Many thanks to all who read and to those who took the trouble to review.
I realise that I've taken a few minor liberties with canon as presented in the diary but so did the entire Series 10.
Harry's House . Approx 5.00 am
Harry's secret now had a name.
Ruth Evershed. Ruth Evershed. Ruth Evershed.
Or did it?
Ruth Evershed. Ruth Evershed.
It reverberated like a claxon through her brain.
Ruth Evershed. Ruth Evershed, Ruth Evershed.
Temporarily insulated from the world outside, her head enclosed within a bubble of speculation she continued to stare, hypnotised by the plate proclaiming the book's provenance, as the name beat its rhythmic tattoo.
Ruth Evershed, Ruth Evershed
Was this unknown Ruth really the owner past or present of every one of these books or was the name simply a random oddity? Did the remaining volumes all carry the same identification? Even as Jane considered this possiblity her native commonsense resurfaced to tell her she was being stupid, these books were not Harry's preferred choice of reading so their significance must lie in the ownership. Her internal dialogue informed her that there was only one way to answer that self posed question.
Kneeling down in front of the bookcase of revelation Jane carefully slotted the volume she was still clutching back into its previously alloted space. Then, just as gingerly, she removed the book it had nestled against, opened it up and checked the inside cover for evidence. Slowly, she repeated the process, handling the publications gently as she examined them one by one, ensuring that as she worked her way along the contents of the three shelves the replaced titles looked undisturbed. Thankfully, due to Harry's good housekeeping, no tell tale streaks of disturbed dust would betray her interference with the contents.
Hauling herself off her now her aching knees Jane flopped wearily onto Harry's bed as she tried to make logical connections between the name and the various scattered hints she'd mentally filed away during the past forty eight hours. Lightheaded through tiredness her first thoughts merged into a variation on the earlier Jane style rap.
Ruth Evershed, Ruth Evershed – had she ever shared this bed?
It was a reasonable assumption, otherwise why where these books in Harry's bedroom? Knowing his habits of old it was scarcely credible that he'd been celibate for any substantial length of time during the last quarter century. So Ruth Evershed, who was she? More particularly what was she to Harry? Until five minutes ago Jane had thought, foolishly, that having once obtained a name her curiosity would rest satisfied? Now she knew that belief to have been a chimera. The discovery had merely intensified her fever of speculation. In her mind she saw a ghost stalking Harry, a vague indeterminate shadow in female form giving rise to a myriad of questions. Short or tall? Blonde, brunette or redhead? And crucially what on earth had this Ruth done to affect Harry so deeply? In those odd unguarded moments, before he snapped his stonewalling mask back into place, Jane had never before seen such deep yearning mixed with paralysing sorrow etched upon the face of this most secretive of men. Her disconnected thoughts were swirling around in an emotional whirlpool of sorrow and pity for him, combined with fury that she'd been reduced to snooping. Most surprisingly, and even horrifically, she was experiencing a touch of envy! Had she ever made Harry feel or look that way?
Preferring to stamp down such a ridiculous emotion she sought solace in trying to approach the situation as if it were an academic research problem.
First stage – define the terms of reference. That was simple, "Who was Ruth Evershed and what was her connection to Harry?'
Next stage, 'What did she already know?' Head in her hands she began to think, trying to apply the intellectual clarity she would demand from the more gifted of her pupils, as she set up her mental bullet points of deduction.
a) Recalling Erin's mentioned and then hastily truncation of a name two days ago Ruth had been a member of Grid staff.
b) If Erin had known her as an equal and the woman had been near enough to report that Harry had held back on a 'kill order' then she must have been a senior officer.
c) Tentatively then Jane could identify the elusive Ruth with female analyst who'd moved to the Home Office. As Harry himself had admitted that he was trying to replace her and with Erin being a comparative newcomer to the Grid the transfer must have been a recent occurrence.
