Gareth called off their wedding with Coralie’s pins still caught in his sleeve.
She had one between her lips. She took it out before she answered, because some small functioning part of her understood that she might swallow it.
“What?”
He looked over her head at the mirror. In it they made a familiar arrangement: Gareth standing straight in an expensive jacket, Coralie crouched beside him, making something sit better on his body.
“I can’t marry you.”
The pin went into the cushion strapped to her wrist. It missed the first time. She watched its bright point catch the edge of the elastic and tried again.
Outside, someone dragged the bakery’s sidewalk sign across the stones. The scrape went on and on. She had meant to tell the baker that he could lift the thing. She had had this mild, ridiculous thought every Saturday for seven years, and apparently she could still have it while her life came apart.
“Are you ill?”
“No.” His eyes found hers in the glass. “I’m sorry. I should have said something before today.”
She stood. Her left knee clicked, too loudly in the little room.
Their wedding was five weeks away. There were place cards on her kitchen table. Two evenings ago he had asked whether they should serve the sparkling wine before or after the photographs. He had said after. She had written it down.
“What should you have said?”
He tried to turn toward her, and the sleeve tightened where she had pinned it. His mouth pulled with the discomfort.
“Stay still.”
He stayed still.
She took out the first pin. Then the second. There were four in the sleeve and one near the shoulder. She knew where each one was because she had put them there, and this was information she could use. When the last was safe in the cushion, she stepped back.
“All right.”
“There’s someone else.”
The words were quiet. Gareth had always been good at keeping his voice level with difficult guests. Once she had admired that about him, the way nothing became a scene if he was involved.
“Someone you want to be with?”
“Yes.”
“Someone you’ve already been with?”
He looked down. That was her answer, but she made him say it.
“Yes.”
A car horn sounded beyond the window. Coralie put a hand against the worktable. There was a chalk pencil under her palm, and she pressed hard enough to feel its round shape in the flesh.
“Who?”
“Verity.”
She knew the name. A colleague at the hotel. There had been a Christmas dinner and a photograph with six people in it, all of them holding absurdly large paper crowns above their heads. Coralie had thought Verity looked tired. She remembered that especially, the unremarkable kindness of wondering whether the woman wanted to go home.
“How long?”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“That isn’t a length of time.”
“Since February.”
February contained her birthday dinner, late because he had been working. It contained their afternoon choosing wedding bands. It contained a Sunday when he had fallen asleep against her on the sofa and she had stayed still for forty minutes because he looked so worn out.
She moved her hand off the chalk.
“Does she know about me?”
“Yes.”
“About June third?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
Coralie went to the door and turned the sign to Closed. She had opened only for his fitting that morning. Her next appointment was tomorrow, but somebody might knock to ask a question, and she could not bear the idea of answering one.
When she turned back, he had taken his phone out.
“Please don’t.”
He put it away immediately. “I wasn’t messaging her.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
For the first time he sounded frightened. The sound gave her a mean flicker of pleasure, followed by disgust at how little pleasure it was.
He said her name.
She shook her head.
“I care about you.”
“Don’t make me look after that.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
Behind him, the curtain across the storage alcove was pulled almost shut. Almost. A narrow strip of ivory showed where her own dress hung from the rail. She had stayed until ten on Thursday working on its bodice. She had tried it on over her jeans and taken a photograph she had not sent him, because she wanted him to see it for the first time properly.
Gareth followed her glance. His face changed, and she hated that too. She did not want to share the sight with him now.
“Take the jacket off.”
“Coralie—”
“There aren’t any pins in it. You can take it off.”
He struggled with the second sleeve because he had unfastened only one cuff. Ordinarily she would have reached to help. Her hands stayed beside her.
Beneath it he wore the shirt she had bought him last autumn. That was something else she had not prepared for: how much of him had her in it.
She folded the jacket along the shoulders, then remembered she didn’t owe it that much care and handed it to him.
“I’ll arrange the cancellations,” he said. “We can work through the deposits. I don’t expect you to—”
“Yes. You can tell your family. And your friends. You can tell them why.”
“I don’t think details will help anyone.”
“They might help me not have to answer questions about why I changed my mind.”
He stared at her.
“Tell them you called it off, Gareth. Don’t say we decided.”
“All right.”
She wanted to believe him. It was humiliating that this reflex survived everything he had just said.
He picked up the coat cover from the chair. She thought he was leaving. Then he looked down at the jacket in his hands.
“There’s just—the event next Saturday. I don’t suppose you could finish the sleeve before then? Obviously I’d pay you.”
She actually laughed. One hard, startled sound.
He flushed. “That was thoughtless.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No.”
He stood with the unfinished jacket. She let him.
The suit had been her gift. He had chosen the cloth, and she had offered the alterations, pleased to contribute something more intimate than another payment toward a wedding bill. Now he was holding it as though the problem might be its dimensions.
“You’ll need someone else.”
He nodded. At the door he turned again. She knew the expression coming, the careful sorrow, and looked instead at the floor where a loose dark thread lay curled by his shoe.
“I really am sorry.”
“Go.”
The bell above the door rang when he left. It made exactly the same cheerful sound it made when somebody arrived to collect a hemmed pair of pants.
Coralie stood until his car pulled away. Then she sat on the fitting stool, which was too low for sitting still, and bent forward with her hands on her knees.
Nothing came. No sobbing, no great rush of anger. Her body seemed occupied with staying in the room. She could feel her stockings at the backs of her knees. She could hear the hum from the iron, still on at the far end of the table.
She got up and switched it off.
That was when she began to cry.
Farah answered on the fourth ring.
