The Winter Room

Orson recognised Anouk by the cardigan under her open coat before he could clearly see her face. Then she saw him, and the smile that broke across her mouth made the three months both real and briefly irrelevant.

She came straight into his arms. The suitcase rolled an inch and stopped against his shoe.

“I said the third,” she whispered.

“You did.”

“Here I am.”

He kissed her, not caring who had to walk round them. She was cold from the platform, warm at the mouth, laughing and close enough at last. When he drew back, her eyes were wet.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“I know what your face is doing.”

“I can’t help that.”

She laughed and kissed him again.

They took her luggage to the room she’d booked above a quiet guesthouse near the square. Three weeks, paid from the money she’d set aside for December. She had told him in November that she wanted somewhere of her own while they worked out what came next. He had felt hurt for an evening, then understood that being welcomed was different from having no other place to go.

The room was plain, with a desk, a kettle and a wardrobe that smelled faintly of polish. She put her case down and looked at him.

“I don’t want to spend tonight here.”

He smiled. “Good.”

“I want to spend it with you.”

“Better.”

She chose a few things for her smaller bag. He waited by the window, watching people cross the square with their collars raised against the cold. When she came beside him, she took his hand and put it against her cheek.

“I missed this,” she said.

He stroked her face with his thumb. “So did I.”

At his house she stopped in the hallway, taking in the shoes, the scarf, the familiar hook. Nothing had been made ceremonial. He’d bought food she liked and cleaned the bathroom. He hadn’t filled the place with signs of waiting.

She hung up her coat herself.

The kiss that followed began gently and did not remain so. She pressed him back against the closed door, then paused, searching his face.

“Yes,” he said, before she had to ask.

Her answering smile was fierce enough to undo him. They made it upstairs with the small bag abandoned halfway along the hall. He would move it later. Much later.

He had imagined reunion often enough to fear the imagining would interfere. It didn’t. Anouk was less graceful and more wonderful than memory: laughing when her cold fingers startled him, impatient with a fastening, suddenly quiet when he touched her as she’d asked. The room warmed around them. They had time to look, time to listen, time to discover that longing had not made either a stranger.

Afterwards she lay with her head on his shoulder and her hand spread over his chest.

“I wanted you so much on the train I was angry with the train,” she said.

“That seems unfair.”

“It was doing its best.”

“I appreciate its effort.”

She laughed into his skin. He held her closer, feeling the ordinary miracle of her weight.

They ate late, soup reheated and bread torn rather than sliced. Anouk wore the cardigan again. He watched her dip the bread into her bowl and thought that happiness ought to have felt more impressive. Instead it looked like somebody he loved being hungry at his table.

This time he didn’t avoid the word in his own mind.

· · ·Scene break

For four days they let themselves enjoy the return. Anouk worked in the guesthouse by day and came to him in the evenings when both were free. She saw Meriel. Orson kept his classes. They went to Zadie’s for supper and endured the detailed account of her successful week alone, including the particular pleasure of never having to discuss where to eat.

“You’re making solitude sound superior,” Anouk said.

“Only when I’m hungry.”

On Sunday Orson and Anouk walked to the headland in coats, carrying hot tea in a flask. The grass was wet, so they stood instead of spreading the rug. The beach below them had lost its summer inhabitants. The flat stone looked bleakly innocent.

“No peaches,” Orson said.

“No ambition.”

She leaned against him and looked at the water. It was good to have the place in another season, to know that the memory had not depended entirely on warm weather and bare arms.

“I’ve been thinking about a base,” she said.

He kept his eyes on the sea. “Here?”

“Possibly.”

He wanted to turn, to ask a dozen questions, to make the possibility bigger before she could take it away. Instead he waited.

“A room. Somewhere I could keep things and work. Not a flat I can’t afford. Not your spare room because that would be easiest.”

“I wasn’t going to offer.”

She looked at him.

“I was trying not to,” he admitted.

She smiled and took his hand. “I know you’d mean it kindly.”

