That evening, Mrs Pike emailed the flat papers and the number of the previous tenant. I called him. He told me the stairs were awkward for a sofa, the bookshop was quiet and the bedroom window needed persuasion in wet weather. These were faults I could understand.
I laid the rent figures beside my own budget. The business account was separate. The money for my deposit would come from my personal savings, leaving less of a cushion than I wanted and enough to make the decision possible. I asked Harriet to check one clause I didn’t understand and sent Mrs Pike the references she’d requested.
Then I telephoned the charity warehouse about the remaining nursery things. They had accepted the cot after looking at the details I’d sent; collection could be Thursday. The clothes could go with it. I wrote the time in the diary and went to the annex door, where the donation box had become an obstacle I stepped around without seeing.
I moved it inside, out of the draught, ready for the van.
The little LATER box stayed under the bed. I did not open it that night.
Adam called after nine. We talked about the hill, the way Nina’s branches had seemed to grow out of empty space, the fact that I had bought a book while investigating rent.
“It’s research,” I said. “For living above a bookshop.”
“You’ll bankrupt yourself.”
“One novel at a time.”
I told him I had applied for the flat. He asked when I would hear. I said soon, I hoped, and found myself describing where the lamp would stand.
“By the chair?”
“Obviously.”
“Will there be a second chair?”
There was warmth beneath the question, and something less certain than his usual teasing.
“Yes,” I said. “A second chair.”
After we hung up, I sat at the annex table with Nina’s photograph on my phone and the flat details open beside it. Neither showed the room I had thought I wanted a month earlier.
I looked at them for a long time, then put the papers away and began my new book.
Before You Promised
The extra flowers were printed in green.
I noticed the colour before I understood what I was reading. A little trail of green marks ran down the plan of the winter garden, from the entrance through the long gallery and into the side room where our three pieces belonged. Each mark had a number. There were twelve.
I counted again.
Beside me, Celia was explaining where the sponsor’s photographer would stand. Martin had a pencil poised above the running order. Adam was at the other end of the table, talking to a woman in a cream coat about the entrance doors.
“Sorry,” I said. “What are these?”
Celia leaned over the plan.
“The floral groups.”
“Ours are here.” I put my finger beside the platform, then at the door. “These three.”
“Yes. And the continuation along the path.”
I looked up.
Adam had stopped talking.
“The what?”
The woman in the cream coat smiled as if I had asked about something delightful.
“The sponsor walk. We’re taking the guests through the garden before the music. Adam showed us the photographs of your samples. We’ve built the feature round them.”
I kept my finger on the paper. It had begun to tremble, very slightly, and I pressed harder.
“Adam.”
He came round the table.
“I was going to talk to you about that.”
The familiarity of the sentence hit me so hard that for a moment I couldn’t answer. A study. Clearance drawings. Another man telling me there would have been a conversation, eventually.
Then Adam put a second sheet beside the first. It was a staffing estimate, not an order to leave my life. I forced myself to look at what was actually in front of me.
“We can bring people in,” he said. “The additional costs would be covered. I spoke to the event team yesterday.”
“Which people?”
“Two assistants, possibly three. The supplier has availability.”
“For making the flowers?”
“For preparation and installation.”
“Have you hired florists?”
“Event staff. We can find—”
“No.”
The word cut across him, louder than I intended. Everyone at the table stopped moving.
I drew a breath.
“We are making the three pieces on our agreement. We can’t make twelve.”
The woman in the cream coat looked from me to Adam.
“Perhaps we’re getting ahead of the practical discussion.”
“We’ve already had it,” I said. “The practical discussion. We agreed three.”
Celia set down her pen.
“That was my understanding too. Adam said you’d found a way to extend the design.”
He looked at me, then at her.
“I said the shape could carry through the main garden. I was confident we could arrange the extra hands.”
“And I said another time,” I told him.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
“I heard that as a time problem.”
“It is a time problem.”
“Which we could pay to solve.”
“With whose time?”
Martin’s pencil clicked against the table. He put it down carefully.
I could see Adam becoming frustrated. Not angry yet. Frustrated that something he could picture so clearly was being stopped by a difficulty he believed he had already made provision for.
“If we discuss the hours—”
“I have. With Ruth. With Nina. With the clients whose work we’re doing before yours.”
The woman in the coat drew the plan towards her.
“Our mailing goes out this afternoon. If the route has changed, I need to know now.”
“Give us a moment,” Adam said.
I moved my hand off the paper.
“The route may be the same. The flowers aren’t expanding.”
It was not a threat. It was the answer they needed, and I could see from the woman’s face that she understood that even if she did not like it.
