Tariq woke up with a headache. So did Harry. Whereas Ruth who hadn't had a drink before she'd gone to bed, was beginning to wish she had. That and not for the first time in her life, she was wondering why she hadn't been born with a better coping method when she was faced with a crisis. Because against her better judgement she'd called Harry a total of five times, only to find that his phone was going to voice mail. Worse still having come onto the grid expecting him to be there, he wasn't. Her saner self, telling her that he had probably stayed somewhere overnight, whilst the other Ruth who was wishing that she'd worded her rejection differently, was imagining his upturned car to be in a ditch somewhere.
'I'm just going to make a coffee, does anyone want one?' asked Dimitri, with the usual happy persona that at times bordered on the cheeky and any on any other day would have made her smile.
'Tea would be lovely,' she called after his disappearing back, only to see Beth heading towards her.
'How did it go - the funeral?' she added, when she didn't respond. Beth who had arrived on the same day as Dimitri and appeared to sail through life without a care in the world. Both of them eager and with expectations that matched her own when she'd first arrived and as far as she knew were house sharing quite happily. Whereas she and Harry who were perfectly suited, were seemingly incapable of translating their love for each other beyond gazing into each other's eyes.
'The best I can say is that it wasn't raining,' was as far as she got, before the pods opened and the man in question walked onto the grid and with a flick of his head to indicate she should follow him, disappeared into his office.
'It looks as though Harry agrees with you,' said Beth, pouring salt on the already open wound.
'It also looks as though he could do with a coffee, I'll go and make him one,' she told her in an attempt to avoid any further questions. Or at least that's what she was telling herself. As opposed to wanting to be assertive and tell him why she'd said no to his proposal. Except that by the time she'd made Harry's coffee and a second cup of tea for herself, she was back to being the nervous individual she'd been all night. Although God knows why because this was Harry and in all the time they'd been, close was the best she could come up with, he'd always found the expression if not the words to smooth things over.
Sliding his door open, her first thought was that he'd fallen asleep. But whether he was or not, he was clearly exhausted. Which meant that any thought of asking him where the hell he'd spent the night, was replaced by a deep need to protect him from prying eyes.
That she managed to do by closing the blinds, but what she couldn't protect him from what was an ill-timed call from the new Home Secretary William Towers, who even though she was sitting opposite Harry, with his desk in between them, sounded verbally energetic in the extreme.
'I'll be with you in an hour,' was Harry's response, having first apologised for having not been there at nine because something had come up that he'd had to deal with. An understatement if ever there was one, which Ruth let go.
Unfortunately, Harry didn't and started from where he'd left off by saying, 'you're perfectly within your rights to say I told you so Ruth and yes, I should have listened to you. The roads were crowded. I stayed in what I can honestly say was one of the roughest pubs on the planet, but the only place that was still open at midnight. The room was archaic and the breakfast barely edible. Now it seems I've also forgotten about my meeting with Towers. So, if you'll excuse me I need to go home and change.'
'Don't let your coffee go cold,' was all she could manage before bolting through the door and heading straight to the women's rest room and shutting herself in one of the cubicles. Where for the second time in as many hours, she wondered why the hell it was, that when one of them was trying to be conciliatory, the other always managed slam the door firmly shut.
She was still there when Harry left his office, crossing the grid without a word to anyone before disappearing as quickly as he'd arrived. Berating himself, not only for what he'd said, but for not acknowledging that Ruth had been doing her best to move on which was what he'd suggested they needed to do. Which meant that by the time he opened his front door, having taken a taxi rather than drive himself, he'd called himself a bloody fool, an idiot and every other put down concerning his ability to behave as he should have done with the woman he loved. Taking the stairs two at a time, he opened his bedroom door and again wished he hadn't. Because the neatly made bed was where since that bitterly cold morning when she'd sailed away from him, he'd imagined her head on the pillow next to his, gazing at each other having just made love. The suit he was wearing, the shirt and his underclothes he discarded in a pile. He'd bin them later he told himself as he walked into his bathroom and turned on the shower. The scalding water helping to ease the aches and pains in his tired body but not his mind, because here again was another sharp reminder of the possibilities if only Ruth had said yes.
.
Forced to go back onto the grid by a concerned Beth who had come to find her, Ruth had sought solace by burying herself in the latest pile of paperwork which had been delivered to her desk. Including the autopsy report on the Home Secretary, which concluded he'd suffered a cardiac arrest. No surprise there. What if anything Andrew Lawrence's family had been able to bury, didn't in any way compare and was a sobering thought. A decent man, with hopes to make the world a better place. A man who Harry hadn't been sure about, whereas Nicholas Blake he'd trusted as much as he had any politician. Another in the long line of people who he was probably adding to the list of people who to her certain knowledge had betrayed him. Colleagues such as her predecessor Tessa Phillips, Connie James who had replaced her and Juliet bloody Shaw, who had told him that she was in love with him and he shouldn't let this opportunity pass him by. Only to turn out to be the deranged witch they'd both thought her to be by attempting to kill Ros. Ros who had gone the extra mile that Harry always demanded of his team and hadn't let him down. Was this reason that he'd chosen to propose to her moments after Ros's actual funeral and for Lucas to have gone walkabout?
Either way there was a conversation to be had she told herself, looking at her watch to see that it was gone six which made her wonder why Harry hadn't come back after his meeting.
'I'm due an early night,' she called across to Beth, before shutting down her computer and heading out.
Half an hour later.
'She said she was due an early night and I think she had a headache.' Beth told Harry, who had left the Home Office with the intension of going back to Thames House and apologising to Ruth. After what had been a meeting during which he'd offered his resignation. To which Towers had responded by telling him that he understood that he'd been close to Ros, but that he wasn't going to accept it until he'd had more time to think. Instead of which he gone for a walk along the embankment in the hope that it would clear his head.
It had, but only in as much as he was now wondering if he was that obvious. Had Beth read his expression when he'd come through the pods only to see Ruth desk empty and her bag which she took everywhere with her gone? Did Beth even care, or would she be likely to behave in a way that would suggest to Ruth that they were the subject of gossip yet again? He thought not. Besides a lot of water had passed under the bridge since Ruth had been subjected to that sort of pressure.
'Thank you for holding the fort so admirably,' he told her, before heading into his office and reaching for the whisky bottle and a glass, before pouring himself a large measure. He'd only just sat down when his phone rang and as tempted as he was to ignore it, what if it's Ruth said a small voice in his head?
It wasn't. In fact, if he'd sat there guessing for the rest of the week or beyond, the last person he would have imagined to be inviting him to lunch on Sunday and if she wasn't too busy would he bring Ruth with him, was Ros's mother Caroline.
'That would be lovely,' he heard himself saying, when she suggested about eleven before grabbing his coat and car keys. The reason for the invitation a mystery. As was Ruth, but one he hoped would be solved if he listened rather than presumed.