Sophie was already on the bench when I arrived. She stood as if she meant to hug me, then sat down again before I reached her.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
The park was full of small weekday sounds: a gardener moving a hose, children in the playground beyond the hedge, a woman calling a dog that had decided not to recognize its name. I was grateful for the space. In a café I would have felt required to order something, to make the meeting resemble an ordinary sisterly afternoon.
Sophie held a small envelope in her lap.
“Your necklace,” she said.
I took it. The paper was warm from her hands.
“Thank you.”
“I should have brought it back sooner.”
I put the envelope in my bag. We both watched the gardener adjust the hose.
Sophie looked tired. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and she had twisted a lock of hair so often that it had separated from the rest. I noticed the flat shoes, the bottle of water beside her, the small physical arrangements of a life already changing.
“Mum says she came to see you.”
“She did.”
“I didn’t ask her to.”
“All right.”
She looked at me, perhaps hoping for more. I waited.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then tell me why you asked me here.”
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the bench.
“Because I miss you.”
The words hurt. I had expected an excuse, an explanation, perhaps an apology so carefully prepared that I could reject it without feeling anything. Missing me was something I understood too well.
“You can’t ask me to help you with that.”
Her eyes filled. She nodded quickly.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I’m trying to.”
I looked out across the grass. A child ran past carrying a stick twice as long as he was tall. His father followed at a distance, ready to prevent whatever disaster the stick might cause without interrupting the triumph of having found it.
“When did you stop thinking about me?” I asked.
Sophie made a small sound.
“I didn’t.”
“That makes it worse.”
“I know.”
“Then stop saying it as if it explains anything.”
She wiped beneath one eye with the back of her hand. For once, I didn’t offer a tissue before she looked for her own.
“At first,” she said, “I told myself it wasn’t going to become anything.”
I kept looking at the grass.
“Then it did. And every time I thought I should tell you, there was another reason not to. Your birthday. Work. The engagement. I knew the reasons were stupid. I just kept using them.”
There was no way to hear that without seeing the months again, every dinner and message and small thing I’d mistaken for my ordinary life. I pressed my feet against the ground.
“Did you want him to leave me?”
She was silent for long enough that I turned.
“Yes,” she whispered.
At least there was that. An answer with no soft cloth wrapped around it.
“And the wedding?”
“Mum thought—”
I looked at her.
She stopped. “I let her.”
“You stood there.”
“Yes.”
“You let her tell me to be sensible.”
“Yes.”
Her tears fell then, but she did not move toward me. I sat beside her and felt the old habit pull at me so hard that my hands hurt with keeping still.
“We’re not using the hotel,” she said after a while. “It’s going to be small. Later. Just the registry office.”
“You don’t need to give me the details.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know. I just don’t want them.”
She nodded. A bird landed near our feet and inspected the gravel for crumbs. We watched it with the concentration of people grateful for any third thing to look at.
“I wanted you to come,” Sophie said.
I closed my eyes for a second.
“I can’t.”
“I know.” She drew in a breath. “I won’t ask again.”
That was the first promise she made that afternoon which seemed small enough to believe.
We did not stay much longer. Before we stood, I told her I didn’t know what kind of relationship we could have. I could not give her a date on which this would stop hurting, and I would not listen to anyone tell me that a baby ought to make it easier.
She nodded, looking down at her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For what I did. Not just how you found out.”
I let the words remain between us. I did not thank her for them. I did not say they were enough.
At the gate, she turned toward Mum’s house and I toward the theater. We had walked that route together as children, arguing about which shortcut was quicker. I remembered it only after we had gone our separate ways, which was a mercy.
Four days later, I woke before the alarm.
For a moment I didn’t know why. The room was pale with early light. A gull shouted from the roof opposite. My mouth tasted of sleep, and my hand lay outside the covers where the ring no longer was.
Then I remembered the date.
I had removed the appointment from my phone, but the paper diary on the kitchen shelf still held it. I had written it in January, before we were even officially engaged, when the hotel cancellation first appeared and Daniel said there was no point waiting if we knew what we wanted.
I went into the kitchen and opened the diary.
Two o’clock. Wedding.
I had drawn a little star beside it. I didn’t remember doing that. The small, foolish decoration made me cry more than the words.
I made tea, sat at the table and cried until the kettle cooled. Then I washed my face and got dressed for work.
Mina did not bring a cake or organize a surprise. She put a packet of my favorite biscuits on the table and asked whether I wanted the radio on. I said yes.
We spent the morning adjusting a skirt that kept catching on a chair. There were worse ways to spend a morning. The problem had a cause, and the cause could be corrected without asking anyone how they felt about it.
At one, I took my lunch to the courtyard. Nick was there, reading a page on his phone.
“I can go,” he said when he saw me.
“Why?”
He looked at me, then put down the phone. “No good reason.”
I sat beside him.
For a while we ate in companionable silence. I could hear the rehearsal piano through an open window and somebody dragging a chair across the floor above us.
“I thought today would feel more dramatic,” I said.
Nick leaned back. “How does it feel?”
“Like I’ve missed a train. Except I don’t want to be on it.”
He nodded slowly.
“I keep wondering what I’d be doing.”
“Right now?”
“Probably arguing with a hairpin.”
His mouth moved. “The hairpin would lose.”
I smiled, then felt my eyes fill again. I looked down quickly.
“It’s all right,” I said, though he hadn’t asked.
Nick reached across the gap between our chairs and took my hand. He didn’t tell me it was for the best. I leaned back and let the next minute pass.
At two, I was kneeling beside a hem in the rehearsal room while Helen argued with a lamp. At ten past two, the lamp won. By half past, I had forgotten to check the time.
That evening, Mina, Rhys and I went to the pub near the theater because we often did on Mondays when the kitchens were quiet. I bought the first round. Rhys told a story about a touring company that had once lost its entire set in a service-station car park. Mina said this was why she didn’t trust anything with wheels.
Nick arrived later, after a call with Priya about the tape. I watched him come through the door and felt glad in a way that belonged to the present rather than the date.
He sat beside me, his knee brushing mine beneath the table.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“She hasn’t heard yet. She was reminding me that no news is not a personal insult.”
“A useful service.”
“I pay her a percentage for it.”
The others made room for him in the conversation. He listened to Rhys, disagreed with Mina about a film, stole one of my chips and looked so unreasonably pleased when I moved the plate closer that I wanted to kiss him in front of everybody.
So I did.
Only briefly, leaning across while Rhys was in the middle of a sentence. When I sat back, Mina looked at me over her glass. She didn’t smile broadly or make a noise. She simply looked pleased.
Nick’s hand found mine beneath the table.
We left when the others did. Outside, the night was warm enough that I carried my coat. Rhys turned toward the bus station and Mina toward the car park, leaving Nick and me at the corner.
“Will you come up?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Yes.”
I took his hand on the hill. At my door, he waited while I found the key. My fingers were unsteady, but not from crying this time.
Upstairs, I set my bag down and turned to him before I could find something unnecessary to tidy. He touched my cheek, then kissed me with a gentleness that gave way when I drew him closer.
Later, when we stood at the bedroom door, I hesitated. He stopped with me.
“I’m here because I want you,” I said. “Not because of today.”
His forehead rested against mine. “I want you too.”
I closed the door behind us.