When I wake, hours later, Ruth is sitting up next to me, the sheet pulled up under her arms, sipping champagne. In her other hand is her mobile phone. Her work mobile, the one I programmed and set up for her, the one I changed the ring tone on at her request. I struggle to both wake up and sit up at the same time, and once I am upright, she hands me the other crystal flute, brimming with bubbles. "Pol Roger, did you know it was Churchill's favourite…it seemed such a shame to waste it", she begins, "I hope you don't mind that I opened it – I love champagne, but I don't buy it for myself, it's really a drink for two," she pauses, inexplicably nervous, before blurting, "Malcolm, we have to talk." I grope for my own phone, and flip it open, but there is no red flash, no messages, nothing. I'm completely compos mentis now, but I'm still scrambling to catch up with her swift analyst's mind, even as an awful hollowness grows in the pit of my stomach and my thoughts fly back over the last twenty life changing hours, if the pale twilight outside is anything to go by. Those words are the exact ones Sarah used to preface the conversation which ended our engagement. There is no good which can come of this, I think, and suddenly it is as if I am standing, blindfolded, at the edge of a precipice. I feel sick with fear.
Ruth draws her knees up, and wraps her arms around, huddling into herself. I touch her bare back lightly, and when she doesn't flinch away, I draw her towards me, tucking her into my side. I feel slightly better now we are touching. Looking straight ahead, she says in a voice so low I can barely hear the words, "This…us…it's a stolen moment. On Monday we have to go back to work, and it all starts again. The pressure, racing against the clock, dealing with the worst evil that men can invent…and being on the Grid, with the rest of the team…I couldn't bear it if they knew…" And there it is, the great, unseen, unspoken barrier between us. If Harry knew, she means. If she suddenly stepped out of their exquisitely painful pas de deux, and declared that she was with me instead. My heart stammers in my chest as I consider my reply, aware that the wrong words now will fracture our relationship forever. And that's a thought that I can't bear; she means too much to me. "Ruth, look at me", I say, turning her by her shoulders towards me. She glances at me, her beautiful eyes bright with unshed tears, and I take a shaky breath before plunging in. "Here's how I see things. We were friends, good friends, before last night, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardise our friendship, because it means the world to me. If you feel that this can't go any further then I will respect that, even if I don't understand it…" my voice cracks and I stop, ashamed to continue, because all I want to do is beg her to stay, to choose me, and to forget about Harry bloody Pearce.
Ruth has been listening with even more concentration than usual, and she gives me a tremulous smile as she speaks. "Last night, I went out hoping to find a stranger I thought I was in love with, and instead I found you, and I'm so glad that I did. You're a wonderful man, Malcolm, and in any other world, in any other line of work, we might have had a chance to be together. But what we do, it's soul destroying. I've seen it chew up good officers and spit them out. Look what happened to Tom, once he lost Ellie. I couldn't bear it if that happened to me, or to you. " and then her shoulders are shaking and she is crying, and the stark, ugly reality of the life we have chosen comes crashing down around us once more. I remember Harry telling me once, not long after I had joined Section D, that a spook's best assets were their own self-control and self-denial. Yes, I think, self-control and self-denial have been sadly lacking lately, and now it's time to pay that particular piper. Releasing Ruth, and drawing a deep breath to brace myself for the betrayal which must now come, I drop a rueful kiss on the crown of her head, and in a light voice I say, "Ah well, here's to us, or rather to what might have been." Malcolm Wynn-Jones, man about town, is the effect I am trying for, as I drain my now warm glass of champagne in what is meant to be a devil-may-care gesture. I push the covers back and get out of bed, shrugging back into my dressing gown as I stand up, then make my way to the window to draw the curtains against the dark and the cold seeping in through the glass. As I walk back towards the bed, on my way to the bathroom, I see that Ruth is watching me with a look of sheer amazement. I steel myself against the hurt in her eyes and say, "I'll just dash through the shower, then it's all yours, unless you wanted to go first?" She shakes her head in mute astonishment, her eyes showing her shock at the change in me, and I go into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I fiddle with the taps and levers of the bath plumbing until water comes rushing out of the shower rose, and step under the warm stream of water. I let the tears fall, then. I am so deeply in love with Ruth that anything, even this, is preferable to losing her altogether, but it was shockingly hard to leave her in that bed, crying. My heart feels like a dead weight in my chest, and suddenly I am very glad that I have Sunday off as well. I need to return to the dull familiarity of routine, to have some time in which to think things through. I decide I will spend tomorrow working in the garden, burning leaves perhaps – a melancholy sort of activity, to suit my mood.
When I emerge from the bathroom, she has gone. I shouldn't be surprised, I think, but the room which has been our sanctuary feels impersonal and empty now, and I hastily get dressed to leave. As I am about to open the door to our room, something catches my eye – a little red spot on the bedside table, next to the upended champagne bottle in its silver bucket. I look closer and see that it's a single strawberry, split into two halves, each heart-shaped half carefully placed so that they are nearly touching at the widest point, before angling away from each other. In the tiny space between each half, I see that Ruth has written something in the condensation formed on the glass table top by the champagne bucket.
Squinting, I can just make out the words – I'm so sorry, traced with a fine-tipped tool (a bent paperclip, perhaps?) in the misty surface of the glass. I sweep the strawberry halves into the ice bucket and use my sleeve to wipe out the message, the spook in me wanting to leave no trace of us behind. Ruth, with her love of symbols and codes, of ciphers and cryptography, has depicted perfectly our relationship as it now stands. Two halves of a whole, separated by regret, by the deceit which is our stock-in-trade, and by circumstances too circuitous to safely navigate together. Most of us are lone swimmers in a treacherous ocean, each making our own way to shore. It will have to be enough, I tell myself, as I swing my coat over my shoulders, then walk out the door. Humphrey Bogart, watching Ingrid Bergman leave Casablanca, has nothing on me, in the hopeless romantic stakes - hopeless being the operative word. What was it that Churchill used to say about the champagne he loved? Ah yes. In victory, deserve it; in defeat, need it. Yes, indeed, I think. Yes, indeed.