By the last week of the run, summer had begun to look a little tired around the edges. The hanging baskets outside the hotel needed watering. The grass above the harbor had turned pale. At the Portlight, everybody knew which floorboard complained and which dressing-room door needed a shoulder rather than a hand.
The play had settled into itself. Not become easy, exactly, but acquired the confidence of something that had survived small disasters and continued. Ruth’s repaired hook held. Julian’s buttons remained attached. The green coat looked better for having been worn by a person who knew what it meant.
On the morning of the final performance, Mrs. Avery rang to say the wedding dress had sold.
“A woman from York,” she said. “She’s having the skirt shortened a little. Very pleased with it.”
I stood in my kitchen with the phone against my ear, looking at the empty place where the garment bag had hung.
“Good.”
“I’ll send the payment through once the collection’s complete.”
“Thank you. For all of it.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“You’re welcome, Claire.”
After we hung up, I made another cup of tea. I expected to feel more. Perhaps I had already done most of the feeling while the dress was still here. Now I was simply glad it would be worn by someone who wanted the day it belonged to.
I spent the afternoon at the theater preparing for the strike. There were rails to label, pieces to return, things to clean before they became somebody else’s problem. I loved the end of a production less than the beginning. It was difficult to pack away a world you had worked so hard to make convincing.
Mina found me checking a seam that did not need checking.
“We’re not burying it,” she said.
“I know.”
“Some of it may return in worse circumstances.”
“The school pantomime.”
“Exactly. That coat could have a long career as a tree.”
I laughed and put it on the correct rail.
Mum was coming that evening. I had invited her myself and put her name on my guest list. One name. Rhys had looked at it, looked at me and asked whether I was sure. I had said yes.
It was not a test for Nick or a reward for Mum. I wanted my mother to see the work again. I wanted to decide that wanting without imagining it obliged me to want everything else.
Sophie and Daniel were not coming. I had not asked what they were doing instead.
Before the half-hour call, Nick found me in the wings. He was dressed, the jacket sitting perfectly now, his hair already belonging to Julian.
“Last time,” he said.
“Until somebody asks for a revival.”
“Don’t say it where Helen can hear.”
I smiled and adjusted his collar, though it was straight. He had learned to recognize when the adjustment was not really about the collar.
“Manchester next week,” he said.
“Monday.”
He nodded. We had talked about the train, the bags, the first planned visit. There was nothing left to organize that would make leaving feel entirely comfortable.
“I’m going to miss the pins,” he said.
“You can buy your own.”
“It won’t be the same.”
I put a hand against his cheek, careful of the stage makeup. He turned his face enough to kiss my palm.
Then Rhys called him, and I let him go.
I watched most of the performance from the back again. Mum sat near the aisle, alone. When she noticed me, she lifted a hand but didn’t beckon me over. I returned the gesture and stayed where I could see the whole stage.
The last performance had an energy the others hadn’t. The actors knew they were saying certain words together for the last time, standing in certain places, waiting for certain looks. Nothing became sentimental. It was simply more awake.
Nick was particularly good in the scene where Julian’s charm stopped working. He let the silence after a failed joke remain uncomfortable. He did not rush to rescue the audience from it. I thought of the man at the café who had answered my questions without trying to make himself easier to forgive, and I felt a tenderness so strong it almost hurt.
At the curtain call, Helen brought the company forward, then called the crew from the wings. I tried to stay behind Mina. Mina moved aside with the treachery of a friend who knew exactly what she was doing.
The applause was warm and rather bewildering. I could make clothes for people to look at, but being looked at myself still made me want to find a task.
Nick stood at the other end of the line. He caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back, then looked out into the auditorium and saw Mum clapping with both hands high in front of her face.
For once, I let myself remain where people could see me.
Afterward, the theater filled with the untidy relief of an ending. People hugged, promised to stay in touch, stole photographs before the set was dismantled. I changed out of my work apron and found Mum waiting where Rhys had asked her to wait.
“You were wonderful,” she said.
“I didn’t do much onstage.”
“I know what I was looking at.”
I looked at her. She met my eyes, and I let the compliment arrive without explaining it away.
“Thank you.”
She gave me a small bunch of flowers, nothing white or bridal, just yellow and orange blooms wrapped in brown paper. I took them and felt an absurd desire to cry.
“Would you like to see the room?” I asked.
She nodded.
I showed her wardrobe: the rails, the table, the green coat waiting to be cleaned. She touched the edge of it with one finger, then drew her hand back and looked at me for permission. I smiled and lifted the lining so she could see the work inside.
“Your father would have turned it inside out,” she said.
“He would.”
We laughed. It was a good way to remember him, in a room full of something I had made.
Nick came to the door a few minutes later. He stopped when he saw Mum, then looked at me. I nodded, and he came in.
The greeting was polite and awkward. Mum congratulated him. He thanked her. Nobody tried to turn the moment into a family reconciliation. I found I could bear the awkwardness when it wasn’t being hurried past on my behalf.
Mum left soon afterward, taking her flowers’ empty paper bag and a promise that I would ring when I reached Manchester. She did not ask about Sophie. At the side door, she hugged me and said, “I’m glad you invited me.”
“So am I.”
That was enough for the evening.
The cast gathered at the pub, but Nick and I were late leaving. I had one more rail to check, and he had forgotten where he’d put his own shoes. By the time we found them, the corridor was quiet.
I stood at the wardrobe door and looked back. Without people in it, the room seemed smaller. The table held marks I recognized from the last two months: chalk, a little scratch from a dropped tool, a pale ring where somebody had ignored the coaster Mina provided.
“Ready?” Nick asked.
“Nearly.”
He waited beside me, his coat over one arm.
I turned toward him.
“I love you.”
The words surprised me by how little they needed arranging. I had thought them often enough in the last few weeks, then put them aside while I waited for a moment that would make them safe.
Nick went very still.
“Claire.”
“You don’t have to make a speech.”
He laughed once, shakily. “Good. I don’t have one.”
I smiled, and then his hands were at my waist and his forehead against mine.
“I love you too,” he said.
I closed my eyes. The room smelled of wool, dust and the flowers Mum had brought. Somewhere outside, a van door slammed. None of it was the setting I would have chosen if I had been designing the scene.
It was where we were.
We kissed for long enough that Mina rang to ask whether we had been locked in. I answered with my face warm and Nick laughing beside me.
“We’re coming,” I said.
“Bring yourselves. Not another excuse.”
At the pub, we found a place among the others. Nick sat beside me, his hand resting on my knee beneath the table. We listened to stories about the run, some already becoming better than the events they described.
I laughed, drank a little wine and let myself be part of the room. In two days I would leave for Manchester. Tonight, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.