Mum came on Saturday without ringing first. She brought a casserole in the dish she had once insisted was too good to lend me.
“I thought you might not be eating properly.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“Well, it will keep.”
She stood on the landing with the dish between us, looking older than she had in the bridal shop. Her hair had escaped its usual careful shape around one ear. I noticed, then resented myself for noticing. I was not ready to find reasons to feel sorry for her.
I stepped aside.
She went into the kitchen, set down the casserole and looked around the flat. The boxes had disappeared. My cookbooks were on the shelf, the pan on its hook, my coat over the back of a chair. The wedding dress still hung in the studio doorway.
Mum’s eyes went to it and away.
“You’ve unpacked.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure what you were planning.”
“I’m living here.”
She took off her gloves, folded them together and put them on the table. It was June, but Mum wore thin gloves whenever the weather made the slightest attempt at discourtesy.
“Shall I make tea?” I asked.
“If you’re having some.”
I wasn’t, but I filled the kettle. A conversation could last longer if I had tasks inside it.
She sat in the chair Mina had used the week before. I found myself disliking that too.
“Daniel tells me the hotel won’t be possible.”
I set two mugs on the counter.
“Then he’s spoken to them.”
“They’re making other arrangements.”
“I expect they are.”
“Claire.”
I turned. “Did you come to tell me how inconvenient I’ve made it?”
“No.”
“Because you’ve started very badly.”
Her face tightened. She looked at her folded gloves.
“I came because I haven’t seen you. Because I don’t know how to speak to you when every word seems to make things worse.”
The kettle began to hiss. I watched it rather than her.
“You could start with the thing that happened to me.”
“I know what happened.”
“Do you?”
She was silent.
I poured the water, left the tea bags in longer than either of us liked, then put the mugs on the table. Mine had a chip near the handle. Mum noticed. Usually she would have mentioned it.
“Sophie was frightened,” she said.
I sat down.
“She came to me crying. She didn’t know what to do. I thought—”
“That I would.”
Mum looked up.
“You thought I would know what to do,” I said. “I would work out the rooms and the flowers and how to explain it to Aunt Penny. I’d be angry, but I’d still get it done.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Which part?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
I could hear somebody moving downstairs. A drawer shut. A tap ran. The ordinary sounds made the silence at our table feel smaller and less possible to escape.
“You’ve always been able to manage,” Mum said at last.
I looked at her. She meant it as praise. Even now, she meant it as something good about me.
“I know.”
“When your father died—”
“Please don’t.”
She stopped. I put my hands around the mug, though it was too hot to hold comfortably.
When Dad died, Sophie had moved back into Mum’s house for six months. She had cried at breakfast, slept in the afternoons, forgotten to buy milk. I had arranged the funeral, called the bank, found the folder with the insurance papers and taken two days off work because two days were all I thought I could spare.
Nobody had asked me not to cry. I had simply found there was always something else to do first.
“I needed you then,” Mum said.
“I needed him.”
Her face changed. I looked down before I could see too much of it.
We sat without speaking. The tea grew dark around the bags. I took mine out and put it on a saucer.
“I was wrong to bring it to the shop,” Mum said.
“You were wrong to ask.”
She nodded, but slowly, as if the second admission weighed more than the first.
“I thought there might be a way not to lose everyone.”
“You were asking me to make it look as if nobody had lost anything.”
Her eyes filled. I felt the old movement in myself, the urge to get up, fetch a tissue, reduce the difficulty until she could speak again. I stayed in the chair.
After a moment she found a tissue in her own bag.
“I don’t know how to make this right,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
That was where we left it. Not resolved, not a door slammed forever. She drank half her tea and asked about the play. I told her the opening date. It felt strange to say something ordinary after the other things, but ordinary life had not had the courtesy to wait until we finished.
At the door she touched my arm.
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
I could hear that she meant some of it. I could also hear how much we had not yet said.
“Thank you for the food.”
She let her hand fall.
I watched her go down the stairs, one hand on the rail. Then I shut the door and stood with my forehead against it until the pressure behind my eyes eased.
The casserole smelled good. I hated that too, for about a minute. Then I put it in the fridge.
At the theater that afternoon, Mina was late. Only twelve minutes, but I had a fitting to finish, a collar to collect and the kind of mood in which twelve minutes could become evidence of everything wrong with the world.
She came in carrying a bag and apologizing before she’d taken off her coat.
“Kit’s match ran over, then the bus—”
“Could you have sent a message?”
“I did.”
I looked at my phone. There it was, sent twenty minutes earlier.
“I didn’t see it.”
“No harm done. I’ll catch up.”
“Some of us have been trying to.”
The words came out sharp and ugly. Mina went still. I heard myself properly a second too late.
“Right,” she said.
She hung up her coat and went to the cutting table. For several minutes we worked in a silence that was nothing like our usual one. I tried to concentrate on the seam beneath my hands, but all I could hear was my own voice repeating the sentence.
At last I put down the work.
“Mina.”
She looked up.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Mum came this morning.”
Mina waited. I realized I was offering the beginning of an excuse.
“That isn’t your fault,” I said.
“No.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Her expression softened a little. “Accepted. But don’t make me earn it by being late for my own child.”
“I won’t.”
She nodded and went back to work. We did not hug. She did not tell me I was allowed to be awful because I was having a difficult time. I felt ashamed and, beneath that, unexpectedly steadied.
Later I made tea for both of us and brought her the good scissors she’d been looking for. She took them, glanced at me and said, “These will do more for my mood than the tea.”
I smiled. The room became ours again.
Nick arrived near the end of the afternoon to check a change to his cuff. He stopped inside the door, looked at my face and did not make the joke I could see preparing itself.
“Bad day?”
“I’m improving.”
Mina snorted from behind the rail.
“Slowly,” I added.
He gave me his arm so I could examine the cuff. I adjusted the mark and told him what I needed to change. He listened. Afterward, while Mina went to find a spare button, he leaned a hip against the table.
“Do you want to go out later?”
I wanted to. I could imagine the relief of sitting beside him and borrowing a different mood for a few hours.
I also knew I needed an evening in my own flat without being frightened of it.
“Not tonight.”
He nodded. A small disappointment crossed his face before he looked down at his cuff.
“Another night, then.”
“Yes.”
“Sunday?”
I smiled. “You’re very persistent.”
“Only when encouraged.”
“Sunday,” I said.
He left with the marked cuff and a reminder not to lose it. For once, I didn’t spend the next ten minutes wondering whether I’d been unkind.
That evening I ate Mum’s casserole at my own table. It was too salty, as it always was when she was worried. I put the leftovers in a container and washed the good dish by hand.
Then I opened my laptop.
An email had arrived from Gwen, a designer I’d worked with in Manchester two summers before. A small company there was offering a six-week residency for a designer to develop a new production. She thought it might suit me. There was an attachment with dates, a fee and a description of the work.
Late August. Six weeks away. A room provided, a real budget, time to try things before somebody needed them finished.
I read it twice.
In March, I would have looked at the dates first and decided they were difficult. Newly married, just moved, Daniel’s busy season approaching. I would have told myself there would be another opportunity, which was sometimes true and sometimes a way of ending the conversation before I had to admit what I wanted.
I opened the attachment again, this time beginning with the work.
The ideas came slowly, then all at once. A shape, a color, a question about how the main character moved. I reached for a pencil and drew on the back of an envelope because it was nearer than the sketchbook.
When I looked up, it was almost eleven.
I wrote to Gwen. Not a commitment, not a declaration about my new life. I asked three practical questions and said I would like to apply.
Then I pressed send before I could make myself smaller than the space being offered.