“If this is about the seating plan, put my husband beside somebody who doesn’t think school lunches are a personal insult.”
“He’s left me.”
Silence. Then a door shut at the other end.
“Who?”
The question was so useless that Coralie cried harder.
“Sorry. Sorry, I heard you. Where are you?”
“The shop.”
“Is he still there?”
“No.”
“I’m coming.”
“You’ve got—”
“I can manage twenty minutes. Don’t lock me out.”
Farah arrived in a sweatshirt with a small handprint in flour near the shoulder. She had brought no flowers, no wine, nothing that suggested she had stopped to prepare for the occasion. Coralie was grateful until Farah put her arms around her, at which point gratitude vanished into something much less manageable.
She cried against the sweatshirt. Farah held her firmly, one hand at the back of her head.
“I can’t breathe properly.”
“You’re breathing.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“I know. Here. Sit on the proper chair, not that torture mushroom.”
Farah pushed aside a bag of offcuts and brought the chair close. She crouched in front of it, then winced and stood again.
“What happened?”
Coralie told her in pieces. February. Verity. Five weeks. The sleeve.
“The sleeve?”
“He asked whether I’d finish it for a work thing.”
Farah stared. “I hope you charged him a thousand dollars.”
“No. I said no.”
“Better. Though less profitable.”
Coralie tried to smile and couldn’t. Farah’s face softened at once.
“Oh, love.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“All right.”
“Sorry.”
“You can be rude. I’ve got a bit of time.”
That made Coralie laugh, weakly and painfully. She pressed a tissue beneath her nose.
Farah looked toward the curtain. “Do you want me to take that away?”
“No.” The answer came too quickly. “I don’t know. Not yet.”
“Fine.”
“What am I meant to do with it?”
“Today? Nothing.”
“I’ve nearly finished it.”
Farah put her hand on Coralie’s knee. She didn’t answer, which was merciful. There was nothing useful to say about all the hours inside that hanging piece of cloth.
Her phone vibrated. She looked at it and swore under her breath.
“You have to go.”
“Not this second.”
“You said twenty minutes.”
“I can steal another five.”
Coralie looked at her friend’s floury shoulder, at the crease between her eyebrows. Somewhere there were children waiting to be taken to a birthday party. There would be an argument about shoes, and a present in the wrong wrapping paper. The world was continuing to require ordinary things.
“I don’t want everyone to know.”
“Then I won’t tell everyone.”
“Your husband can know. I suppose.”
“I’ll tell him you’re having a rotten day. He doesn’t need a briefing.”
“And don’t say I had a lucky escape.”
Farah pulled her hand back a little. “Wasn’t going to.”
“You looked like you might.”
“I was going to say he’s an idiot.”
“I was going to marry the idiot.”
“Yes,” Farah said, and let the word stand.
Before she left, she made Coralie drink half a glass of water from the studio tap. She asked whether she wanted company that evening, and Coralie said no, then said perhaps, then said she would call. Farah did not make her choose more firmly.
At the door she turned. “Eat something before you decide anything expensive.”
“Is that advice?”
“It’s what I tell the children before the school fair.”
After Farah had gone, Coralie swept the fitting area.
She knew it was absurd. There was nothing on the floor except thread and a single paper scrap from the suit cover. But she could push those things into a pile and put the pile in the trash can. Each stroke of the broom had an end.
She had written her own married name once in the back of the diary. Not because she intended to use it at work; she had told him she would keep Venn professionally. She had simply wanted to see the other name in her handwriting. Now she found the page and looked at the experiment, its small, hopeful flourish.
For a moment she considered tearing it out. Instead she closed the diary so hard the pen jumped from its loop and rolled under the desk.
She left it there.
A woman passed the window with a toddler on her hip and paused to look at the display. Coralie stepped behind the alcove curtain until they had gone. She knew the woman couldn’t see anything extraordinary through the glass. She knew her humiliation wasn’t visible from the sidewalk. Still, she waited, holding her breath, before returning to the chair.
Her phone lit with Gareth’s name.
I’ve told my mother. Will email about practical arrangements tomorrow. I’m sorry.
She set it facedown.
His mother. The blue-stone brooch was in the top drawer of Coralie’s bedroom chest, wrapped in tissue. His mother had lent it to her for the wedding, smiling as she said it was nothing grand. Coralie had promised to keep it safe. She had kept it safe. The thought made her cry again, though not for long this time.
She pulled the alcove curtain fully closed. Then she opened it, because hiding the dress felt worse than seeing it, and stood with the ivory fabric between her fingers.
The skirt wasn’t attached yet. A line of temporary stitches ran across the waist. She had chosen a shape she could dance in, had made the armholes comfortable, had left room to eat dinner without thinking about her body. There was no grand train. She had wanted to be able to walk toward him without anybody carrying part of her.
She let go.
On the table lay tomorrow’s appointment card. Bryony March. Her mother’s wedding dress. Consultation, eleven.
Coralie picked up the phone and opened the diary. There was room to move the appointment, probably. She could say she was ill. She could say there had been an emergency. Both felt true enough.
Her thumb hovered over the client’s number.
She pictured somebody arriving with a dress and a mother, then remembered the note: mother deceased. Father attending. For a moment the room felt too crowded with other people’s expectations.
She put the phone down and went to wash her face. The little mirror above the sink was unkind but accurate. Her eyes were swollen. There was a tiny black mark at her jaw where she had touched herself with a chalky hand.
She wiped it away. The rest would have to stay.
Back at the desk she moved the appointment card to the middle of the blotter, where she would see it in the morning. Then she took out a fresh consultation sheet and wrote Bryony March across the top.