The Spare Key

The key cutter asked Adela whether she wanted two copies, and she nearly said yes because two seemed less revealing than one.

“One,” she said. “Please.”

The man took the key without interest. He had probably seen people entrust entire lives to small pieces of metal before lunch. Hers was an ordinary front-door key, worn smooth at the shoulder from years in her pocket.

While the machine worked, she looked at the display of tags. Plastic houses, coloured rings, a brass fob with an inscription about home. She chose a plain blue ring because it would be easy to find in a bag and because that was enough reason.

She had not asked Oswin to move in. She did not want a key to make the request for her.

It was Wednesday, three days before dinner. Two friends coming, Rhoswen not coming, and a small accumulation of things she had once thought would have to be settled before she could make plans. They remained unsettled. She bought the key anyway.

That evening she went to Oswin’s with it in her pocket.

He opened the door halfway through fastening his watch.

“I’m early,” she said.

“I’m late. It balances.”

They were going to the harbour restaurant. She had made the booking because she wanted the fish, not because there was something they needed to prove by being seen there. The distinction still pleased her whenever she noticed it.

He kissed her and went to get his jacket. Adela waited in the front room, looking at the sofa he still had not asked her to repair. The bad spring was less troublesome now that she knew which end she preferred.

On the table lay a newspaper folded at the property pages. A small cottage inland had been circled in pencil.

She looked away, then back. Not a letter hidden in a drawer. Something left where anyone in the room could see it.

“Thinking of moving?” she asked when he returned.

He followed her glance. “Sometimes.”

“There?”

“Probably not. It’s damp, if the photograph’s trying that hard to show the garden.”

She smiled, but the key had become noticeable against her leg.

“You can tell me if you are.”

He put his jacket over his arm. “I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to start somewhere nobody knows the story. I do that when I’ve had a bad day. Look at places. Imagine how simple I’d be in a different town.”

“Would you be?”

“I doubt it. I’d still own the jumpers.”

She looked at him until the joke settled and left the rest visible.

“I haven’t made any plans,” he said. “I haven’t rung anyone. I should have mentioned it.”

“You don’t have to report every thought. I would want to know if it became a plan.”

“You would.”

He said it plainly. She believed him.

“What was the bad day?” she asked.

He looked towards the newspaper. “Someone at work told me they were pleased it had all blown over. As though the year had been weather. I said something sharp and then spent the afternoon wishing I hadn’t had to be there for any of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He meant well. That was the irritating part.”

Adela could imagine it. The wish to be considered happy only after everyone else had decided the happiness was uncomplicated. She had heard versions of it herself.

“I don’t want you to stay here to prove you love me,” she said.

“I don’t want to leave every time loving you includes somebody being clumsy about it.”

They stood in the front room with ten minutes before their booking. There was no reason to turn dinner into a test of whether they could finish this conversation neatly.

“Let’s eat,” Adela said. “I have something to ask you. It will keep until we’ve had the fish.”

He looked at her. “Should I be nervous?”

“Only about the bread. You’re developing a reputation.”

· · ·Scene break

The fish was good. The table was level. A waiter recognised them and asked whether they wanted their usual water, which made Oswin look mildly alarmed at having become a regular without a formal application.

Adela enjoyed the meal enough to postpone the key until they were walking home. Not delaying out of fear. Allowing something pleasant to be complete before asking it to contain something else.

At her door she stopped and took the new key from her pocket.

“This is for you,” she said. “If you’d like it.”

Oswin looked at her palm.

“Adela.”

“It’s a key, not a proposal concealed in a practical object. I want you to be able to let yourself in when we’re expecting each other. Or fetch something you’ve left. I don’t want you waiting on the step because I’m under a chair with my phone switched off.”

He smiled a little. “Very specific.”

“It happened twice.”

He took the key and turned it in his fingers. “I’d like it.”

She let herself breathe out. “Good.”

“I’d like you to have mine.”

“I’d like that too.”

He looked up. “Were you worried I’d think you were asking me to move in?”

“Yes. Because I haven’t decided I want that yet.”

The sentence came more easily than it would have a year ago. Wanting him had not made every other preference disappear.

“Neither have I,” he said.

Adela laughed, surprised by the relief. “We could have saved a great deal of staring at a key.”

“I like your house. I also like mine.”

“I like having a room I haven’t had to discuss with anybody.”

“And I’d have to admit how many fishing things I own.”

“I’ve seen the cupboard.”

“That’s the respectable cupboard.”

She leaned against the door, smiling. He stood close enough that she could touch him, still turning the key in his hand.

“Two homes for now,” she said. “Not two lives we keep apart.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like a rhythm we choose, though. Not only checking who’s tired and who has something in the fridge.”

He considered it. “Wednesday evenings. Like this. And Saturdays when I’m not on an early Sunday shift. We can change it when work changes.”

“We can also ask for more.”

“I will.”

She looked at the serious part of his face. “Good.”

He kissed her, holding the new key loosely beside her shoulder. She could feel the cool edge of it against the back of her coat, such a small weight to have carried so much thought.

“Try it,” she said.

He opened her front door.

· · ·Scene break

Inside, Oswin hung his jacket on the hook he had been using for a year. Adela put the kettle on and went to find the calendar she kept for home, distinct from the workshop diary after three unfortunate overlaps involving collection times and supper.

They wrote the next four Wednesdays in pencil. The first was at his house, the second at hers. Two Saturdays were free. The third was not; he had work and she had promised to go to a fabric fair in the next town. They left that one alone.

“This feels almost disappointingly sensible,” she said.

“We could argue about the pencil.”

“I like the pencil. Things change.”

“All right, then. No argument.”

He sat back. She could see him looking round the kitchen, at the small table, the blue glass among the others, the folded calendar beneath her hand.

“About the cottage,” he said.

Adela waited.

“It isn’t really the cottage I want. It’s the first week somewhere. Before anyone expects anything of you. Before you’ve had time to disappoint people.”

“You’d have a lovely first week.”

“Then I’d have to live there.”

She nodded.

“I want to live here,” he said. “In this town. With you, in the untidy arrangement we’ve actually got. I’m tired of keeping another life ready in my head so this one can’t hurt me.”

She could not promise it would stop hurting. Saturday would have an absence neither had wanted. The woman who had spoken to them over soup might always be awkward. Rhoswen might never come for dinner while he was there.

“Then stay in this one with me,” Adela said.

“That’s what I’m asking.”

She moved her chair nearer and put her hand on his cheek. He turned into it, the familiar gesture still capable of making her forget what she had meant to say next.

“I used to tell people you were staying for supper,” she said. “Even when I knew you’d be here in the morning. As if explaining less made it easier.”

“I noticed.”

“I know you did. I don’t do that now.”

“I know that too.”

There were promises they had already begun to keep before saying them well. Adela liked finding those more than inventing new ones.

Later he went home, because he had an early shift and his things were there. He kissed her at the door, put the key on his own ring and did not hand it back to prove anything about independence.

The next evening, Adela let herself into his house at the time they had agreed, using the copy he had given her after work. He was in the kitchen, a pan hissing on the stove.

“It’s me,” she called.

“I hoped. Otherwise I’ve issued a key irresponsibly.”

She went through and kissed him. On the table lay the newspaper, folded open beneath a potato he was peeling. The circled cottage was disappearing under a drift of peel.

She said nothing about it. She washed her hands and found a second knife.