A/N: Only you and me left as readers again, Pumpkinator, if last chapt's response was any judge. Ah, well.

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(memories for dinner)

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I went to the Watch's after the day ended. The streetlamps were spaced far and wide, and the wind skittered scraps of cheap-print posters down the clay-grey pavement like little whispering phantoms in the dark. Occasionally, the posters wrapped themselves around the legs of the few people who were hurrying along, already bundled in their thick coats and worries; none bothered to pause to pull it off.

A man nodded gruffly as he shuffled past me; on the back of his calf, a walking advertisement: CAPITALISTS FOR NEW ENGLAND! FREEDOM FOREVER!

I dodged a fluttering call for the past—YOUR MONARCHY, YOUR HERITAGE! FREEDOM FOREVER!— and ducked into the white glare of the Watch's entrance.

"Good evening," I nodded at the man on duty. He nodded back, too used to my visits to go through the official procedure of getting my details down.

Inside, it was surprisingly quiet, only the odd drunk or defiant looking group huddled in handcuffs in the corner.

I veered right and turned into the largest office. The door was open.

"Eric," I smiled. "How are you?"

The Head Watch looked up and didn't look surprised to see me. "Nervous," he said. "Things are too calm. What is that?"

"Your dinner." I set the packaged takeaways on the only clear space in his desk, setting them one atop the other. "And mine."

Eric cleared his throat, his usual sign of embarrassment. "You have to stop doing this," he said, not unpleasantly.

"You have to start eating properly," I countered. "You're worse than Dominic. At least he remembers breakfast."

He shrugged and shuffled away the papers he'd been studying. I caught a glimpse of the usual FREEDOM FOREVER endnotes and grasped their content immediately.

"Studying the parties? That'll take some time."

He snorted. "Sometimes I think there's one for every bloody person in England." He gestured for me to remove the files on the chairs and sit. "What's wrong now, Evey?"

I could have pretended puzzlement. He would have pretended to let go of it.

"Do you believe in ghosts, Eric?" I heard myself say instead. A sudden stillness invaded the room, like the breath held before the shout. I smoothened out my skirt and forced myself to look straight at him.

"These days, I believe in anything," he replied after a pause, but his hands had stilled over the papers. "Whose ghost have you been seeing?"

His face bland as a mask, a dart of a twitch at the side of his jaw, but it was clear: he knew. Who else could it be? There were twin flames of trepidation and knowing as he stared at me with his dark detective eyes: already, he was half-believing, half-rising, the undoubting John to my Thomas.

"No one," I lied, ignoring his flash of disbelief. There was already one insomniac in this room and Eric hardly needed to join the club. My relief was a breaking wave: it threatened to overwhelm me. It wasn't impossible, wasn't only me, I wasn't going mad. Not yet. I resisted the inane impulse to reach over and hug Eric for being the most grimly pragmatic man I knew and still ignore the laws of logic when it came to V.

"It was just a silly thought. Don't tell Dominic," I add automatically. "He worries enough already."

Eric looked disgruntled. "He worries about you," he muttered, but he didn't push it.

We sat in the office of England's new Watch: just a weary man and an ordinary young woman, our plastic forks making no sound against the waxed paper and the future of England laid out as our placemats. I ate for Eric's sake and he ate for mine, and our unspoken thoughts curled around the edges of our pale knuckles.

The dinner finished without any words.