Thank you so much for all the reviews and favouritings and whatnot; I'm chuffed to bits, truly! I'm also very sorry that I'm posting this rather later than I intended; last weekend was manic and I've been ill all this week and not really up to thinking about this until today. On that basis I do hope that it's up to scratch and that you enjoy it. And thank you for reading!

She supposes it's some kind of self preservation thing that kicks in eventually; in any event as winter begins to exert its grip on a bleak, grey London, she's getting used to missing him and is beginning to accept that she now has to sort herself out and get on with the rest of her life. Tariq, however, quietly continues his search, and Beth, who is back working in the private sector, is using her contacts and calling in all the favours she can. Ruth is grateful, but resigned. All she can do is wait, and hope.

Several thousand miles away he stares out of another plane window as it banks over an improbably blue bay, and he realises that wherever he goes, he will still be there. He will still be there, and she will not. He has only one birthday still to come before he hits sixty, yet for the first time in his life he knows what it is like to feel as if a part of him is missing. Selflessness, he thinks, as he downs the last of a ruinously expensive malt, is vastly overrated.

He zigzags across Australia, enjoying the cricket, the beer and the weather. He suspects that the outback, even the cities, would be easy to get lost in, but knows that this young country, this remote land of contrasts whose footprints are shallow and few in the sands of history, is not for him. To the hidden, lead-lined pocket of his holdall he adds the passport which he purchased from an old contact in Belgium, and a few days after Christmas he buys a standby ticket to Denpasar. It is in the name of Sam Travers; the second of Malcolm's legends.

He does not examine his motives too closely.

New Year's Eve, and Ruth is in the Ladies at Thames House, getting herself ready for a Home Office party in Whitehall that Erin has asked her to attend in her stead. A Christmas Eve bomb in a Berlin nightclub and a Boxing Day bomb in Milan Central train station have meant a long, hard week with all leave cancelled, however it appears that the party must go on. As she grimly slaps blusher onto pallid cheeks the eyes that regard her in the mirror are tired and bloodshot; she would give away all the state secrets she knows to be at home right now, curled up on the sofa with a book and a pot of tea.

At that moment her reverie is broken by a knock on the door and Tariq calling her name. Before she can respond he bursts in, and once he establishes that they are alone he turns to her, the grin on his face a mile wide.

He's in Bali, he tells her. Harry is in fucking Bali.

She's hopeless at schmoozing. Small talk has never been her forte, and tonight as her emotions veer from elation to relief to apprehension and back again she is distracted, fidgety, and unrewarding company. As she stands on the periphery of the gathering sipping a mineral water, she is aware of a presence at her elbow. William Towers. Fond of Ruth, and feeling to an extent responsible for her predicament – irrational though he knows this is - he has been keeping a quiet eye on her since Harry left. Tonight he gets the feeling that there is something amiss. Or not quite amiss, perhaps. Despite the abstracted air there is a senses of calmness about her...and in an instant he knows. She's telling him in her normal rambling fashion about the work section D has been doing in response to the bombings in Europe - never one to switch off, our Ruth - and when she pauses for breath he asks her straight out. She denies it, but when Towers, his eyes kind, raises a sceptical eyebrow she knows that she's not convincing anyone. As her words falter he tells her of an anti-terrorism summit, coincidentally arranged for four days' time in Rabat. She speaks Arabic and French, doesn't she? Would she care to come along as an interpreter? It would be an invaluable experience, after all. She stares at him. He knows. And he's giving her a way out. She stammers about the appropriateness of her attending, about Erin's likely opposition, about her lack of fluency in Darija. All her objections are brushed aside, and he tells her that his secretary will be in touch. Perhaps, he says, she should go home and start packing. She wants to hug him, but all she can do is murmur her thanks. He pats her arm, gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and moves off, back into the throng and the noise.

She goes home and stands in the middle of her living room and wonders where the hell to start. Casting her mind back to the days, weeks and months after she kissed Harry goodbye on the docks she remembers that once the shock and the panic had subsided it was books she missed. Photos. The little wooden buddha a colleague had brought her back from Nepal. Her cereal bowl - this makes her smile. The little Persian rug on her bedroom floor that had cost her three weeks' salary. These things she packs first; despite the fact that she was supposed to be dead, Harry had paid a small fortune to have the contents of her house packed up and put into storage, and so she still has them all. She had assumed he had neither had the time nor the inclination to do the packing himself; in reality he had been unable to bear being surrounded by such personal, intimate reminders of her, and had only stayed in her house long enough to pick up Fidget and purloin a strip of photos, too bewitchingly happy ever to appear in a passport, that were pinned to the cork noticeboard in the kitchen.

