At seven fourteen, Coralie woke and knew the date before she knew the weather.
She lay still. A car went past below the window. Someone in the next apartment turned on a shower. There ought to have been other women in the room, a kettle going, a disagreement about the time. She had imagined being nervous. She had not imagined waking alone with one sock still on because she had fallen asleep without taking it off.
Her phone was on the floor beside the bed. She did not reach for it.
The wardrobe door had swung open during the night. A strip of the garment bag showed between two coats. She got up and closed it, too hard. The sound made her flinch. Then she opened it again because she could not bear to spend the morning behaving as if a bag could hurt her.
She made tea and left it on the counter. She washed her face, found a clean shirt, took it off, and sat on the edge of the bath. She had not cried yet. That seemed like a failure too, which was so ridiculous that she laughed once, without pleasure.
Farah knocked at nine with a supermarket bag and a face that was trying not to look concerned.
“I bought breakfast,” she said. “Then I remembered you might have eaten.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good. Not good. You know.”
She put the bag down and hugged Coralie without waiting for an answer. Coralie stood rigid for a moment. Then Farah’s hand moved slowly between her shoulder blades, and the tears came so abruptly that she could not turn away in time.
“Sorry,” she said into Farah’s cardigan.
“It’s washable.”
They remained in the narrow kitchen until Coralie could breathe without making a noise she hated. Farah did not tell her she had escaped something worse. She did not mention Stellan. When Coralie moved back, Farah handed her a piece of kitchen paper and said the tissues were always useless when she needed them.
They ate at the table. Farah talked about a delivery at work that had contained enough carrots for a small army and no potatoes. Coralie listened with gratitude until she realized Farah had not asked a single question.
“You can say it,” she said.
“Say what?”
“That today is awful.”
Farah looked down at her hands. “I was trying not to decide for you.”
“It is awful.”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t want him back. Those things can both be true, can’t they?”
“I should think so.”
Coralie picked at the edge of the paper around her breakfast. She wanted Farah to give her a better answer, one with a shape she could hold. Instead her friend waited, and after a while Coralie said what she had been afraid to say.
“I liked being nearly married.”
Farah’s expression softened.
“Not all of it. I hated the seating plan. But I liked having something ahead that belonged to us. I liked saying we would do things after the wedding. As if there was a whole bit of life waiting on the other side.”
“You still have—”
Farah stopped herself.
“I know,” Coralie said. “I know I still have a life.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t want the sensible answer today.”
“Right.”
Farah tore a corner from her own wrapper. “I hated the color he wanted for the invitations.”
Coralie looked up.
“You said it was elegant.”
“You’d already ordered them.”
“It was gray.”
“It was the color of wet sidewalk.”
Coralie laughed, then cried again, angry this time because she had argued for green and given way over something she had not even cared enough about to remember until now. She did not want every small compromise recast as evidence. There had been good days. There had been afternoons when Gareth had known exactly how to make her laugh. Remembering them felt like disloyalty to herself.
“He wasn’t awful all the time,” she said.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to agree with everything.”
Farah leaned back. “Then stop saying things I agree with.”
They sat quietly after that. Below the window, two people argued about a parking space. The world was behaving with a maddening lack of occasion.
Coralie’s phone vibrated on the table.
Gareth’s name appeared above a message long enough to run beyond the preview. Thinking of you today. I know that probably doesn’t help, but I wanted to say—
She turned the phone over.
Farah watched her. “Him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to throw it out?”
“The phone?”
“Only from the first floor. It might survive.”
Coralie shook her head. She waited for the old pull to answer, to make the exchange less uncomfortable for him. It arrived. She let it sit there. Then she opened the message, read the rest, and closed it without replying. He was sorry. He hoped she was with people who cared about her. There was no question that required an answer.
“I wish he hadn’t,” she said.
“Yes.”
Farah had to leave before noon. One of her children had a school event, and her husband could not manage both children in two different places. She had explained this earlier in the week. Coralie knew it, had told her not to worry, and now felt deserted anyway.
Before she went, Farah asked whether Coralie wanted to take a walk. Coralie shook her head, then led her into the bedroom instead. She had not planned to show her the dress. She opened the wardrobe and stood aside.
Farah looked at the garment bag. “Do you want me to take it somewhere?”
“No. I want someone else to know it’s there.”
She pulled the zip down a little. The unfinished neckline appeared, familiar enough that she could remember exactly where her hand had last worked. She had made choices she still liked. That seemed unfair too. The dress ought to have become ugly, or foolish, or obviously wrong for her. It had not.
Farah touched the edge of the bag, keeping her fingers away from the fabric.
“I was looking forward to seeing you in it.”
“So was I.”
Coralie swallowed. This was the first thing anyone had said about the wedding that did not seem to require her to agree she was better off. She leaned her forehead against the wardrobe door. Farah stayed close without putting an arm around her.
“I don’t want a picture,” Coralie said. “I don’t want to put it on and make some brave point.”
“Then don’t.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you.”
“Because I’d probably have suggested it next week.”
Coralie turned her head. Farah looked guilty enough that she laughed despite herself.
“You would.”
“With wine. It would have sounded like an excellent idea.”
“It would have been awful.”
“Yes. I see that now.”
Coralie closed the bag. She did it slowly, without catching the fabric, the way she would have handled anyone else’s dress. Farah watched her finish and did not ask what she intended to do with it. They went back to the kitchen together.
