Room for Two
On Friday I put a price beside Nina’s name.
She examined the sheet for so long that I began explaining it before she asked.
“For installations you lead. The extra hours would be agreed separately. This is the responsibility payment.”
“I can read.”
“I know.”
She read it again.
“Does lead mean I get to decide where things go?”
“Within the agreed design.”
“And if the room’s different when we get there?”
“Then you’d ring me.”
Nina looked up.
I could hear the problem as soon as I’d said it.
“If it’s a cost or a safety issue, you ring me. If the table’s six inches to the left, you move the flowers.”
“And if you don’t like where I’ve moved them?”
I wanted to say that of course I would trust her. She would have known what it was worth.
“Then we’ll find out whether I can keep my mouth shut.”
She smiled a little. “I’d like that in writing too.”
I added the decision limits. We argued about the payment, not because she asked for too much, but because she asked whether it applied to jobs already booked. I had intended to start with new work. She pointed to Sophie and Finn’s staircase, where I had already promised her labour and used her design.
“Yes,” I said. “That one too.”
It took money from the margin I had enjoyed pinning above the desk. I changed the calculation while she watched. She signed the revised role sheet, and I put a copy in her hand instead of keeping both in my file.
At lunch, Ruth and I tried a different phone arrangement. For thirty minutes she ate in the yard while Nina took messages and I worked. The world did not end. A caller objected to being called back about an unscheduled consultation; she was still objecting when I rang her at two, but we agreed a time and she booked it.
Small changes were less moving than declarations. Mostly they involved saying the same thing twice to somebody who hadn’t expected it.
Saturday morning brought the fiftieth-birthday lunch Nina had booked herself. She made the low table pieces and the branches for the sideboard, checked the client’s photograph one last time and asked me to hold the long end while she tied it into the van.
“Not there,” she said. “You’ll snap it.”
I moved my hand.
The delivery went on time. By two, a photograph arrived of a man pretending to look appalled beneath a gold birthday banner, with Nina’s branches reaching above the sideboard behind him. The tables were full of plates, glasses and small yellow flowers that left people room to eat. I showed it to Ruth, then put my phone away and finished early.
At four I was outside the winter garden wearing boots and a dress, a compromise I had thought better of three times on the drive.
Adam came through the gate carrying two paper cups.
“Tea,” he said. “Unless you’d like to reject it before we start.”
“On what grounds?”
“Quality. Temperature. Personal inclination.”
I took one. He looked at the dress, down at the boots, then back at me with an appreciation so open that I forgot to make fun of the cup.
“Very practical,” he said.
“Parts of me.”
He kissed me beside the gate. A cyclist went past and rang his bell, probably at a car behind us. I chose to believe it was applause.
Inside, the old entrance smelled of limewash, damp stone and the faint green breath of growing things. The main path curved round a bed of broad leaves whose names I did not know. High above, restored panes admitted an extraordinary pale light. Unfinished areas were screened off. Beyond one barrier lay stacked boards and the ordinary litter of work: gloves, a level, a screwed-up sandwich bag.
I stopped walking.
Adam stopped too. He had been watching me instead of the roof.
“Well?”
“You’re fishing.”
“Shamelessly.”
I turned in a slow circle. There was enough height for the trees to look at home, enough iron in the ribs of the building to make its fragility an illusion. Rain from earlier in the day still ticked from a leaf onto stone.
“I understand why you want it,” I said.
His face changed. He didn’t reach for a joke.
“Come here.”
He led me along the cleared path to the side room. It was smaller, with a floor of worn tiles and a shallow platform at one end. Someone had put six folding chairs in two uncertain rows. Through the far glass, a chestnut tree lifted new leaves like hands not yet fully opened.
“This is where you heard the concert?”
“Yes. I remember the chairs being worse.”
He sat in one. It gave a little metallic complaint.
“Possibly these are the same ones.”
I sat beside him. Our cups rested on the floor. With no other people in the room, the platform looked ridiculous and inviting.
“What was the music?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“You must remember something.”
“A woman with a flute. Someone dropped a programme. My father was cross because I’d brought mud in.”
“Were you eight?”
