The Footbridge

Ash read Sable’s notice twice before he let himself be pleased by it.

The firm said it had suspended sales of its courtesy review service while examining customer correspondence. The notice appeared on the public page where the service had been offered. It did not say that every fee would be returned, that the original losses had been recovered or that Harvey accepted the allegations. Ash checked those omissions as carefully as he checked the sentence he wanted to believe.

It was Monday, four weeks after his first morning at Sable. He had no access to its internal systems now. A public notice was a public notice, not proof of what every employee would say on the telephone. Still, one invitation to pay had been replaced by a suspension. He could be glad of that much.

Leonie had acknowledged receipt of his answers on Friday. She had permission to tell him that his account would accompany some clients’ formal complaints within the agreed limits. She gave him no list of their names and no promise of an outcome. He had replied that he would remain available for questions about his own work.

Then he had gone to lunch with his former colleague and eaten a sandwich he disliked, which had been worth it for an hour spent talking about something other than the worst thing either man had done at work.

The weekend had been uneventful. Ash had done laundry and some paid work for an existing client. Delilah had repaired her coat button again and sent him a photograph of its improvement with no invitation to supply a score. On Sunday they had walked to a bookshop, disagreed about a cover and gone home separately because both had early work. Pleasure had survived being practical.

Today he was supposed to be sending an estimate for a new small assignment. Instead he found himself calculating the money he had returned to Sable, what Delilah had given back and what remained uncertain for the people who had hired her. He knew only the first amount. That should have stopped the calculation. It did not.

He could afford to make something easier for her. The thought arrived with a warmth that should have made him suspicious. For weeks he had been unable to provide a clean result. Money was at least measurable.

Ash shut the spreadsheet without saving the new calculation. At five he went to meet her by the river, as they had arranged over breakfast messages. Tomorrow was her chosen evening. Today they had an hour before he needed to go home and finish the estimate.

Delilah was already there, her coat properly fastened for the first time since he had known her. The slightly wrong button sat securely between two older ones. She caught his glance.

“I did it again,” she said.

“I can see.”

“No rejected attempt in a tin. I’m ruthless.”

He kissed her. Her mouth was cool from the air and warm by the time she stepped back. He had begun to know the difference between a greeting she meant to hurry and one she would happily let take their whole hour. This was the second kind.

“I’ve seen the notice,” she said as they began walking.

“So have I.”

“It’s something.”

“Yes.”

“I keep wanting to add a qualification to being pleased.”

“I’ve written several in my head.”

“Keep them there for a minute.”

They walked without speaking. A bicycle passed, its bell unnecessary because they had already moved aside. Ash felt the small unforced accord of their pace, the same thing that had nearly broken him on the evening he told her his brief. It was easier now. He had helped make it easier, and had no right to treat that as accidental.

At the footbridge they stopped to look at the water. Delilah put her hands on the rail. He stood close enough for their sleeves to touch.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said.

She turned toward him. “Ask.”

“About the fee you returned. And the work that might still be needed.”

Her expression changed before he had finished.

“What about it?”

“I wondered whether I could cover some of the gap. Yours, I mean. I have money put aside, and you lost part of the commission because of—”

He stopped. There was no satisfactory end to the sentence. Because of him? Because she wanted him? Because the people paying her had exercised a choice she had given them? Every version placed a price on something he could not buy back.

“Because of what?” Delilah asked.

He looked at the water. “I hadn’t finished thinking it through.”

“You had finished offering.”

“Yes.”

She drew her hands off the rail and put them in her pockets. He hated that he had made her colder in a place where they had come to enjoy each other.

“I returned money for work I wouldn’t do,” she said. “I wasn’t fined for seeing you. The smaller task was paid separately. I can pay my bills.”

“I know.”

“Then what are you trying to make right?”

Ash made himself look at her. “The part where being with me cost you something.”

“It did cost me something. You can’t turn it into a purchase and call it even.”

