"I saw some of your work recently." Harry says as he leads Suki down the dark strip of corridor towards the stage.
"Oh! Where?" Suki stumbles slightly over an uneven floorboard and Harry turns back, checking she's ok before continuing.
"These bloody floorboards." He sighs, "same in every theatre. They won't do anything about backstage until someone breaks their neck... But you're not going to believe how much work they've done to the stage since I was last here..." He trails off, gathering his thoughts as Suki's question comes back to him. She picks her way along in the darkness behind him and the low drawl of his voice travels back to her; "I saw a sculpture in an gallery in Camden and knew it was yours straight away. It's in my living room. It's beautiful. Everyone always comments on it."
A lump rises in Suki's throat. Harry bought one of her sculptures, after all this time apart. After the divorce, whilst she was living her life and he his- at some point he'd connected to her and the most she'd known of it was the letter that informed her of another sale.
She knows exactly which sculpture it'll be and the knowledge makes it all the more poignant. Two separate arms, one male and one female, beginning at the elbows and meeting in the middle via their tightly clasped hands. Both arms show signs of decay and rotting. They're perfect, aside from the odd patch of exposed ligament, peeled muscle.
This piece she'd made after the divorce. After long, sleepless nights and days of zero inspiration, she'd thrown her heart and soul into it. It seems incredible, obscene, ridiculous that of the 10 million people in London, Harry should be the one to buy it, knowing who had made it, knowing that it signified the breakdown of his own marriage. She wonders how he can even bare to look at it. It was raw and vicious and brutal and the fact that he has taken it into his home reminds her that Harry was always better at facing up to pain than she was. He always confronted what she always tried to avoid. Still, she wonders how he can bring himself to look at it everyday.
Neither of them speak as Harry finally pulls back the thick red velvet curtain on to the stage. To her surprise, there is a light shining there, illuminating the stage and casting a glow over the rows of maroon seats.
"Did you light this one too?" She says, trying to sound offhand and hide the dryness in her throat, the tears she's tried to push down since Harry's revelation.
"What?" Harry glances at her with a frown, before realising that she's pointing at the light. "Ah, no. Don't you remember?" She shakes her head and he laughs lowly, holding back the curtain for her to walk through. "It's a ghost light."
A vague thread of recognition tugs at her memory but it's not enough. The theatre was Harry's world, she merely observed the outcome of his labours, a happy spectator at the end, the way he was with her sculptures.
Harry steps onto the stage behind her and in a booming circus voice he says; "And tonight, for one night only, the beautiful Ms. Suki Styles..." She rolls her eyes with a snort and he sniggers.
"Is it always on?" She asks.
"What, the ghost light?" He frowns. "Of course it is. 24 hours a day, aside from performance time. Have you really forgotten that much? Every theatre in the world has one. It's so that anyone who has to pick their way across stage while the theatre is shut doesn't fall off the bloody thing and break their neck."
"Ghost light is a bit of an eerie name." She points out, gesturing around the empty theatre.
"You know what superstitious creatures actors are." He laughs. "They think that every theatre has at least one ghost and they believe the light has to be left on to guide them on stage. They think terrible things will happen if they ghost isn't allowed to perform... I'm not joking!" He protests at the look on Suki's face. "I worked with Ralph Fiennes last year and he flat out refused to rehearse one day because the ghost light had been switched off the night before and he thought it was bad luck."
He snorts and Suki can't help a laugh. Suddenly, the memory of a woman Harry acted alongside fills her head. She refused to go onstage until she'd touched a rabbit leg keyring an older actor had given her for luck. One night the performance had been delayed for 10 minutes because she couldn't find it.
"Actually, that's why every theatre is closed for one day a week, so that the ghosts can have their time on stage to perform." Harry says. "Hey... We might even be disturbing a paranormal version of some play right now." He raises his eyebrows and wiggles his fingers.
"Is that true?" Suki says skeptically.