“Eleven. Old enough to know better, apparently.”
I imagined him at eleven, long legs and a stubborn mouth, watching rain instead of a performance he had been told would improve him.
“Did you like the flute?”
“I expect I was very polite about it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He grinned. “I wanted to climb the tree.”
“Of course you did.”
A woman entered carrying a large bunch of keys. She wore purple trainers with a smart coat and looked as if she had just remembered she was supposed to be somewhere else.
“Adam. I thought that was your car.”
He rose. “Celia. This is Elena.”
“Hello.” She offered her hand. “He’s been telling everyone about you.”
I looked at him.
“The flowers,” he said, too quickly.
Celia’s smile broadened.
“I’m one of the trustees. He’s allowed to complain about us for no more than ten minutes at a time. Otherwise we’d never get anything done.”
“An unfair restriction,” Adam said.
She glanced at the empty platform. “We’re hoping to have the first small opening here on the eighth of May. Friends, volunteers, people who’ve paid for panes and refuse to believe the roof exists until they stand beneath it. We’ve got music. We have no idea where to put the flowers.”
“Celia,” he said.
“What? I’m making conversation.”
“With an expression I’ve seen in fundraising meetings.”
I laughed. Celia did not look chastened.
“I would pay,” she told me. “We’ve learned that much.”
“There are already rather a lot of plants,” I said.
“That’s exactly what the treasurer said.”
I stood and walked to the platform. The room didn’t need another garden arranged inside it. The leaves beyond the glass gave all the fullness anybody could want. What it lacked was a place for the eye to rest near the music, something lower and warmer at human height.
I could see it. That was dangerous.
“Something here,” I said, indicating the left edge. “And perhaps at the entrance. Not all the way along. People will look outside if you let them.”
Celia followed my hand.
“Would you send an idea?”
Adam was very still beside the chairs. For once he seemed to be trying not to help.
“I’d need the actual timings and budget first,” I said. “We’re moving at the end of May. I can’t give you three days we haven’t got.”
“An afternoon and evening, I hope.”
“Send me the details. I can tell you if there’s something possible.”
She took my email address and left us with the promise of a message. I watched her purple shoes disappear behind the broad leaves.
“You told her I was coming,” I said.
“I told her I was showing you the building. I didn’t ask her to pitch you a job.”
“Did you tell her I was a florist?”
“Yes.”
“And about the conservatory?”
“About your work. Not Richard.”
I turned towards him. He looked annoyed now, with himself or Celia or me; I couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t bring you here to get a cheap arrangement.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I also know a person can have more than one thought in his head.”
His mouth tightened. Then, reluctantly, he nodded.
“I’d like your work here.”
“I might like it too.”
That surprised him enough to be satisfying.
“But I’m going to look at my diary before I give your trustee an afternoon that turns out to contain seventeen hours.”
“Fair.”
“And you haven’t shown me the tree you wanted to climb.”
He took my hand. “It isn’t still here.”
“Then this date has been misleadingly advertised.”
We wandered through the rest of the open section. He knew too much about the glass and almost nothing about the plants. I knew more about the plants, until I confidently identified something a nearby label contradicted.
“An unusual fern,” he said.
“It’s having a difficult year.”
He laughed and read the label aloud in an unnecessarily educated voice. I took his empty cup and threatened to leave him there.
At the far end we found a narrow bench. I sat with my boots on the stone edge of the bed while Adam leaned back, face turned towards the warmth. There was dust on the shoulder of his coat. I brushed it off, then left my hand there.
“What happens when it’s open?” I asked.
“I’ll stop having arguments about when it’s going to open.”
“And start having different ones.”
“Probably.”
“What would you do if nobody rang you for a week?”
“Check my phone was working.”
I smiled. “After that.”
He thought about it.
“I’d like to go somewhere and draw badly. No measurements. No one asking whether a line meant a wall could come down.”
“Where?”
“The coast, maybe. Or a city I don’t know.”
“I’d like a theatre where nobody asks me to supply flowers for the interval.”
“That’s quite specific.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
He turned his head towards me.
“There’s a play in town next week. At the little theatre behind the library. I saw the poster.”