He nodded. She was right, and the readiness of his agreement was itself a temptation to leave the feeling unexplored.

“I want to be able to finish owing,” he said.

Delilah’s face softened a little. Not because the wish was generous. Because it was finally his.

“You owe an accurate account of what you did. You’ve given one. You may have to answer more questions. You don’t owe me the restoration of a life in which I never chose you.”

He swallowed. “I don’t want to make you regret it.”

“Then don’t decide that regret is the only thing I can feel about the cost.”

For a moment the river filled the silence between them. Ash could hear shoes on the boards of the bridge behind him, someone laughing on the far side. He wanted a sentence that would repair the last five minutes. She had just told him what was wrong with wanting an easy repair.

“I withdraw the offer,” he said. “And I won’t make it through Leonie instead.”

“Good. Any question about responsibility to the clients belongs with the people advising on it, on its own merits. It doesn’t belong in our walk.”

“Agreed.”

“I also need you to stop imagining me as the price you have to keep paying to be a better man.”

He turned fully toward her. “That isn’t how I think of you.”

“Not all the time. Enough that you offered me money instead of telling me you’re afraid this won’t hold.”

The exactness of it took the breath out of him. He had admired her questions before he had understood that eventually they would reach the things he used admiration to avoid.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “Things are becoming ordinary. I don’t know how to make sure I don’t lose them.”

She brought one hand out of her pocket. He looked at it, then at her face.

“You can take my hand,” she said. “That would be a start.”

He took it. Her fingers closed around his, colder now, and he warmed them between both palms without trying to make the gesture an answer to everything.

“I don’t want to spend my whole life demonstrating that I can manage alone,” she said. “I can. You’ve heard that. I would also like you to carry a bag when it’s heavy and make dinner when I’m tired. Those things aren’t forbidden because money is complicated.”

“I can carry a bag.”

“You have considerable experience with onions.”

He laughed, quietly. She did too, and the sound gave them somewhere to move.

“What can I do today?” he asked.

“Walk with me until six. Then go and finish the work you said you’d finish. I want to see you tomorrow without you resenting the estimate you haven’t sent.”

“I wouldn’t resent you.”

“You might resent yourself all over the evening. Similar effect.”

She was smiling now. He brought her hand to his mouth, then kept it as they walked off the bridge. There was no need to promise that he would never make another foolish offer. He could remember this one, and ask a better question next time.

They bought hot drinks at a kiosk and sat on a bench with a view of the river steps. Delilah put her cup between her knees to open a paper packet of biscuits, then offered him one before taking her own. He recognised the small generosity that had undone him over a roast potato and wondered how he had ever thought its value could be repaid.

“I’m going to miss some of it,” she said.

“The work?”

“The people. Even being corrected by them.”

“You might be corrected elsewhere.”

“I live in hope.”

He put an arm along the back of the bench. She leaned into him, accepting the invitation without either making it ceremonial.

“I miss hearing you in the corridor,” he said. “Still. Ridiculous, when I can telephone you.”

“It was a good corridor.”

“It was a terrible corridor.”

“Yes. But there you were.”

He looked down at her. She had said it easily, and he could not. All the things he had been trying to make certain reduced themselves to the wish to be somewhere she would look for him.

“There I’ll be tomorrow,” he said.

“Seven.”

“Seven.”

At six he stood reluctantly. Delilah stayed seated long enough to finish her drink, then rose to kiss him goodbye. She held his face for a moment after the kiss, as though she wanted him to understand that the conversation had not taken anything away she had not chosen to give.

“Send the estimate,” she said.

“I will.”

He went home and sent it. The work was modest, the terms clear, the result not yet assured. Afterwards he closed the laptop and put his phone beside the book on his chair. Delilah had sent the address for tomorrow: a small restaurant near the river they had walked past without trying.

No research, she had added.

He smiled. He knew enough. He would go where she had asked him, at the time she had named, and let her tell him what she wanted when he arrived.