"What about ghosts acting out plays? I doubt it-"
"No! I meant the ghost light being left on for them, and the day off every week."
"It really is." Harry can't conceal a little dimpled grin. "You know what actors are like."
Stupid though it is, the thought unnerves Suki a little and Harry's handsome face creases into a frown at the little shiver she gives. "Hey, we can go back to common room if you like? I didn't mean to scare you."
"No it's ok... Lets sit down in the seats, if you like?" Suki suggests. Harry beams at her in approval and it strikes her how strange this whole scenario is, how odd it is to see each other one last time in the place for their first date... Then again, they were never a 'normal' couple. They lived in a fantasy world of art and theatre.
Life with Harry had been impossibly vibrant, Suki realises it now more than ever. The rare weekends they got off work were spend driving up to Loch Ness to camp and spend the day Nessie hunting, hiking in Yorkshire, heading to Cornwall to surf- even though they could barely swim. Every second that life gave them, they extracted the most out of. Suki might have hated London, but with Harry it didn't matter. Life with Harry had never been about the place they lived, it was the way they lived and the mere fact of being together.
"What do you want from the future, Suki?"
They were sat, now, in the plush comfortable seats of the front row, looking up at the stage as though they could see the ghostly performance that the light shone for.
"I don't know, Harry." Worry threaded Suki's voice. "In Italy I've got this workshop, it's a tiny village and a local artist has asked me to come and give lessons to locals and tourists. My accommodation is included... I even went on Skype to check it out." Harry laughs along with her at this unexpected burst into technology.
"It sounds very romantic." Harry says with a side smile. "Perhaps you'll fall in love and have a bunch of artistic children running wild through the Italian countryside."
A silence grows between them as they stare up at the bright light on the stage. Suki hesitates, on the cusp of saying something that she feels she shouldn't, something that she has never admitted to even a tiny group of friends.
Her eyes on the light, not daring to look at Harry, she speaks quietly. "I often wish that we had had a child, Harry."
"What?" She can hear surprise on his tone. He turns to face her but she refuses to do the same. It's easier to talk when she'd not looking at him. He continues to gaze upwards, not speaking until Harry softly asks, "Why?"
"Because you were ten years of my life and I have nothing to mark it by. I think that at least a child would be some eternal, everlasting memory of it."
"Children aren't souvenirs." Harry laughs lightly.
"No, of course not. But..." Suki's voice breaks slightly and it takes her a minute to compose herself before she can formulate the next sentence; "It would have been part of you that I could have kept, part that would never have left me. Something from you that was everlasting."
"You already had that." Harry says quietly. He doesn't elaborate and despite the ambiguity of this statement, she doesn't push him.
They stare up at the stage a while longer. Despite the words that have echoed in this theatre, words of drama, of love and loss... They can't seem to grasp at any of the ghosts of these old words and use them to express their own thoughts.
True pain is a game with emotions, not words. Suki vaguely remembers reading this somewhere, she can't remember the source but the words are completely true.
"I never thought we would end, Suki."
It seems like an eternity since either one of them has spoken. Harry's voice seems to rise into the air like soft dust from one of the old seats they're sat upon.
"I didn't either."
"You did." Harry's voice is soft. "You saw it before me. Right up until the end I thought I could fix it. I thought if I came home earlier, if I listened more, if I tried harder... I thought I could fix it."
"I'm sorry." The hot tears that have been brimming in Suki's eyes finally spill from the corners of her eyes. "I thought I didn't love you anymore. I thought I'd married too young."
Harry nods slowly, looking wounded by this admission that he always knew. It's the sort of thing that will always hurt, no matter how often it hits you, the wound will always reopen.
"And I thought you didn't love me." Suki whispers, gnawing her lip in a fruitless attempt to stop the tears. "I thought it was for the best."
"Ah. You were wrong on one count." Harry says softly, looking up at the stage as though the most intense play is being acted out on the empty stage.
"I never stopped loving you, Suki. Never."