Her suitcase half full, she contemplates the contents of her wardrobe and her chest of drawers. A dispiriting palette of monochrome, she knows that all too soon little will be of any use to her anyway. She throws in some underwear, some basics, three floaty cotton summer dresses and a couple of pairs of sandals, then sits on the case and zips it up around her. Fidget wanders in and watches her dispassionately, a reminder both of what she will be leaving behind and of how much she still has to do. But she has had enough for one day, and she lets him out, undresses, washes, and crawls into bed. By the time the fireworks herald the new year, she is fast asleep.

The next day dawns, bright and cold, and she spends most of the morning in front of her laptop researching Rabat and Bali, and trying to work out how best to get from one to the other as quickly as possible without leaving a trail. Hunger drives her into the kitchen, and as she nibbles on a slice of toast she phones Malcolm, Tariq, then Beth. They arrive on her doorstep within the hour.

Beth, whose opinion of Harry has been coloured by his midnight flit, keeps her opinions to herself but promises to tie up the domestic loose ends after Ruth leaves. Tariq, sharing Harry's cynical view of politicians, is worried; unsure if Towers can be trusted; but he says he will do what he can to create a smokescreen, and will keep tabs on Harry. And Malcolm, sorrowful but resigned, tells her that Fidget will be good company for his mother. They get down to planning Ruth's journey to Bali. By the time they say their farewells the light has long since leached from the sky, and for the first time Ruth dares to hope.

The following day on the Grid Erin is predictably narked that her analyst's networking has resulted in such a junket; that Towers informs her himself only adds to her resentment, but as the minister's regular summoning of Ruth has become something of an office joke her suspicion is not aroused. She even agrees without demur to Ruth's request to stay on in Africa for a few days afterwards to meet up with an old university friend. As Ruth returns to her desk it dawns on her that not only is she a better liar than she ever used to be, but that she feels no guilt at deceiving Erin or colleagues she has worked with for years; colleagues that are the closest thing she has to friends. She buries the thought and gets on with clearing her workload as best she can. Yet as the desklamps go out one by one around her, and her colleagues, with wishes for a safe trip, bid her good night for the last time, she struggles to maintain the facade. As the pods hiss shut behind Erin, leaving her alone on the Grid, she cries.

Ten days later

As he gazes out through the curtain of rain at the rice fields he realises that his travels have not yet come to an end. For all that he had been prepared for the wet season to be, well, wet, he hadn't expected this. The humidity, too, is hard to cope with; he has bought a supply of thin cotton shirts and shorts from the market opposite the palace, and to the amusement of his pembantu has taken to ambling out of the master bedroom and diving into the pool fully clothed. The cool water provides but brief respite as the heavens pummel him from above.

He is upstairs in the loft reading when the stillness of the dusk carries the sound of a car approaching, then he hears the crunch of gravel as it comes to a halt outside the stone archway that is the entrance to the villa's grounds. With barely a second's hesitation he kills the light, opens the drawer in the desk and takes out the gun. Checking it is loaded he shoves it into the waistband of his shorts, and runs downstairs to the living room. It is in darkness, the blinds already lowered, but edging one aside he can see the stone path that leads from the entrance to the walkway across the rice fields. Nothing. There is a second gun taped to the back of the television; this one he keeps hold of. The car engine is still idling, and at a crouch he runs to the back door and lets himself out into the courtyard. For all its aesthetic appeal, the glass front of the villa offers him scant protection; outside he is at least shielded by the wall that runs round the top end of the pool.

As he reaches the far side of the wall the sound of the engine changes, and slowly the car moves off. He waits, unwilling to relax just yet, and his suspicions are proved right when moments later the security lights at the entrance are activated. Despite himself, he smiles. If this is someone trying to kill him, it is either a rank amateur, or someone who wants him to think that they are.

Still he waits. There are two small windows high up in the wall and he edges towards the first and looks towards the entrance. Backlit by the security lights he sees a not entirely unfamiliar silhouette. His pulse quickens, but still he doesn't move, wondering if there are others in the shadows waiting for him to take the bait. It has started raining again, and the figure moves quickly but carefully down the steps to the walkway. He retraces his steps, and circles the rear of the villa, running round the perimeter of the rice fields towards the entrance. The palm trees over little cover; he has to rely on the fading light.

Only when he is sure that there is no-one else in the grounds or beyond the entrance does he turn back, tucking the gun into his waistband with its partner. This time he sees no reason not to follow the walkway.

Although he is barefoot, she senses him, and turns, and in the light of the verandah he sees her properly for the first time. He stops. Even at a distance she can see the shock on his face, and he drags his hands down his cheeks in a gesture she knows so well. She knows, too, what he must be thinking, and her eyes fill with tears.

Then he begins to run.

[THE END]

ETA: A pembantu is a maid. And sorry for Tariq's language. ;)