Beyond that the puzzle remained, with the key mystery still unresolved. Why were these books in Harry's bedroom? Well cared for but almost certainly not read. And the crunch question, where was Ruth Evershed now? Still lurking in the Home Office? Had she deliberately distanced herself after abandoning a relationship with Harry? Was she cut from the same cloth as the utterly vile but very sexy Juliet, using him to achieve her ends, in this case a promotion, and then callously rejecting all further ties? But if that was so Harry would hardly be preserving her books as memento of his folly! If Harry had been in the throes of an intense relationship Catherine hadn't said anything. There again had Catherine asked? Harry could quite easily have kept his private life hidden from his daughter, he probably had. While Jane hadn't encouraged Catherine to pass on information concerning her despised ex-husband she did recall her daughter's plaintive complaint that contact with her father had become virtually non- existent during the past few months – was this why - Harry and a blossoming love life that had suddenly turned sour? Jane response to her daughter's words had been that such behaviour was typical of Harry, continually blowing hot and cold where his family was concerned. But still that central conundrum stood; proud, stubborn and without adequate answer. If the love affair had run into the sand why was he keeping Ruth's books? Had she walked, leaving him wallowing in misery like a lovesick puppy hoping for her return unless...?
Ruth Evershed, Ruth Evershed, is she alive or is she dead?
Jane wouldn't care to guess. If Harry had simply been dumped his reaction seemed a little excessive. If he lived an ordinary life she'd have assumed he was in deep mourning, he seemed so utterly bereft ... but... Jane also knew that when spooks were lost they hadn't necessarily departed from this life, but instead may have vanished without trace into a new one. A thought that sent her memory winging backwards to relive that nightmarish evening, a night of horror that had occurred towards the end of Harry's German based secondment to Six.
Harry and an American agent arriving on the doorstep.
Harry hastily dragging her into the sitting room while the tall, quiet American, addressed by Harry as Jim, had waited in the hallway.
Harry handing her an envelope containing false passports for herself and Catherine.
Harry hurriedly giving her a call sign with the instruction that if she wasn't contacted within the next forty eight hours by himself or Jim to follow the emergency instructions in the envelope. That was an order.
Harry leaning over the Moses basket containing Catherine, asleep, and therefore so mercifully oblivious to the drama that she didn't even stir as he kissed her.
Harry, even while she was trying to comprehend the enormity of all this, giving her a quick hug accompanied by a murmured 'I love you' before vanishing with his companion into the menacing dark of the midnight hour.
She'd never really discovered what had precipitated the flurry of activity that had so nearly sent her into exile. When Harry been decanted back over the threshold within the allotted timescale, sporting a technicolour eye, and wincing with the pain produced care of three cracked ribs, she hadn't asked. The grim agonised expression on his face and total silence was sufficient to make her deduce that not only was he not going to explain, but also that she didn't really want to know. Nelson had been possessed of twenty twenty vision in comparison to what she'd blind eyed during their marriage. Instead she'd tended to his wounds, concealing her banked up terror, for him as much as for herself, through her subsequent scathing objection to the notion of spending the rest of her life secreted under the moniker of Prunella Albright.
'Really Harry; and what on earth possessed you to pick Pollyanna for our daughter. Even including Little Lord Fauntleroy that girl with her Glad Game has got to be the most irritating character ever to grace children's literature.'
"Just be glad then that you don't have to go through life with the nickname Prune."
With memories of that nature speculation on the vanishing of Ruth Evershed was unwise. Nor did Jane believe that Ruth's unknown fate, whatever it was, was the sole cause of Harry's desolation. She'd seen him cast down, depressed, wracked with guilt over the murder of his close friend Bill. He was used to grief and loss, anyone in his job had to become hardened to the anguish of death, although Jane knew the struggle he'd had to come to terms with this in his distant youth. Whatever underlay the unyielding remorse currently afflicting him was different. Possibly years in post, the endless attrition rate, survivor guilt, whatever, had finally ground him down, but somehow she couldn't quite shake the feeling that the undisclosed, unrevealed background to his sorrow was more complicated, otherwise where had the old Harry gone? She'd been granted a glimpse of the charming, mischief driven joker of yesteryear re-emerging within their brief rounds of verbal sparring; otherwise his personal default mode seemed locked into the permanently morose. Earlier in the day she'd become convinced that whatever was troubling Harry was also tied up with the Russian partnership. She recalled the name Ilya and the agonised nightmare cry referring to something they had to do – smuggle Ruth away from some disaster? Or had the attempt proved been fatal? And where did the dead CIA Deputy Director fit in? That must have been a recent happening to have left the shadow of extradition hanging over him, not to mention those other, more primitive threats of revenge. She'd yelled in the hospital that he was like a boomerang that kept winging its destructive way back into her life. Courtesy of their daughter the entire package of guilt, mystery, murder – in short all the horrors she'd walked away from - had returned into her life in full destructive force.