“Do you know which one?”
He recognised my borrowed question and smiled.
“No. I was mostly noticing the word theatre.”
I kissed him before he could enjoy his own cleverness any further.
His coat was rough beneath my palm. He shifted closer on the bench, one leg against mine, and the room beyond the trees fell away. When I drew back, there was a little crease between his brows that had nothing to do with restoration.
“Come to supper,” he said.
“Tonight?”
“If you can.”
I could. I had stopped work early. Ruth had gone home. There was nothing at the annex except a kettle, a pile of papers and the reassurance of spending an evening where I knew how everything would feel.
“I haven’t brought anything.”
“I’m reasonably supplied with food.”
“That isn’t quite what I meant.”
He looked at me. The silence altered, became something neither of us could mistake.
“I’d like you to stay,” he said.
I wanted to say yes immediately. I also wanted a clean shirt in the morning, my own toothbrush, a little time in which this was something I’d chosen and carried towards him.
“Monday,” I said. “Not because I’m washing my hair tonight.”
“I hadn’t accused you.”
“I’d like to come on Monday. And stay.”
The pleasure in his face was so unguarded that I leaned over and kissed him again, more softly.
“Monday,” he said against my mouth.
We did have supper that night, at a crowded café with steamed windows and chairs too close together. I ordered something from the specials board without conducting a public inquiry into the menu. Adam stole a potato and burned his mouth. I laughed so hard the couple beside us began laughing without knowing why.
When we went outside, I saw a woman I knew from estate dinners. She looked from my face to Adam’s hand in mine, and for an instant the pavement seemed to narrow.
“Elena. How are you?”
“Hungry no longer.”
It was a stupid answer. I had panicked.
She blinked. Adam coughed into his free hand.
“This is Adam,” I said. “We’re going to get some air.”
She said hello. He said hello. Nobody burst into flames.
We walked on until she was safely behind us. Then I stopped beneath a shop awning and bent forward laughing.
“Hungry no longer?” Adam repeated.
“Never mention it.”
“I thought it was dignified.”
“It was deranged.”
He caught my hand as I straightened and pulled me gently towards him.
“You didn’t let go.”
I looked down at our joined hands. I hadn’t noticed.
“No,” I said.
He kissed the corner of my mouth. I kept hold of him all the way to the cars.
Back at the annex, I hung the dress on its hanger instead of dropping it across a chair. Then I took my overnight bag out of the cupboard.
The ring was still in its zipped pocket. I touched the outside of the fabric, feeling the small circle through it, and left it where it was for the moment.
On the table lay Ruth’s offer deadline. On my phone was a message from Celia with a budget and the date of the opening. I put them beside each other and opened the diary.
There would be work tomorrow. There would be more decisions than I could make in one evening.
For Monday, I packed the green top.
Stay
I took my wedding ring out of the bag before I put my toothbrush in.
The pocket lining had caught around it. I had to turn the corner inside out and ease the ring free with my nail, which made the act less solemn than it might otherwise have been. It dropped onto the table beside a receipt for flower food.
I had expected a feeling large enough to tell me what to do next.
Instead I thought that the inner edge needed cleaning.
I found a small box in the cupboard, put the ring inside and shut the lid. It went into the drawer with the Cornwall photograph. I did not throw either thing away. Then I packed the toothbrush, a clean shirt and the book from the nursery chair, because I had finally begun reading it and wanted to know whether the heroine was going to stop trusting the obviously unsuitable cousin.
Adam opened the gate while I was still trying to extract the bag from the car.
“You’ve brought provisions.”
“A toothbrush. Don’t be alarmed.”
“I was going to offer you a cupboard.”
“Let’s see how the evening goes before we negotiate furniture.”
He took the bag and kissed me. I could feel myself smiling against him. It was difficult to look like a mysterious woman arriving for a night of passion when the zip of your bag had trapped a sock.
He freed it without comment, which I appreciated less when I saw him trying not to laugh.
“Say nothing.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You’ve already said it with your face.”
Inside, the kitchen table was laid for two, with bread, tomatoes and a roast chicken cooling in a dish. Nothing dramatic. No tall candles. I found myself absurdly pleased by the sight of potatoes with their skins split open.
