Thursday

The back room was smaller than I remembered. When I came home at the end of the placement, Rafi let me in through the passage so I could see its separate door first. Boxes occupied the wall where I wanted the workbench. The window faced a brick yard and gave more light than its narrow frame promised.

“I can move the boxes,” she said. “The light is yours to decide about.”

Felix stood beside me, hands in his pockets. I had asked him to look for faults I might miss, not to draw a studio for me. He pointed out the loose catch on the window and the mark of damp below one corner of the sill. Rafi wrote both down. The landlord would need to address the damp before I stored anything there.

“I can’t sign until we know it’s dry,” I said.

“You shouldn’t,” Rafi said. “I can ask him today.”

It was a delay I could bear. I had returned with records of work I was proud of and a modest list of possible clients, none promised until I had a safe place for their objects. I could work from a hired bench for examination appointments while the room was sorted. It was not a triumphant opening. It was a beginning whose costs I could name.

Outside, Felix asked whether I wanted to go to the market. I wanted to see my flat, wash the journey out of my hair and sleep for twelve hours. I told him so.

“I’ll walk you there,” he said.

“You can stay for supper after I sleep.”

“I have Dad’s on Thursday. Today I have you, if you’ll have me.”

At my flat the lemon plate was not on the shelf. I had forgotten I had left its pieces in Copenhagen until I opened the cloth at the bottom of my bag. Felix found them on the table while I made tea.

“Still two pieces,” he said.

“It travelled well.”

“You said you’d decide what it was for.”

“I could use it for drawing pins. Separately.”

He put them near the window. Neither of us offered to mend it. The room had its own unfinished things.

· · ·Scene break

On Tuesday Felix arrived at six with bread and a bunch of leaves from his father’s garden. The florist had told him what they were. He had forgotten the name on the walk over and offered them anyway. I had spent the afternoon on a call about the damp. The landlord would inspect on Friday, which meant I could not order the storage I wanted. Felix listened, then told me about a child who had marked one of his library tables with a pen. The librarian wanted to know whether the surface could be cleaned without losing the drawing beneath the mark. He had said he would look before offering an answer.

“We’re both being paid to wait for evidence,” I said.

“Mine is a blue dragon. What’s yours?”

“A wet wall. Yours is better.”

We ate the bread with eggs on the plate that had survived the week. At eight his father called. Felix glanced at the screen, then at me.

“He knows I’m here. I told him I’d come Thursday. I’ll ring him after supper.”

“You can answer if you need to.”

“I know. I want to finish this with you.”

When the call ended he sent a short message to say he would call later. I watched him do it without the old urge to turn his choice into a test of whom he loved more.

The pleasure of that Tuesday wasn’t in being chosen over his father. It was in seeing him keep both promises by their proper names.

On Thursday I went to Rafi’s shop for my old box of shears. She had a customer waiting and an assistant I had never met. She introduced me as the person setting up a conservation room at the back. I missed being the woman everyone knew at the counter. I also liked hearing my new work said plainly in front of a stranger.

Felix was due at his father’s for supper. I had meant to go to his flat afterward. At five a former client called about a damaged embroidered panel. I spoke with her longer than planned, making no promise of treatment until I had examined it. I sent Felix a message: I need another hour. Go to supper. I will come afterward if you still want company.

He answered: I do. I’ll be back by nine. Don’t leave your work unfinished for my sake.

At nine I reached his door. He let me in and stood aside while I took off my shoes. His work boots were in the basket now. The basil had lost several leaves, but the florist’s cutting was growing toward the glass.

“How was your father?” I asked.

“He defeated me at cards. How was your panel?”

“A question I can ask better after I see it.”

He smiled. “That sounds like you.”

I took his hand. We had both arrived later than we imagined, carrying whole evenings he had not been required to watch. I wanted him as fiercely as I had on the day I left; I also knew I could come through his door without putting down the rest of myself outside it.

· · ·Scene break

On Friday he asked me to the cinema we had walked past on our first date. I thought he had chosen it for the memory. He had chosen it because the film began late enough for me to finish an examination appointment, and because he wanted to sit beside me in the dark without either of us producing a calendar.

“I don’t know what it’s about,” he admitted as we queued. “The poster has a horse.”

“You hate films with horses.”

“I hate films that use a horse to tell me somebody is noble. The animal itself has done nothing wrong.”

We bought the tickets. I took his hand in the aisle and kept it until the lights went down. The film was not about nobility. It was about a man who had lost a field he never knew how to farm, and a woman who knew the field better than either of them wanted to admit. Halfway through, the horse escaped. Felix whispered that it was the only sensible character. I laughed into his shoulder and had to sit up before the row behind us objected.

Afterward we walked home through streets neither of us needed directions for. I told him I had been afraid the first ordinary week would make our declarations in Copenhagen look extravagant. He said he had been afraid of the opposite: that we would try to keep living at the pitch of a visit and be exhausted by Monday.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Somewhere in between. I like learning which nights you’re tired enough to be cross with the world, and which ones you’ll laugh at a bad film.”

“The film was good. The horse had the best part.”

He stopped under the cinema’s reflected light and kissed me. I was glad no journey had to end in the morning. I was also glad we had chosen to leave our work, eat popcorn and let something happen to other people for two hours. It had nothing to prove, which was why I wanted to do it again.