did not know what to say or do to alleviate whatever pain Ruth was feeling. She was relieved when Ruth finally emerged from her own private hell a week later and started to eat properly again.

It was not so much that Ruth would ever contemplate killing herself over this new development. It would be ludicrous to kill herself over Harry since nothing ever happened between them. Denial, anger, depression, acceptance. Ruth went through all the known stages of grief, except that "bargaining" was not an available option. There was nothing she could do about losing Harry to this woman. How can I mourn the loss of something I never had to begin with?

Ruth deleted the new folder from iPhoto and considered briefly whether she should scrub the hard drive clean of all photos of Harry. She had so many other things on her hard drive that it would take a while to relocate elsewhere the items which she needed to keep before the reformatting process could begin. She decided to postpone the housecleaning till another day. Next week, I'll reformat the hard drive … She shoved the flash drive to the back of the bottom drawer.

When Horace noticed that after two years in Hong Kong, Ruth had failed to establish a romantic liaison with anyone, he knew that Ruth was still living in the past. He did not know the extent of Ruth's relationship with Harry, since after that first time, Ruth refrained from discussing Harry in front of Horace again, and he never pried. By now, Horace had known for some time that Harry Pearce was seeing someone, but he did not do anything about that because he felt, initially, that it was none of his business, and he did not want his boss to know that he had disobeyed a direct order from him. After the Olympic Games were finished and he had more time to himself, Horace thought long and hard about the matter and decided that perhaps seeing the photos would help Ruth take her head out of the sandpit, look around and consider other possibilities. He ran the risk of being alienated by Ruth once she saw the photos, but it was a risk that he felt he had to take.

# # # # #

Early April 2009, Hong Kong

At 1:30 am, Harry was woken by the wind and the rain which had been pelting against the windows ever since he had arrived in Ruth's apartment. The rain was coming down so hard that it felt as though someone was standing outside with a hose which was aimed directly at the windows.

He was in a strange city and in a bed which was not his own. He looked at his watch to check the time. He remembered that Ruth had packed him off to bed around 8:30 pm local time, which was much too early for his bedtime. But he was tired after the long flight and must have dozed off. Initially, it felt nice to be in a bedroom which was air-conditioned, but now, it felt as though he was sleeping in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator. He got up to switch off the air-conditioner.

Harry thought about his trip so far. He was disappointed that it was not going as well as he had hoped. Often times a person might remember an old friend with greater fondness than the friend might have for that person, with the result that when they meet up again, that person would be let down by the lack of warmth and affection on the part of the friend. Harry wondered whether this was the case here, that in all those years, he remembered Ruth with greater fondness than Ruth had for him. Although Ruth tried to act in a jovial manner, Harry was bothered by the distinct lack of warmth and affection on Ruth's part throughout the afternoon and earlier in the evening. If she's not keen on seeing me again, how do you explain the photos on her computer? What was it that Ruth said earlier about going home to London? Something about wishing hard for something and then not wanting it? That means that she did want to go home but … what or who could be stopping her from wanting to go home?

Even though it was as wet as could be outside, Harry's throat felt like the Sahara desert. Since he had received such an underwhelming reception, Harry was not sure whether he should be paddling about Ruth's apartment in the middle of the night in search of water. After fidgeting for a while, he decided that he had to go to the kitchen to get some water. When he opened the door to his bedroom, he noticed that the door to Ruth's study was half closed and the light was still on. Although he told himself that he should not disturb Ruth, his hand reached out to knock on the door before his brain managed to get the message across that it was probably not a good idea to do so. Before his knuckles reached the door, it swung open and Harry jumped.

"Harry, hi, sorry if I startled you. Did you need something? Can't sleep with all this commotion going on outside?"

"I just needed a glass of water."

"His lordship over there," Ruth motioned to Nikoo who was curled up on top of Ruth's laser printer, "knew as soon as you got out of bed and has been staring at the door for some time, which is why I knew you were standing outside."

Harry looked over Ruth's shoulder and got another dose of "evil eye" from the grey cat. That bloody cat must think that he's a dog or something!

"You don't look as if you've slept at all. I had no idea that university work was that demanding." Harry noticed that Ruth's eyes appeared to be a little moist. He was not sure whether the moisture was the remnants of a yawn or that she had been crying but he did not say anything.

"Right, water. This way. Maybe I should also make some tea for you. They say that Chinese tea helps you relax after a long flight; or would you rather have English tea with milk and honey, or lemon and honey?"

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