My room in Manchester was smaller with my things in it.
The portfolio leaned against the desk. My shoes occupied most of the space beneath the chair. I had brought too many books and not enough hangers, a failure of planning I would have criticized mercilessly in somebody else’s packing list.
On the first evening, I walked to a shop for milk and took the wrong turning on the way back. I found myself beside a canal, watching a row of narrowboats settle into the dusk. There was music from one of them and the smell of somebody cooking onions.
I stood there for a while before looking at the map on my phone.
Nobody knew me on that street. Nobody knew what my sister had done, or what Nick had promised, or what I had chosen afterward. It was lonely and strangely pleasant to exist without explanation.
Back in the room, I called him.
He answered from his kitchen, where he was apparently attempting to use up the contents of the fridge before they organized themselves against him.
“How is it?” he asked.
“Small.”
“The room or Manchester?”
“The room. Manchester remains reasonably large.”
He laughed. I sat on the bed and told him about getting lost, about the canal, about the lighting designer next door who had introduced herself while carrying six mugs at once.
He told me about the day he had spent reading the tour script and discovering that his character spoke for three pages without anybody else being helpful enough to interrupt.
“You wanted a bigger part,” I reminded him.
“I did. This is an important lesson about wishing.”
We talked until the room began to feel less unfamiliar. When we hung up, I missed him sharply, but the missing was not the only thing in the room anymore.
The first week was difficult in ordinary ways. I had to learn where everything lived, which machine disliked heavy fabric, which person needed a question phrased directly and which wanted a few minutes to think before answering. I was good at the work and still tired by the effort of doing it somewhere new.
On Thursday, one of my strongest designs failed in rehearsal. The shape restricted a movement the actor needed, and what had looked elegant on paper became awkward when she tried to sit. I knew how to solve it, but not without losing something I liked.
I spent the afternoon making changes, then went back to my room cross and hungry.
Nick rang while I was looking at the revised drawing.
“Tell me something good,” he said.
“I don’t have anything good.”
He was quiet for a second. “Bad day?”
“I’m sorry. That came out sharply.”
“It’s all right. Tell me the bad thing.”
I did, in too much detail at first, as if he needed to understand every seam before he could understand why I was upset. He listened until I ran out of breath.
“Do you want suggestions,” he asked, “or do you want me to agree the dress is behaving badly?”
I laughed despite myself.
“The second.”
“Then it’s a disgrace.”
“It’s not the dress. It’s my idea.”
“Ideas can behave badly too.”
I looked at the drawing again. It was better for the change. I was beginning to see that, which was inconvenient for my mood.
“I think I wanted to be good immediately,” I said.
“You are good. Immediately is a separate problem.”
I leaned back against the wall. “How was your day?”
He hesitated.
“You can tell me,” I said. “I haven’t used up the available difficulty.”
His day had gone badly too. A payment was late. He had spent an hour learning a passage with the wrong pause in it, then another hour trying to unlearn it. A friend had invited him out, and he had said no because he was waiting to call me, then felt foolish for resenting the invitation he had declined himself.
“You should have gone,” I said.
“I know.”
“We could have talked tomorrow.”
“I know that too. I wanted to talk to you and also wanted you to know I’d stayed in, which is not my most attractive quality.”
I smiled at the ceiling. “Thank you for telling me before it became my mysterious fault.”
He laughed, and the two bad days became something we could sit beside together instead of evidence that we were doing everything wrong.
The next evening he went out. I worked late with the lighting designer, whose name was Robyn and whose collection of mugs became useful to both of us. We sent each other brief messages, nothing requiring an immediate answer. I slept well.
By the third week, I knew the route to the workshop without looking at my phone. I had a favorite stall at the market and opinions about the bakery near the station. The room was still small, but it no longer felt like a waiting room for my real life.
Nick came on Saturday morning with a bag, a paperback and the pleased, slightly dazed expression of a man who had been on a train before breakfast.
I met him at the barrier. For a moment we looked at each other as though three weeks had changed more than either of us expected.
Then I went into his arms.
He held me tightly enough that I felt the whole journey leave him in one breath.
“Hello,” he said into my hair.
“Hello.”
We kissed in the station, between a family arguing about tickets and a man trying to balance three coffees. I had imagined a more graceful reunion. I liked this one better.
We had planned lunch and a long walk. On the way to the café, my phone rang. Louise needed a quick decision about a change for Monday’s presentation. I answered one question, then another, and realized the conversation could not be useful without looking at the garment.
I ended the call and looked at Nick.
“I need to go to the workshop for an hour.”
He nodded too quickly. I recognized it.
“You can be disappointed,” I said.
“I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is it something only you can do?”
I thought before answering. It would have been easy to say yes because that made the choice feel less like a choice.
“Not entirely. But it’s my design, and I want to be there while we decide.”
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded more slowly.
“All right.”
“You don’t have to come and wait.”
“I wasn’t planning to look decorative beside a sewing machine.”
I laughed. “You’d be good at it.”
“I have other ambitions.”
We found a place to eat something quickly. Then he went to a museum he had wanted to visit, and I went to the workshop with a promise to meet him at three. Not whenever I finished. Three.
At half past two, the problem was solved well enough to continue on Monday. There were other things I could have stayed to do. There were always other things. I wrote down what remained and left.
Nick waited outside the museum holding a postcard of an old railway map.
“For the collection?” I asked.
“Possibly. Or to prove I can amuse myself.”
“You don’t have to prove that.”
“No. But I enjoyed remembering.”
I took his hand. We walked through streets I had begun to know, and I showed him small things I liked: the canal bridge, the shop with the absurdly elaborate cakes, the wall where plants grew out of the brickwork.
He listened as if the details mattered because they belonged to my days. I found myself wanting to show him everything, then remembering there would be other visits, other afternoons if we kept making them.
That evening we ate in a small restaurant near the hotel. The food was good. The table wobbled. Nick folded a piece of cardboard under one leg while I steadied the glasses, and when we sat back down we were both laughing.
“A highly compatible skill set,” he said.
“Don’t put it in a speech.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Later, alone together, the three weeks apart made familiar things feel new. I had missed the weight of his arm across me, the warmth of his shoulder beneath my cheek, the way he looked at me when he was not trying to be anything for anybody else. We took our time.
In the morning, I woke before him and lay listening to rain against the window. His face was relaxed in sleep. I knew there would be more departures, more schedules that refused to line up neatly, more moments when one of us had to say something less agreeable than fine.
I wanted the life anyway.
When he woke, he looked at me and smiled without opening his eyes fully.
“What time is it?”
“Too early to be sensible.”
“Good.”
He drew me closer, and we stayed there until breakfast became a practical necessity rather than a plan.
At the station that evening, saying goodbye hurt. I did not pretend otherwise. Nick kissed my forehead, then my mouth, and told me when he would ring.
“If work runs late, tell me,” I said.
“I will.”
“I’ll probably be covered in fabric glue anyway.”
“A glamorous image to take with me.”
I smiled, then held him tightly for a moment before letting go.
I watched until his train moved out of sight. Then I turned toward the tram stop, toward the workshop and the room and the work waiting for me. I was sad, and I knew where I was going.