Recognising with disgust that she was rambling around a circular maze with no discernible centre, while simultaneously tying herself into enough knots to make a Girl Guide preen, she pulled herself back into the world of firm investigative principles.
Next stage, 'What do I need to find out?' That one was easy, the truth! The real truth; the entire truth; not the spook variety that Harry habitually fed to the world. Not so simple then.
Final stage, 'What do I need to access to fill the gaps?'
Upon consideration of the practicalities Jane sardonically reflected that this system of research obviously hadn't been road tested by anyone in close contact with the twisted world of spying. When it came to handing out information on anything, let alone spilling the beans on their boss's mental state, Harry's team would be as tight and protective as a miser's purse. Despite this she briefly considered approaching Malcolm, but instantly rejected the idea. He was Harry's friend, and unless she was mistaken, regarded her with a degree of justified wariness. How did he know he could trust her not to gloat over Harry's misfortunes? Unless she'd misinterpreted earlier disclosures Harry had suffered sundry betrayals within recent memory. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't deliberately set out to deprive Harry of what even she, the uncaring ex, recognised was a desperately needed confidante who could be trusted to keep his mouth firmly zipped. There was of course the obvious alternative swinging across her brain in neon lighting. ASK HARRY.
The logical Jane, who was striving to keep the emotional Jane in check, could see that going well. 'Harry who is Ruth Evershed and why are her books in your bedroom?' As she even considered that outside possibility her blood began to curdle. If Harry ever found out that she'd been snooping around his bedroom...
What excuse could she reasonably give? None. Even worse the resulting row would end with her reminding him that she knew exactly what it was like to be spied upon. She could still recall the sheer force of her fury when she'd discovered that believing her to be in the throes of an affair with Robin Harry had taken typical spook steps to confirm his suspicions. Considering his various strayings from the path of matrimonial righteousness the utter steaming hypocrisy of his actions had temporarily robbed her of speech. Once her vocal records were restored to full life she'd lost little time in disabusing him of the theory that giving Robin a broken nose was proof of his, Harry's devotion, to her. Parts of that show down, the defining moment when she finally gave up on their marriage, remained burnt into her brain.
"How dare you spy on me, your own wife!"
"Maybe was tonight was innocent but you're not fooling me Jane. You've been making an idiot of yourself for months burbling on to all our friends about how gorgeous and talented that smarmy prat is."
"The only foolish thing I've ever done was marry you, a man who lied on our wedding day and every day of our marriage since. Love's young dream be damned. I married a nightmare. You're never here, you leave me to bring up the children, and when I complain you patronisingly tell me I don't understand your job. I only work to bring in some extra money and keep my sanity, and now you've just humiliated me in front of my boss."
"That's rich when for months you've embarrassed yourself and me twittering to everyone, 'oh Robin he's so brilliant, such an understanding man. He really knows how to make everyone feel special'. Why women never see through that type of brill creamed chancer defeats me, but don't expect me to stand to one side and ignore my wife dropping her knickers for him."
"Well you'd know all about knickers thudding to the floor wouldn't you – the man who thinks monogamy is something you make furniture out of. How do you think I've felt for years, while you were bonking your boss and God knows how many others, expecting me to play the good little wife at home. And you're only back here for a couple of nights before you're off again. Well I've had it, I'm taking the children to my mother's and when I get back I expect you out of here."
"Don't be so hasty, think about the children. And Jane this assignment is vital, regnum defende at all costs'."
"'Well fine, defend the bloody realm if you must, but pay the costs yourself because I can't any longer. And how dare you accuse me of not thinking about the children. I am, and they're not living in this poisonous atmosphere for a minute longer. My solicitor will be in touch. Don't try to stop me. I hate what you've done to us. I don't want you near me or my children."