“I remembered you were coming from work,” he said.
“Did you think I might arrive too weak to seduce?”
The words left my mouth before I could improve them. He looked up from putting the bag on a chair.
“Was that the plan?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I may have overcatered.”
He crossed the room and put his hands at my waist. The second kiss was slower. I slid my arms beneath his open jacket, feeling the warmth of his back through his shirt. He had shaved; the clean line of his jaw invited my mouth, and when I kissed it he drew a breath that made me forget the chicken.
A timer sounded.
We both looked at the cooker.
“Something else?” I asked.
“Only the potatoes.”
“Only.”
He let go with obvious reluctance. I took off my coat and sat down, feeling ridiculously alive in my own skin.
We ate. He had been out that morning at a building where someone had removed a wall before asking whether it mattered. I had spent an hour trying to get a supplier to understand that the new delivery address did not yet apply. We complained without improving each other. When he described the hole in the wall, I asked whether it gave the room more light. He looked so appalled that I stole the last crisp bit of potato while he was composing a reply.
His phone rang halfway through the meal.
He glanced at the name. “One moment.”
He stepped into the hall. I could hear enough to know that the caller was someone at the winter garden and that the matter concerned a delivery. One moment became three. I buttered bread I did not want and watched the skin form on the gravy.
When he came back, he picked up his fork and said, “Where were we?”
“Eating.”
He looked at my plate, then at his.
“Sorry.”
“Was it urgent?”
“It felt urgent to him.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He put the fork down.
“No. It could have waited.”
I wasn’t angry enough for a quarrel. I was disappointed enough not to be entertaining about it.
He switched the phone to silent and put it in the drawer beneath the cutlery. Then he moved the chicken between us and asked if I wanted more.
I did. The evening resumed awkwardly for perhaps thirty seconds, then he told me a story about a window that had been fitted upside down by a man who insisted the photograph was wrong. I laughed with food in my mouth. He laughed at that. The interruption became part of a real evening instead of a test he had either passed or failed.
After supper I dried while he washed. He was slow, methodical and inclined to rearrange the draining rack after I’d already found something a place. I moved a glass back. He moved it again.
“It’s happier there,” he said.
“It hasn’t expressed an opinion.”
“You can’t hear it over your own certainty.”
I flicked the tea towel at his arm. He caught the end and pulled me towards him, which was a poor method of drying dishes and an excellent use of a kitchen.
We left the last pan in the sink.
In the sitting room I stood by the shelves, pretending to read the titles while he turned on a lamp. I had wanted this all day. Now the absence of anything left to do made me shy.
He came to stand beside me.
“You don’t have to make a speech,” I said.
“I was going to ask why you’re looking at a guide to drainage.”
I closed my eyes.
He laughed softly and turned me towards him.
I kissed him before my courage could turn back into a joke. His hands moved over my shoulders, down my arms, then held my fingers. I felt the callus beneath his thumb again and remembered the gate on that first morning, how little I’d known about the man whose hand I’d taken.
Now I knew the noise he made when he was trying not to laugh. I knew he disliked beetroot and lost games badly, answered calls he should leave unanswered and wanted people under that glass roof again. I wanted to know things I could not yet imagine asking.
He drew me close. I rested my forehead against his, breathing the same warm air.
“Still Monday?” he asked.
“Very much.”
We went upstairs together.
At the bedroom door I paused, not in doubt, but because the room was new. A chair with a sweater over it. A glass of water. Books stacked unevenly beside the bed. An ordinary man’s private disorder, waiting for me to become part of it for a night.
Adam put down my bag.
I reached past him and switched off the bright overhead light. Then I took his hand and brought him to me.
Later, when the house was quiet, I lay with my cheek against his shoulder and listened to rain beginning at the window. He had one arm around me, heavy with the beginnings of sleep. I had expected to feel changed. Mostly I felt warm, tired and greedy for more of the same.
“Are you awake?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“You sound doubtful.”
“I’m concentrating.”
I laughed, and his arm tightened.
For the first time in weeks, there was nowhere else I wanted to be before morning.