“What would it change?”

“I’d come back to the same place. I could stop paying short-stay prices every time I return. I’d have to travel less to make the year work financially.”

“How much less?”

“I haven’t finished the figures.”

He nodded. It was not an answer to everything. It was an action she was considering without having been cornered into it.

“Tell me when you do,” he said.

“I will.”

· · ·Scene break

Anouk did the figures at the guesthouse desk, where nobody could see her cry over a perfectly reasonable column of numbers. Not much. Just enough to annoy her. A permanent room cost money when she wasn’t in it. Four months away could still work if she chose fewer moves, ordinary rentals and no expensive improvised detours. Six months would not, unless she earned more than she could responsibly assume.

She would also lose the room in Varelle she had hoped to take again in spring. The owner needed a longer commitment than she could now make. There was no villain in that either. A room could be someone else’s livelihood rather than a symbol awaiting her decision.

She shut the notebook and went out for air.

Meriel met her for coffee. Anouk had asked because she wanted company, not advice, and said so when they sat down.

“Good,” Meriel said. “My advice is expensive.”

“I’ve seen your curtains.”

“Cruel.”

Anouk told her about the base, the budget, the spring room. Meriel listened without calling any part of it obvious.

“Would you want a base if Orson weren’t here?” she asked eventually.

“Not now.”

“Then don’t pretend it’s a purely practical improvement.”

Anouk looked at her.

“You’re allowed to change something for someone,” Meriel said. “You just need to know that’s what you’re doing.”

“I don’t want to resent him.”

“Then don’t give him the bill for a choice he hasn’t made.”

Anouk sat back. The words stung because they were useful.

That evening she brought the notebook to Orson’s, then left it in her bag through supper. She wanted one meal in which he didn’t feel like a proposed expense. Afterwards, when they were sitting on the sofa, she told him the truth.

“I can make four months away work. In two blocks. With a room here. I think I want that.”

He was quiet.

“You don’t have to look pleased immediately,” she said.

“I am pleased.”

“But?”

He rubbed his hands together. “I think I’d hoped for less.”

“Less time away.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Two months. Perhaps three.”

She looked down. Four had felt like a great concession while it was only hers to consider. Hearing that it might still be too much brought up a sharp, childish anger.

“I’ve already given up—” She stopped.

Orson waited.

“No,” she said. “I haven’t given anything up yet. And it isn’t a debt you owe.”

“Thank you.”

“I did hope you’d be happy enough that I wouldn’t have to feel the loss.”

He reached for her hand. “I can’t do that for you.”

“I know.”

They sat close, but the closeness did not answer the problem. She could feel his warmth and still know they wanted different amounts of absence.

“I don’t want to bargain you down until you say yes and hate the answer,” he said.

“I don’t want to offer more than I can mean.”

“Then we shouldn’t decide tonight.”

She nodded. Her eyes burned again. She was tired of tears arriving around arithmetic when what hurt was love.

“I love you,” she said, almost angrily. “That’s the inconvenient fact underneath all this.”

His face changed completely.

She had not planned it. She would not take it back.

“I love you too,” he said.

The answer made her cry properly. He held her because she asked him to, and she let the tears come without turning them into an argument. He kissed her hair, her cheek, then her mouth when she lifted her face. There was relief in it and grief for the version in which saying love would have made the rest simple.

After a while she said, “I should sleep at the room tonight.”

He drew back enough to look at her.

“Not because I’m withdrawing anything,” she said. “Because if I stay, I’ll promise whatever makes this feel better. I don’t want to do that to us.”

He swallowed, then nodded.

“I’ll walk you.”

She let him. At the guesthouse door they kissed for a long time in the cold, neither disguising how much they wanted the night to end differently.

Upstairs, Anouk took out the notebook. She did not change the four to a three to make herself good. She wrote a sentence beneath the figures instead.

What can I choose and keep choosing?

Then she put the pen down and went to bed, loving him, alone, with the question still honest.