We stopped outside a small restaurant beside the square. Its menu was displayed in a frame with an apologetic handwritten correction beneath one dish.
“What do you like?” he asked.
“Food.”
“That narrows it.”
I read the menu. “Not that.”
“You just said food.”
“I didn’t mean foam.”
He looked at the description. “It’s probably optional.”
“Then why mention it?”
He moved to the next item. “There’s lamb.”
“With mint foam.”
“A determined kitchen.”
We went to look at the menu across the street. It offered bowls in which every ingredient had been invited to meet every other ingredient, whether or not they were likely to get on. Adam found beetroot in three of them and gave up.
“It’s good for you,” I said.
“So is sleep. I don’t want that in a bowl either.”
“You’re remarkably fussy.”
“You’ve just rejected an entire restaurant on the grounds of bubbles.”
I was laughing when my stomach made an unmistakable noise.
He looked down at it, then up at me.
“We may need to lower our standards.”
The pub at the corner had a handwritten board promising pie, potatoes and no further explanation. We went in.
It was busy enough to feel cheerful and quiet enough that we could hear each other. A young man behind the bar gave us a table beside the window. I ordered the pie. Adam ordered fish. Then we both changed our minds when the plates at the next table passed us, and the waiter stood with his pen poised while we accused each other of being easily influenced.
“I’ll come back,” he said.
“No,” I told him. “Don’t leave us. We’ll never decide.”
We chose the original orders. Adam watched the waiter go, smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a suspiciously pleased nothing.”
“I’m having a good time.”
I looked down at the table, then made myself look back.
“So am I.”
It came out more seriously than either of us expected. His expression softened, and for a moment I had no wish to turn it into a joke.
Our food arrived. I discovered that I had been very hungry indeed. Adam offered me a piece of fish in exchange for some pastry. We negotiated quantities with enough concentration to amuse the people at the next table.
For a while we talked about food, films and the worst holiday either of us had taken. His involved rain, a borrowed tent and an insistence that the rain would stop because the forecast had promised it would. Mine involved a cottage advertised as secluded that stood beside a farmyard where a peacock expressed itself at dawn.
“You can’t blame a peacock for being a peacock,” he said.
“I can at five in the morning.”
“Fair.”
I told him about the peacock chasing a delivery driver across the yard. I didn’t say that Richard had been with me. Halfway through the story, I became aware of the missing pronoun, of the awkward work I was doing around it.
“Richard thought it was funny,” I said. “I did eventually.”
Adam nodded. He didn’t look away or search for a consoling response.
“How long were you married?”
“Eleven years. Still are, technically.”
“I know.”
I put down my fork.
“Do you?”
“You’re living in the annex, you’re moving your business and you wear the pale mark where a ring was. I didn’t assume the paperwork had caught up.”
I glanced at my hand. I’d taken the ring off at Ruth’s, after the first night. It was in a zipped pocket of my overnight bag. I had not told anyone where I put it.
“It happened very recently.”
“I gathered that.”
“You haven’t asked.”
“I thought you might prefer dinner first.”
I let out a breath. “Yes. I do.”
He took another bite of fish. The conversation did not demand an immediate confession to continue.
“What about you?” I asked. “Any people I should know about before they arrive carrying luggage?”
He glanced at me, catching something in the question.
“No luggage. No wife. No girlfriend. I’ve had relationships. The last one ended nearly two years ago.”
“Why?”
He considered that without pretending the answer was charming.
“I kept saying things would be quieter when a project was finished. Then another project arrived. Eventually she stopped waiting for the quiet part.”
“Was she wrong?”
“No.”
He ran his thumb along the stem of his glass.
“I thought being able to rearrange everything at the last moment meant I was flexible. It meant she couldn’t rely on a plan.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
I was glad he said it. I wouldn’t have liked him as much if every previous woman had been a mistake on the way to the correct one.
The waiter returned to ask about pudding. Adam looked at me.
“I think we’ve earned a simple decision.”
We both chose something different, then changed our minds again.
Afterwards, while we waited for coffee, I found a small wooden game board on the windowsill beside our table. There were little brass disks in a cup and a row of narrow divisions marked across the wood.
“My grandfather had one of these,” I said.
Adam pulled it between us.
“I know how this works.”
“You sound very sure.”
“It’s not complicated.”
His first disk shot off the far end and landed in my lap.
I picked it up and put it beside the others.
