Really not sure about this one, but it's been bouncing around my head and I thought it best to get it out of there! Hope you enjoy.

It's funny how things turn out, sometimes. When they first met, Calum didn't bother to hide his disdain for Harry, seeing him as a dinosaur; the epitome of all that was bad about the Security Services. Yet over the past few awful months the relationship between them has evolved in a way I don't think anyone could have predicted. Mutually respectful at work, off the Grid they have the closest thing to a friendship Harry's had in years. I suppose when you think about it they're quite alike in a lot of ways; neither is a diplomat, they have the same sense of humour, the same work ethic, the same integrity…the same love of cricket. And so I'm standing at the edge of Calum's local pitch as Harry slowly raises his index finger. A cheer goes up, and a disconsolate figure tucks his bat under his arm and trudges back to the pavilion.

Of course, Harry had wanted to bat; had wanted to relive his university days when he'd come in at number three, howk the ball all over the ground and then get caught attempting a stroke that had the purists weeping into their gin and tonics. But I doubt if his knee could have coped with all that running between the wickets; as Calum told him with characteristic bluntness, it's a young man's game now. And so his boss spends most of his weekends off happed up in a sun hat and other people's jumpers, pronouncing on LBWs, no balls and wides. His knee and his back don't like the standing about much, but he loves it all; the camaraderie, the afternoon tea, the fact that for a few hours at least he cannot allow his thoughts to drift beyond the rope that marks the boundary, two hundred feet away.

After so many years of being apart, it has taken some getting used to being with him everyday. Initially he seemed to lose all faith in his ability to make the simplest decisions. Every morning he'd ask me which shirt he should wear.

The blue one, I'd say. Always the blue one.

'The blue one,' he'd confirm.

If it wasn't shirts it was what to have for dinner. What programme to watch on TV. Then there were the days when he'd say nothing at all. Funny; once upon a time he'd felt a compulsion to fill any silence between us, but now he could lie on the sofa for hours on end, just staring at the ceiling. At these times I'm not even sure that he knew I was there.

But bit by bit a new Harry is emerging from the wreckage of the old. He still works too hard. He still drinks too much. Since Scarlet's death he takes no exercise. (Despite what he told Sally Chapman about taking up cricket, umpiring doesn't count.) Yet something in him has changed. He's less impatient, less caustic. He's building bridges with his children, with some success. He's spending time doing the things that make him happy; there's the cricket, and he's been going to concerts, to the cinema, to rugby matches. He catches up with old friends, loses himself in books, he writes.

He still comes to see me every Friday after work, always with a bouquet of flowers. These days he tells me about his week, as if I didn't know it all already. When he leaves he says the three little words.

'I love you too,' I whisper.

But my words are snatched away by the wind and lost in the trees as he makes his way slowly back to the car.