With that she'd stormed out, slamming of the door physically on Harry and symbolically on their marriage. Her fury compounded by, to paraphrase the words of Joseph Surface, her consciousness of her own innocence. Or at least, in view of Harry's dismal record of fidelity, absence of, she honestly didn't think that two quick fumbles in a deserted staff room counted in the overall balance of who was doing what with whom. Time of course had demonstrated that unfortunately she'd literally fallen for Joseph Surface aka Robin Tindal aka Snuggle Bunny. Even so, the fact that Harry's character assassination of the smarmy lying turd had proved to be well grounded did not, in her opinion, excuse his behaviour. If she felt this way then could she reasonably expect Harry, if he discovered her snooping, to take the view that her curiosity was excusable? She inclined to think not.
Her remaining option? She now had a name and some working theories, she could simply not mention the matter while trying quietly and secretly to discover the truth. Could she do it? Of course she could. She wasn't exactly an amateur in the art of concealment. Perhaps she'd obtained more than two children from her marriage to Harry. Had he, without her realising, managed to sprinkle her with spy dust. Robin still didn't know that she'd sussed him. He'd preferred to attribute her moods to the vagaries of the menopause and she certainly hadn't felt any obligation to enlighten him. Fooling Harry was, admittedly, a tougher proposition, spying on a spy, and one of the best in the business at that, but she felt a certain wicked excitement at the thought of turning the tables. Was this the drug that had kept Harry in bondage to the realm?
Any further speculations were halted abruptly as she suddenly stirred from her reverie, aware that she'd missed Harry's now awakened stealthy tread upon the stairs. Even if her ankle had allowed for a quick exit it was too late to vacate his bedroom. She'd been caught out. Nemesis was upon her. Glancing at the clock she realised she'd left him downstairs half an hour ago. Jumping up she leant over the bed, taking position a split second before Harry appeared in the doorway, arms full of duvet and face full of bemusement.
Harry entering the room saw Jane, her body draped by the fluid lines of the blue kimono, occupied in the innocent activity of smoothing over his bedsheets. Aware of his presence she turned around, saying in a voice infused with genuine regret.
"Oh dear Harry, I thought you'd sleep for longer than five minutes after I tucked you up. I was just straightening your bed before returning to my own."
Jane's quickly volunteered explanation of her reason for invading his room sounded a trifle forced, just a little too hurried, nerves possibly but why? Straightforward embarrassment at being found in his bedroom or... Harry gave no indication of his suspicions, although the very quick dart of his eyes towards the bookcase, which Jane would have missed it had she not been looking for it, confirmed her view that if he'd caught her snooping... as she attempted to breathe normally her heart was thudding, had she deceived him? His face gave nothing away, was he preparing to pounce?
If Harry had been inclined to ask any searching questions they were stayed by the ringing of his landline. Anxiously snatching the phone from its cradle on the bedside table he mouthed 'The Grid' to Jane before speaking,
"No Malcolm it's fine. Good, can you send a car, Normally I'd drive myself but thanks to Tower's instructions I'm grounded."
Turning back to Jane who was looking at him expectantly he indulged her with a one word answer, "Malcolm."
"So I'd gathered, but why are we going to the Grid."
"We aren't, I am. They've managed to track down our friend the soldier and have sent out a team to collect him. Also Malcolm thinks he's found something on the memory stick files that will definitely ruin the CIA's Thanksgiving holiday."
"Isn't that a few weeks away?"
"Don't be so pedantic, Miss. "Seeing her scowl he smiled before amending his statement, "Alright then, spoil their Halloween. They'll not forget this response to trick or treat. They tried the tricks. I get the treat of thwarting them."
"Fine but it concerns our daughter so I'm coming with you – don't argue."
"Would I dare? But please get dressed. The sight of you in that kimono is something of showstopper." Aware that he may have had an appreciative gleam in his eyes as he said it, - he'd have had to be blind not to notice that Jane's choice of nightwear emphasised her still slim but curvaeous figure -and anxious to avoid any potential misinterpretation, he added, "And before you accuse me of anything inappropriate that's just..."
"I know...your eternal mantra...it's just an observation."
Turning away, hoping that she'd disguised her relief at managing her subterfuge, Jane departed the room accompanied by the ringing of her own mantra.
Ruth Evershed, Ruth Evershed – what's going on in Harry's head.
For those who were wondering Joseph Surface is a hypocritical character who features in Sheridan's 'School for Scandal'. Otherwise thanks for reading and if you have a moment please review.