“A confident start.”
“The table isn’t level.”
“Naturally.”
He adjusted the board. I let him. Then I took my turn, sending two disks into the marked spaces with small, controlled pushes. My grandfather had taught me at a kitchen table so old the varnish had worn away beneath his elbows. He’d made me practise with buttons before he let me near the brass pieces.
Adam watched my third disk stop exactly where I wanted it.
“You’ve played recently.”
“About twenty years ago.”
“That was not your first twenty-years-ago attempt.”
“Would you like a head start?”
“Absolutely not.”
I won the first game. He demanded another, saying he had now understood the surface. I won that too. By the third, the waiter was following the score and had brought us a piece of paper to settle a disagreement about whether a disk touching the line counted.
“It doesn’t,” I said.
“It depends which edge.”
“You cannot become a lawyer halfway through losing.”
Adam pointed to the board. “That one is clearly inside.”
I leaned over it. He leaned over it too. Our heads almost touched.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said quietly.
“Immensely.”
“You haven’t even pretended to let me win.”
“Would you like me less if I did?”
His eyes moved from the board to my mouth.
“Probably.”
I forgot which disk we were discussing.
We left the game unfinished, which he claimed was a draw. Outside, the square had emptied. The pub door closed behind us with a warm burst of voices that faded as we walked towards the car park.
“I had you,” I said.
“You had a disputed lead.”
“A considerable lead.”
“You may have been ahead.”
“How gracious.”
We reached the narrow footbridge beside the car park. Water moved darkly beneath it, carrying reflections of the streetlights in broken strips. I stopped at the railing. He stopped beside me, close enough that his coat touched mine.
I had been thinking about kissing him since the empty building on Sunday. In the cinema, in the pub, while he ate fish and admitted a woman had been right to leave him, the wish had become less like an idea and more like impatience in my body.
I turned towards him.
“I don’t want you to take me all the way to my car and say goodnight politely.”
He went still.
“What would you prefer?”
I put my hand against the front of his coat. Beneath it, he was warm and solid and breathing rather less evenly than before.
“This.”
I rose onto my toes and kissed him.
For a moment it was only the contact, his mouth against mine, the impossible fact that I had done it. Then his hand came to my waist and he drew me nearer, and I forgot to be astonished.
He kissed me back slowly at first. I felt the shape of his mouth, the warmth of his breath, the small shift when he tilted his head to find a better angle. My fingers tightened in his coat. He made a sound very low in his throat, and the answering heat went through me so quickly that I pressed closer without deciding to.
One of his hands moved to the back of my neck. His thumb brushed the skin beneath my hair.
I had thought I might feel guilty.
I felt hungry.
When we drew apart, it was only far enough to breathe. His forehead almost touched mine. I could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the place where his collar had folded under his coat.
“Was that polite enough?” he asked.
I laughed against his mouth.
“Borderline.”
He kissed me again.
This time I knew what was coming and still wasn’t ready for it. He held me more firmly, one hand spread at my back, and I let myself lean into him. The railing was cold behind my elbow. A car passed on the road above us, its tyres hissing over the wet surface. None of it required my attention.
Eventually someone approached the bridge from the far side, and we moved out of the way with the clumsy dignity of people who had forgotten they were in public.
An elderly man went past with a small dog. The dog gave us a thorough look.
“Evening,” the man said.
“Evening,” Adam replied, with remarkable composure.
I waited until they were gone before laughing.
“He’ll tell everyone.”
“The dog?”
“Obviously.”
Adam took my hand and lifted it to his mouth. The kiss he placed against my knuckles was brief, almost absent-minded. It made me quieter than the others had.
At my car, neither of us immediately let go.
“I’d like to see you again,” he said.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Friday?”
I thought of my diary. Of the nursery waiting for the weekend. Of the fact that I could spend every free hour getting ready for something painful and still not be ready.
“Friday.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He opened my car door and stood back. I got in, then put the window down before he could walk away.
“Adam.”
“Yes?”
“I won.”
He looked at me, then smiled slowly.
“Goodnight, Elena.”
I drove back through town with the radio off. At the annex I put my keys on the table, took off my coat and looked in the small mirror by the door.
The dress had creased. My hair was untidy at the back. The lipstick I had worried over was almost entirely gone.
I left the dress on until I had made tea.
A Very Good Idea
Adam called when he said he would.
