Chapter Thirty-Five

Tuesday 2nd July

"I got your letter," she said, leaning on the deck rail and staring into the trees at the bottom of the garden. She couldn't tell him how she'd broken down and wept reading it, she couldn't tell him how surprised she'd been at his honesty and she certainly couldn't tell him how the message of hope that it contained was the only thing that had propelled her to get in the car and to drive to Leo's for the second time in as many days.

"I got your note."

"Thanks for taking the time to explain all Leo's wishes; I'm sorry about what I said before. Sorry for not reading the emails."

"You've already apologised, just leave it now." He hovered by the French door uncertain whether to go closer.

"What do you think of my idea?" he asked, he couldn't keep the nervousness from his voice. He still valued Nikki's opinion above all others. "Do you think it will work?"

"It's a good idea," she began knowing that he was talking of his business plan not the part of his letter that she'd sat up rereading in bed until she'd memorised every word of every line. Somehow she had begun to believe it, deep in her core she had always believed it but it hadn't deadened the surface pain of his absence, if anything it had just exacerbated it.

Harry smiled "Just because it's a good idea, it doesn't mean it will work."

"Was it really Leo's idea?"

He walked the few steps to be closer to her, leant over the deck rail and joined her tree watching. "It was; we talked about it a while back; about what would have happened to us if I'd not left." He could see her out of the corner of his eye, but something made him keep his distance. In the old days their elbows would be bumping, now there was space between them.

"What would have happened to us?" Nikki queried.

"To the three of us? Leo was planning on making himself redundant and going independent." Harry explained.

"But that job was his life! He loved it!" Nikki exclaimed. "That time when he was accused of misconduct when James' spook messed with those files, he was beside himself."

"But that was after I'd gone…"

"You think he really would have left if you hadn't?" she asked incredulously.

Harry nodded and sipped at his wine.

"He told me as much."

"He would have just left the two of us?" Harry nodded again and tapped his glass on hers

Nikki turned round sharply and lent back against the railing, her back to the garden and her face to the house.

"Do you think he was trying to tell us something?" she asked quietly.

"I think he was looking for a way of not firing either of us and making the department viable," Harry suggested, still staring into the distance.

"But this?" she gestured forward toward the house.

"You mean leaving us his house? You think he had some ulterior motive?"

"Don't you?" she asked cross questioning him. It had been a long time since they'd spoken like this. It felt familiar but not quite comfortable yet, like a favourite jumper that had been washed in a different washing powder, looked the same, felt the same but still had the wrong smell to it.

"I think you leave your assets to the people you care most about in your life and that's what he did." Did he suspect Leo of forcing them together in the event of his death by making them joint owners of his house? It was possible but it didn't seem likely.

"Do you have a will?" she asked.

"Do you?" he deflected.

She nodded.

"and…?"

"My godchildren, friends. My mortgage is still big, I've not much to give away." She paused, "You?"

"I never got round to it," he admitted. It was stupid he knew, he'd almost been close enough to needing one on a couple of occasions but he'd still not done it. He knew why though. It would be a legal document detailing the fact that he had hardly any family and no significant people in his life. Could there be anything more depressing?

"Do you think you can do it?" Nikki asked.

"What?" Harry suspected that they had moved on from the subject of wills, but he had to be sure.

"Go independent," she clarified.

"It won't be easy," he admitted and remembered his mother's words.

"No, it won't," she agreed. "How will you advertise? Where will you work, how are you going to afford it?"

"I'll teach part time until things take off, longer if they don't."

"It sounds so difficult; impossible."

"Impossible is just what hasn't been done, It's not impossible when it's possible." It was a line Jorge used all the time, it felt right when he said it. Jorge could always make the impossible happen. Harry wasn't feeling so certain.

He could feel her looking at him, felt her eyes searching his face which he kept stubbornly turned to the garden. He could feel her thinking, feel her questioning how his year abroad had changed him. Please don't let this be a gap year fantasy he wished; to return with the belief that he could change the world, only to discover that he could not. He'd always promised himself never to believe in fantasy. And he didn't want to change the world. There wasn't much he wanted, the difference now was that he knew what it was that he wanted.

His wants were simple. He wanted to be his own boss, he wanted to do what he did best, he wanted to find answers for grieving people and he wanted most of all to do all this with Nikki by his side. He wanted to love her the way he knew he could. He wanted her.

"Harry? What's that smell?"

Harry threw down his wine glass on the table and dashed inside just in time to retrieve his mother's dinner out the oven. Nikki followed him in.

"I think it's still edible," he said poking at a blacker bit.

"Doesn't look big enough for two," Nikki said and began making her way towards the door.

"Please stay," Harry murmured as she passed him. "There'll be plenty, unless of course you rediscovered your appetite in the last 24 hours?"

She paused. She was tired, she knew she wouldn't cook when she got home. It did smell good, if a little overcooked in places.

She looked back; Harry had already served the meal onto two plates, shoved a handful of bagged salad on each plate and was looking for cutlery.

She thought about his words earlier and the two of them. 'Impossible is just what hasn't been done.' Were they still possible? She just didn't know anymore, she was so tired, so angry still.

"You want to eat here or in the garden?" Harry asked becoming more certain that it was the house that was making Nikki nervous and not him.

"The garden will be great," she replied and walked back the way she had just come.


Stolen line alert, prizes for anyone who can place the 'impossible' quote and don't say Jorge! If I was being really conscientious I'd go back and sneak it in somewhere but I'm tired so you'll just have to take my word for it, we just didn't hear Jorge say it, but Harry did. All guesses welcome. I was most upset no one guessed the previous stolen line: the 'Who's at the door?' quote from Justin's House on CBeebies. Maybe you were being shy…