Celia nodded once.
“Then we’ll work from the signed scope.”
Adam looked as if he wanted to object. He didn’t. I gathered my folder, aware of every sound it made: the clip catching, a page sliding against the table, the small snap of the fastening.
“I’m available for the installation at the agreed time on Saturday,” I said. “Send any changes to access through Celia.”
I left before I could explain myself into doing part of it.
Outside, the afternoon was bright enough to hurt my eyes. I walked to the van and stood beside it, not unlocking it. I had driven over alone. Nina was making another order, Ruth was handling the collections, and I had told them I would be back in an hour.
Adam came out a minute later.
“Elena.”
I turned.
He stopped a few feet away. His face had lost the easy certainty it had worn over the plan.
“You could have let us talk privately.”
“Before you told the sponsor, yes.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
“I meant you made it sound as if I was trying to force you into it.”
I looked back at the open door. Somewhere inside, people were altering a plan because I had refused to perform it.
“What was I supposed to say in there?”
“That we’d look at it.”
“We weren’t going to.”
He looked away.
A gardener pushed a barrow along the path behind him. We both moved aside, absurdly courteous in the middle of an argument. The barrow contained soil, a broken pot and a pair of gloves. I watched it pass because I needed a moment in which I was not looking at Adam.
“I have spent two weeks making the work fit the people,” I said. “On Monday you saw the result. It fitted. Then you took the picture of it and promised four times as much.”
“Three times as much extra.”
I stared at him.
He closed his eyes briefly. “That was a stupid distinction.”
“Yes.”
“I could have paid for proper florists.”
“On Wednesday for Saturday? People whose work I know? Who knows where the supplies are? Who briefs them? Who checks every piece before my name goes beside it?”
“I would have taken that on.”
“You can’t arrange the flowers, Adam.”
It came out sharper than I intended. He flinched, and I saw the professional pride I’d touched. He could restore a room that had been shut for years. He could persuade people to fund glass and stone and work that would outlast us. He could not become Ruth because he had bought three event assistants.
“I know you want this to be wonderful,” I said.
“It isn’t just vanity.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“People have been waiting years. Every time we get close, somebody decides there’s another thing we can’t do. I wanted them to walk into something that didn’t look like a compromise.”
“The room doesn’t.”
“The rest of the route will.”
“To you.”
He looked at me then, properly.
I was still angry. I could also see the boy who wanted to climb the tree, the man who had told me the building’s closure had begun to seem natural. He had wanted to show people the whole of what he saw. That did not give him the hours between now and Saturday.
“The flowers you’ve ordered are good,” I said. “You stood in there on Monday and saw that.”
“They are.”
“Then let them be good without making them more.”
He folded his arms, then unfolded them.
“I thought you’d be pleased to have your work all through the building.”
“I might have been, if you’d asked before we said yes to the actual job. If we’d planned it. If it wasn’t a week when every extra hour has to come out of someone else.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you grateful.”
“I know.”
I did know. That was partly why it hurt. He had not meant to do anything unkind, and he had still used my possible delight as permission to decide.
The van key had left a small red mark in my palm. I loosened my hand.
“I need to go back to work.”
“Are you coming tonight?”
We had planned supper. Something ordinary, after my meeting. His question sounded smaller than the rest of the conversation.
“Not tonight.”
He nodded, too quickly.
“I don’t want to spend an evening persuading you I haven’t overreacted.”
“I haven’t said that.”
“You began with how I should have handled it.”
He looked down at the keys in my hand.
“Yes.”
I wanted to touch him. It was an unreasonable impulse, coming as it did with a wish to shake him. I put the key into the lock instead.
“This doesn’t mean I don’t want you,” I said. “It means I’m angry with you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He met my eyes.
“I’m trying to.”
I got into the van. He stepped back. Neither of us waved.
At the conservatory, Nina looked up when I came in.
“That took longer.”
“It did.”
I put the folder on the bench and told them exactly what had happened to the job. Not the private argument. The twelve marks, the staffing assumption, my refusal, Celia’s return to the agreed scope.
Ruth listened without interrupting. Nina’s face changed when I told her Adam had used the sample photographs.
“Do they think we agreed?” she asked.
“Some of them did. They know now.”
“Can we have that in an email?”
“Yes.”
I wrote to Celia, confirming the three pieces and times. She replied before five, copying Adam and the event team. The extra scheme was withdrawn pending a revised sponsor plan. Our work remained as signed.
Ruth read it and returned the phone.
“Right. Three.”
