The Green Tape

Orson made two cups of tea on Monday morning and stood looking at the second one. Anouk had said she would call after work. She had not said she would appear for breakfast. He tipped the extra tea into a flask and took it with him rather than giving the mistake a tragic importance it hadn’t earned.

At the studio he taught a class, cleaned the table and spent his lunch break sitting outside with the flask between his knees. He had asked for less absence because that was what he wanted. There was no shame in it. There was also no guarantee that the life he wanted most existed intact inside the woman he loved.

He had been treating the imagined version as a measure of whether the real one was enough.

It was a difficult thing to admit. Easier to say he had learned from his marriage, as though the lesson were simply never to risk being lonely again. But he had been lonely while dating people who lived ten minutes away. Presence was not the same as attention. Anouk, even when she had disappointed him, had returned to the conversation rather than waiting for his hurt to become inconvenient enough to disappear.

He did not want to talk himself into four months because he feared losing her. He wanted to know whether he could choose the actual arrangement with affection, including the portions he would dislike.

At home he took out his leave calendar. There were weeks he could travel and weeks he could not. There was money saved for a holiday he’d kept postponing because going alone had seemed like an admission. He looked at the figures, then at the photograph she’d sent of the ridiculous curtain.

He laughed. It helped.

When she called that evening, he asked if she would come round the next day. Not to decide everything, he said. To talk about what he had discovered he could offer.

“I’d like that,” she said.

Her voice sounded tired. He wanted to fix that. Instead he asked about her day.

· · ·Scene break

Anouk viewed the room on Tuesday morning without Orson. She had found it through a local notice and spoken to the owner, a woman renting the upper floor of her house. The room was large enough for a bed, a desk and a small chair. It came with use of the kitchen, a shelf in the pantry, and an agreement that the rent continued while Anouk travelled. The owner wanted a quiet tenant, not a companion or an unpaid caretaker. Anouk liked the clarity.

There were marks where the previous tenant had put posters. The window faced the back gardens. The bathroom was shared, the stairs steep, the storage less generous than the advertisement had made it appear. She could afford it if she meant what she had written in the notebook.

She asked about the practical terms, took the written information away to read, and did not promise an answer at the door.

Outside, she walked past the furniture shop where she and Orson had laughed at the chair. There were different things in the window now: a small desk, a lamp, a wooden stool with a repaired leg. She stopped in front of the desk. Green tape on the top marked a scratch that the shop had not attempted to conceal.

She could work there. Not in an abstract future. Her laptop on the left, papers on the right, the lamp from Varelle at the back. She would have to bring the lamp when she next travelled with room for it, or keep it there until she knew what she was doing. For the first time the thought did not produce a desire to flee.

It produced sadness for the room she was giving up and excitement about the room she might make.

Both, again. Apparently that was going to be her method.

At Orson’s that evening, she found no prepared meal. He had waited so they could choose together, which made her smile.

“Is this growth?” she asked.

“It’s indecision. But we can call it growth.”

They made toast and eggs. The informality steadied her. After eating, they sat at the table with their papers, then both laughed at the sight.

“We look as if we’re dividing a small country,” she said.

“I was going to offer you the coast.”

“Generous.”

He put his calendar aside.

“I’ve been thinking about what I can actually choose,” he said. “Not what I can endure while hoping you’ll change.”

She became still.

“Four months away is more than I wanted. I won’t pretend it isn’t. But I could travel with you for two weeks of it. Properly. Not only visit and watch the clock until I come home.”

“Would you enjoy that?”

“I enjoyed Varelle.”

“You enjoyed me in Varelle.”

“I did. I also liked the town. And buying pears. And seeing the lamp you chose.”

Her eyes stung, unexpectedly.

“I don’t want all your leave,” she said.

“You aren’t having it. I want a week to myself as well. I haven’t decided where.”

She smiled. “Good.”

“And I need the returns to be real. If you want to change one, we talk before booking anything else. Not because I give permission. Because it changes our life.”

“Our life,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She sat with that for a moment. Then she told him about the room and the desk with green tape, about the actual rent and what it meant she couldn’t afford. She told him she had decided not to take the spring room in Varelle again for the long stay she’d imagined. She would go for a shorter block elsewhere if suitable accommodation was available within her budget, and keep the second block later in the year. Four months total, two months at a time. Eight months based in Lanton Wick.

“I haven’t told the owner yet,” she said. “I wanted to say it to you first. But I know what I’m going to say.”

He looked at her carefully. “Will you miss it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I won’t tell you this is better.”

She reached for his hand.

“Thank you.”

They talked for a long time. About money without turning it into proof of love. About illness or unexpected work, which could change plans and would need actual conversations. About the difference between keeping a promise and never being allowed to revise it. They did not sign a contract with each other. They chose a year they could imagine living, and agreed to keep talking before resentment became their private hobby.

Finally Orson pushed the papers away.

“Come here,” he said.

Anouk rose and went to him. He drew her onto his lap, checking with a look that she answered by settling closer. She put her hands on his shoulders and felt the warmth of him through his shirt.

“I love you,” she said, this time without anger or tears.

“I love you.”

The words were no less frightening for being returned. They were simply shared now.

She kissed him until he made a low sound against her mouth. The serious papers slid beneath her elbow; he moved them out of the way with a decisiveness that made her laugh.

“Careful,” she said. “That’s our small country.”

“It can wait.”

She rested her forehead against his. “Yes.”

· · ·Scene break

Two days later she took the room. She read the terms, asked the questions she needed answered, paid the agreed deposit from her own savings and accepted the key. She did not call it moving in with Orson. It wasn’t. Her home would be near his, and her choice would remain visible to both of them.

He came to help carry the desk after the shop arranged delivery to the door. It was heavier than it looked. They got it upstairs with pauses, bad jokes and one brief argument about which way to turn it at the landing.

“Your left,” she said.

“My left is a wall.”

“Then the other left.”

“Very useful.”

When it was finally in the room, they sat on the floor because the chair had not arrived. Anouk peeled away the green tape, revealing the scratch. She ran a finger over it.

“Still there,” he said.

“I wasn’t expecting magic.”

He looked at her. “No.”

She took the second brass hook from her bag. The one she’d bought in August. He watched her open the packet.

“You kept it.”

“It was small.”

“Of course.”

She put it inside the cupboard, following the instructions as solemnly as before. He held her bag while she waited. When she hung it up and it stayed, he applauded very quietly.

“Don’t mock my foundations,” she said.

“Never.”

Later she wrote to the owner of the room in Varelle. A clear, grateful message releasing the spring booking she had not yet confirmed. She read it twice, then sent it. There was no immediate triumphant feeling. She sat on the bed beside the scratched desk and let herself be sad.

Orson, who had been unpacking mugs with her permission, came to the doorway.

“Done?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want company?”

She nodded.

He sat on the floor beside her. She put her hand in his hair, and he leaned against her knee. Neither made the loss smaller. After a while she started telling him about the first morning she’d spent in that room, the light, the terrible instant coffee she’d bought because she couldn’t find anything else. He listened until the memory became a thing she could keep rather than a place she had to preserve unchanged.

When she finished, he kissed her hand.

“What would you like tonight?” he asked.

She looked around the room: her bag on its hook, the desk, the folded bedding, the cup she’d bought for herself because she liked the handle.

“To stay here,” she said. “With you, if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

They made the bed together. The room had no history with them yet. Anouk thought, as he laughed at the stubborn corner of the sheet, that this was how one began.