Coralie glanced at the clock. Farah followed her eyes. “I can try to change—”
“Don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But go.”
She stood to clear the table, too briskly. Farah caught her wrist, not hard.
“I can call tonight.”
“I’d like that.”
The words cost less than pretending. Farah hugged her again at the door, and Coralie held on until she was ready to let go.
Alone, she took the breakfast things to the sink. She could clean the apartment. She could work on a design. She could turn the day into an impressive account of how well she was doing. Instead she lay on the sofa and watched half a program she could not later have described.
At one thirty she took out her phone.
Are you busy?
Stellan called rather than answering in writing.
“Not especially.”
“That sounds like a polite lie.”
“I was clearing the shed. I can stop.”
She looked at her bare feet. “Could we do something ordinary?”
“Yes.”
“Not dinner. Not something you booked because you thought I’d need rescuing.”
“I haven’t booked anything.”
“Sorry.”
“The fair’s on at the recreation ground. We could walk round. Leave when you’ve had enough.”
She imagined noise, people, something brightly colored that did not care whether she had a good time.
“All right.”
He collected her twenty minutes later. She had put on the shirt she had rejected that morning and brushed her hair. He said she looked nice, then appeared to regret the possible weight of the remark. Coralie spared him by asking whether he was any good at throwing balls into buckets.
“No.”
“Excellent. I need to beat someone at something.”
The fair occupied half the recreation ground. Music from two rides fought in the air. Children dragged adults toward prizes that looked much larger hanging above the stalls than they would in a bedroom. A little boy was crying beside a perfect pink cloud of candyfloss, apparently betrayed by it.
Coralie stopped at a stall with wooden ducks. She paid, took three balls, and missed all three. Stellan kept his face still until she handed him the next set.
“Go on, then.”
He missed twice. The third ball struck a duck, which rocked and remained upright.
“Rigged,” he said.
The stallholder, who had heard this many times, smiled without interest.
They walked on. Coralie found she could laugh at Stellan’s injured dignity without feeling she had betrayed the morning. He bought them cold drinks and dropped his change. She held the cups while he crouched to gather coins, and for a moment the sight of him kneeling made her remember Gareth on one knee a year earlier.
The change was so fast that she could not hide it.
Stellan stood. “What happened?”
“Nothing you did.”
He took his cup. They moved away from the stall and stood near the fence, where the music was less loud.
“I thought I was having a nice time,” she said.
“You can stop.”
“I don’t want to stop. I want my head to stop.”
He looked out across the field. She was grateful he did not look at her while she tried to recover.
“When Elspeth first died,” he began, then stopped. “Sorry. This isn’t the same.”
“You can finish.”
“Sometimes I would be somewhere all right. Then I’d remember I couldn’t tell her about it. That was the bit that got me.”
Coralie turned the cup in her hands. “I keep remembering things that didn’t happen.”
He nodded. There was no answer in it, only attention.
She drank, letting the cold hurt her teeth. Across the field a ride rose above the stalls, chairs swinging outward with shrieking passengers. She watched it slow, descend, and release them all back onto the grass.
“Would you go on that?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“Good. I was afraid you would.”
They tried a game that involved guiding a loop along a wire. Stellan was unexpectedly good until a child behind him shouted advice. Coralie touched the wire almost at once, made the buzzer sound, and laughed so hard she had to surrender the handle. They won nothing. She liked that he did not keep paying until he could give her a prize.
Near the exit, a stall sold cheap jewelry on cards. She saw a row of rings and turned away before she could decide whether the sight hurt. Stellan had been looking at an ugly key ring shaped like a fish. He held it up.
“For the shed.”
“Please don’t.”
“It would make the key easy to find.”
“So would painting it orange.”
He bought the fish. She accused him of doing it to annoy her. He admitted that had become part of the attraction.
On the way back, she leaned her head against the car window. She was tired in a way sleep would not entirely fix, but the tiredness no longer seemed to fill every available space. Stellan drove without asking whether the afternoon had helped.
At her building, she unfastened her seat belt and sat with it slack across her lap.
“Would you like me to come up?” he asked.
She wanted him to. She wanted to be held until she could no longer remember what the day had been meant for. She also knew that tomorrow she might resent having used him that way, even if he never minded.
“Not tonight.”
“All right.”
“I still want Monday.”
They had spoken about dinner at his house on June fifth, a date chosen before this day had arrived and now waiting beyond it.
“So do I,” he said.
She touched his cheek, feeling the roughness that had appeared since morning. “Thank you for not making this a special day.”
“The fish was quite special.”
She laughed and kissed him, briefly but with real wanting behind it. Then she got out.
Farah called while Coralie was taking off her shoes. One child was shouting in the background, and Farah had to stop twice to answer him. Coralie told her about the ducks and the fish. Farah said Gareth would have written a complaint about the ducks, and Coralie laughed before saying that was unfair.
“A little,” Farah agreed.
After the call, Coralie went into her bedroom. The wardrobe was still open. She looked at the garment bag, touched its edge, and left it alone. She did not need to decide what would happen to the dress tonight.
She put fresh water beside the bed, set no alarm for the morning, and sent Stellan a message asking what time he wanted her on Monday.
The reply came before she turned out the lamp.
Six. Earlier if you want.
For the first time all day, the next date on her calendar was one she had chosen herself. She would be there because she wanted to go.