Then she asked me to cut the ribbon for the next morning’s wreath. We still had work. The simplicity of that helped until I found myself cutting the first length too short and had to begin again.
That night I ate at the annex and disliked the silence. I could have called Ruth. I could have gone for a walk. Instead I sat with my novel open at a page I had read three times and imagined Adam at his kitchen table, equally angry, possibly making better arguments to an empty chair.
At half past nine a message arrived.
I’ve told them the extra promise was mine. Celia is arranging the correction with the sponsor tomorrow. You don’t need to answer tonight.
I read it twice.
Then I answered.
Thank you for telling me. Goodnight.
It was neither forgiveness nor punishment. It was what I could say.
The charity van arrived the next morning while I was making tea.
I had forgotten the collection until I heard the engine. For a few seconds I stood with the kettle in my hand, furious at a completely innocent man for arriving when he had promised.
Then I put it down and opened the door.
The cot had already been taken apart, as the warehouse had asked. I had done it the evening before with the instructions beside me, laying the fittings in a labelled bag. Richard had offered by text to arrange somebody. I had replied that it was handled. The clothes stood in their box by the annex door.
I showed the collectors where everything was. They checked the pieces, lifted them and carried them to the van. There was no chair this time, no cushion to run after. Just two trips and the soft closing of the doors.
“Thank you,” I said.
The driver nodded, thinking I meant the service. I did mean that.
When they had gone, I returned to the annex and opened the little box beneath the bed. The cream cardigan lay inside its pillowcase beside the card from Mum. I unfolded just one sleeve and ran a finger over the small wooden bear.
I did not want a new life in which I never touched it.
I wanted this one, where it could still be mine and I could also be angry with a man I intended to see again.
I put the sleeve back and closed the box.
At work, Ruth had made tea. Nina was arguing cheerfully with a wholesaler about a substitution. The three empty winter-garden containers stood on the bench, labels facing out.
I took off my coat and began with the first.
The Smaller Opening
I did not have to explain it again.
That was the first thing I noticed at the short meeting on Friday. Adam put the revised plan on the table and said, “The error was mine,” before anybody could ask me how many flowers I could manage.
The woman in the cream coat was called Helen. She represented a local company that had agreed to sponsor a filmed walk through the restored garden, with their name on the feature. She had a laptop open and no particular interest in our personal lives.
“We can change the invitation,” she said. “We can’t shoot the sequence you’ve described if it isn’t there.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? The camera team’s booked for another event from six. There isn’t time to invent a different treatment at the opening.”
“Then we won’t use the walk-through feature.”
He said it steadily. I saw the muscle move in his jaw.
Helen closed one window on her screen and opened another.
“The general contribution stays. The filmed feature was a separate amount. We’ll withdraw that element and the promotion attached to it.”
Martin made a note. Nobody pretended this was a misunderstanding without a bill.
Adam glanced at the figures.
“The costs we’ve already incurred for that part are mine to cover. Not the charity’s. Not Elena’s.”
Celia looked at him for a moment, then nodded.
“The volunteer welcome can remain at the main entrance,” she said. “Guests walk through at their own pace. We bring them into the side room for the music. That’s a perfectly good opening.”
Helen agreed. It was, she said, simply a different event from the one she’d been sold.
I looked at Adam. He was listening without trying to turn the smaller event into a new extravagant promise. The effort showed.
He put the original design photographs beside the revised running order.
“These were what I saw on Monday. Three pieces. I should have asked before describing anything beyond them. Please use Nina Patel’s design credit on the programme with the business name.”
Helen took a photograph of the credit line. Martin asked about the existing invoice. I confirmed it was unchanged.
That was all I had to do.
Outside afterwards, Adam stayed beside the doorway while I zipped my folder.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I needed to hear what the crew would actually expect.”
“Yes.”
He had not slept well, or I thought he hadn’t. There was a tiredness round his eyes that made me want to smooth his hair, and I kept my hands on the folder because pity would be an unhelpful substitute for what I felt.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I treated your answer as a problem I could work round. You shouldn’t have had to say it twice, let alone in that room.”
I nodded. He waited, not asking me to make the sentence enough.
“I hated being angry with you,” I said.
“I didn’t enjoy it much either.”
“That isn’t an apology for it.”
“I know.”
A child on the pavement stopped to peer through the railings. Her father pointed up at the roof, and she demanded to know whether the trees got cold. We both listened until they moved on.
“Will you come tomorrow as a guest after we’ve finished?” Adam asked.
“I was going to.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Neither was I, for a while.”
He took that without flinching.
I stepped closer and touched the side of his hand. He turned it, just enough for our fingers to meet.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.