On Thursday morning, the conservatory looked like a room holding its breath.
Most of the stock had gone to the new workshop. The long benches were empty. Adam and his team had already secured and marked the sections that would travel, and the remaining glass reflected a sky I seemed to be seeing through it for the first time.
The move would happen in stages. The flowers and equipment first, then the salvaged structure, then the work of making the new yard ready to receive it. We would trade from the workshop while the glass waited for its new foundations. I had needed to hear that more than once before I stopped imagining a single miraculous day in which one place vanished and another appeared complete.
Adam arrived with Colin and two other men. This time everyone knew why they were there. I had the plan, the dates, the costs. When Colin asked whether a particular pot was coming, I could answer without looking at Adam.
“Yes. That one.”
“Even with the crack?”
“Especially with the crack.”
He smiled and labeled it.
My mother’s jasmine would travel in its blue pot, cut back enough to survive the journey. I had resisted that too, until Ruth asked whether I wanted a long plant or a living one. Now the bare stems looked severe and hopeful in equal measure.
Adam walked the room with me before the others began.
“Anything you want photographed again?”
I looked around. We had photographs of every joint, every curve, the damage, the details. What I wanted could not be captured: the room on a summer morning, my mother’s voice from the far end, the particular sound of rain while I worked.
“No.”
He nodded. “Then we’ll start at the north end.”
I watched the first protective panel go up, then went to the flat before I could ask them to stop.
Packing the last things took longer than packing everything else.
There was a button in the drawer that belonged to no garment I could identify. A receipt from a lunch Richard and I had enjoyed. Three hair ties, one dead pen, a birthday card from my mother with nothing inside it except Love, Mum, as if she had expected to say the rest in person.
I put the card in the box with the photographs.
The ring envelope went into a small case with documents I would need later. The cardigan stayed separate. I wanted to carry it myself, though I knew a box could be dropped just as easily by someone who loved it.
At three, I went to the main house to return a set of keys I would no longer need. Richard was in the kitchen, trying to fit a car seat onto its base while reading the instructions upside down.
I stopped in the doorway.
He looked up, embarrassed.
“I think there’s a piece missing.”
I could see the piece on the table beside him. My mouth opened automatically, then I closed it. That felt petty until I realized I could simply point.
“There.”
He followed my hand.
“Oh.”
I put the keys on the counter.
“I’ll leave the flat key tomorrow.”
“All right.”
He looked at the keys, then at me. For a moment I thought he would begin another conversation. He didn’t.
“The movers know about the side gate?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll keep the drive clear.”
“Thank you.”
We stood awkwardly in the kitchen where we had once moved around each other without thought.
“I hope it works,” he said.
I could not tell whether he meant the business, Adam, or the entire life I was carrying away.
“So do I.”
Outside, the sound of tools came from the conservatory. I went toward it, then stopped and turned toward the garden instead.
I walked to the far end, where my mother had once planted bulbs in a line she insisted was a curve. They would not flower for months. Someone else would see them before I did.
I did not dig them up.
Ruth came back after the men had finished for the day. She carried two mugs and a flask. We sat on the low wall outside, looking through the protected doorway at the room being unmade.
“Your mum nearly left once,” she said.
I turned toward her.
“When?”
“About five years after she started here. There was a shop on the high street. Little place. She wanted a window people could look into.”
“Why didn’t she?”
Ruth blew across her tea. “Rent. Nerves. Richard offered to repair something here. She told herself it was foolish to pay for what she already had.”
I looked at the dark glass.
“She never told me.”
“She changed her mind. People don’t always announce the lives they don’t have.”
I tried to picture my mother in a high-street shop, arranging a window for strangers, arguing with a landlord who was not her son-in-law. I could see her liking it. I could also see her worrying herself sick.
“Was she unhappy here?”
“Sometimes. Mostly she was busy.”
Ruth looked at me. “Don’t make this into another thing you should have known.”
I laughed without much amusement. “You know me too well.”
“Not always. You surprised me.”
“By leaving?”
“By choosing the workshop. I thought you’d find a way to carry every pane of glass out on your back.”
I held the warm mug between my hands.
“I wanted to.”
“I know.”
For a while we watched a bird move along the hedge, disappearing and reappearing among the bare twigs. Ruth told me about her brother, about the terrible television program he had made her watch, about how she had slept late because there was no delivery to meet.
I listened. She was not only my mother’s friend or my reliable pair of hands. She had a whole weekend I had not been in.
When she left, she hugged me hard enough that I nearly spilled the remaining tea.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“Tomorrow.”
Adam came after dark. He had showered and changed, but there was a scratch across one knuckle. I took his hand and looked at it.
“The building fought back?”
“A box. Much less dignified.”
We ate the last food in the flat, an odd collection of things neither of us would have chosen together. I had expected to cry all evening. Instead we found ourselves laughing about the amount of packing material required to move objects that had survived years of being thrown into cupboards.
Then the laughter stopped, and I did cry, briefly. Adam stayed close without trying to turn the night into a better one.
“Do you want me here?” he asked when it grew late.
I looked around the little room. The bed was still made. The boxes stood by the door. This had been the first place I had slept after deciding not to live as Richard wanted me to.
“For a while.”
He nodded. We lay on the bed fully dressed, my head against his shoulder. I could hear his heart beneath the fabric of his shirt.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That I don’t know what tomorrow will feel like.”
“Neither do I.”
“You make that sound less frightening.”
He kissed my hair. “I’m frightened about different parts.”
I lifted my head.
“What parts?”
“Whether you’ll have room for me when you don’t need help leaving.”
The honesty of it struck me harder than reassurance would have done.
“I don’t spend time with you because you own a ladder.”
“It’s a very good ladder.”
“It scraped the gate.”
He laughed. I touched his face.
“I want you after this,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. But I want it.”
He held me closer.
When he left, I walked with him to the gate. The conservatory stood dark behind its protective panels. The main house had one light on upstairs.
I returned to the flat, placed the cardigan box beside my bag, and set the alarm for morning.