I was in the van, parked outside the wholesaler, with a roll of cellophane pressing against the back of my head. His name appeared on the screen and I let it ring twice because answering immediately seemed too revealing. Then I felt ridiculous and answered before the third.
“Hello.”
“Are you busy?”
“Only being attacked by packaging.”
“Should I call the police?”
“It’s a civil matter.”
He laughed. There it was again, that small, private pleasure of having caused it.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Would you come to dinner at my house?”
I stopped trying to move the cellophane.
“Your house.”
“I thought we could avoid arguing with menus.”
“You haven’t told me what you’re cooking.”
“I can send a proposal.”
“No beetroot?”
“None within the boundary.”
I smiled at the windscreen.
“I’d like that.”
He gave me the address, a house on the other side of town that I knew by its blue gate. I said seven, he said seven, and neither of us hung up.
“Elena?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking about the bridge.”
The cellophane crackled behind me as I leaned back.
“Which part?”
“Most of it.”
I had to close my eyes for a moment.
“Me too,” I said.
The next day, at work, I cut three lengths of ribbon too short and accused the scissors of having moved.
Nina looked at them. “Very devious.”
I made myself concentrate.
She had a consultation at two with a woman arranging her husband’s fiftieth-birthday lunch. I had intended to sit in, although Nina hadn’t asked me to. She had done the telephone call and the preliminary sketch; I had told myself it would be helpful to be available for questions.
“Do you want me there?” I asked.
She glanced up from the sketch.
“You can be.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She thought about it. “I’d like to do the first bit myself.”
“All right.”
I took a bucket to the other side of the partition. There was plenty of work there. I could finish the small pieces for the following morning, sort the containers and stop listening to a conversation that had not yet begun.
The client arrived carrying a photograph of her dining room. Her husband, she told Nina, hated a fuss. The proposed lunch involved twenty-four people, hired tables and a chef, which suggested a flexible definition of fuss.
Nina asked about the room, the food and whether the pieces would be moved afterwards. I listened to every word while pretending to choose foliage.
“I liked the branches in your window,” the woman said.
“We could use a similar shape.”
I almost went round the partition. The table in the photograph was narrow. Branches would get in the way of the dishes. I held a stem so tightly that it creaked.
Nina asked how the food would be served.
“On the table. Lots of things to share.”
There was a pause.
“Then I wouldn’t put a large arrangement in the middle,” Nina said. “You’d spend the whole lunch passing bowls round it. Could we put the branches on the sideboard and use something lower along the table?”
I released the stem.
The woman liked the idea. Then she asked whether Nina could make a sample now, because she found pictures difficult.
Nina said yes.
I waited for her to call me. She didn’t. She came round the partition, collected a low container and three stems, then looked at the piece I had just finished.
“Could I borrow those little yellow ones?”
“They’re for tomorrow.”
“Just to show her. I’ll put them back.”
I handed them over.
Ten minutes later, the client was laughing about how much her husband would complain while secretly enjoying the attention. Nina had written down a price and a delivery time. She asked me one question about the van schedule, got the answer and went back to finishing the order.
I stayed where I was.
Afterwards she put the yellow stems back in their bucket, not in my arrangement. I began to say something, then realised she couldn’t know exactly where they had been.
“She booked,” Nina said.
“I heard.”
“I thought you might have.”
We looked at each other.
“I nearly came round about the branches,” I admitted.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Your shoes stopped moving.”
I glanced down at them. Traitors.
Nina picked up the order form. “Can I put my name on the design bit when I email it?”
“Of course.”
She didn’t move.
I realised how often I’d said of course and then sent things out myself, tidied into the style I liked.
“Send it from the business account,” I said. “Copy me. You don’t need me to rewrite it.”
She nodded and went into the office.
I put the yellow flowers back where I wanted them. They no longer fitted quite the same way. I rearranged the piece and found it was better with one fewer stem.
At half past six I closed the workroom. Ruth had already gone. Nina was just leaving, waving a packet of biscuits she’d bought for the next morning. I told her not to eat them all in the car and she promised nothing.
I went to the annex, changed into trousers and a soft green top, and found myself smiling while I brushed my hair.
Then I saw the photograph face down on the shelf.
I stopped.
It was possible to turn it over. To spend the evening comparing Richard in Cornwall with the man who had described me as retiring. To sit on the bed and try to identify the exact point at which he had ceased to mean what he said.
I put my brush down, checked that I had my phone and left.