The Two Plates

Meriel came home with a sunburnt nose, a cracked mug wrapped in a sock and an immediate desire to move the kettle six inches to the left. Anouk watched her do it and understood, with a pang that was nobody’s fault, that the flat had stopped being hers.

“The table survived,” she said.

“I never doubted you.”

“You sent three messages.”

“Affectionate messages.”

Meriel set down the rucksack and embraced her. She smelled of travel, clean soap layered over a long day, and Anouk hugged her hard. It was good to have her back. That did not make the small loss imaginary.

They sat at the kitchen table with tea. Meriel told stories that had not fitted into calls: a room with a spectacular view and a shower that required optimism, a woman she’d walked with for two days, the afternoon she’d abandoned the planned route because her feet had voted against it. Anouk listened, laughing, and felt the familiar answering tug. She wanted new rooms too. She wanted Orson’s kitchen. The wanting had not become tidier merely because she had admitted both.

“How is he?” Meriel asked eventually.

“Good.”

“And you?”

“Less concise.”

Meriel smiled. “I gathered.”

Anouk told her about December. Not about the private details of their nights, or the bad class, which belonged to Orson. She told her about the return date, the agreed calls, the October visit they were still pricing.

“That sounds real,” Meriel said.

“It feels real.”

“You look happy.”

“I am. Also frightened.”

“Very inconvenient.”

“Yes.”

Meriel turned her cup between her hands. “I should say this now, while it’s still simple. You can stay the three days we agreed. After that I need the flat back.”

Anouk looked up. “I know.”

“I know you know. I’m saying it because I can see myself offering another week if you’re upset, then being cross about not having my desk.”

“I won’t ask.”

“You can ask. I might say no.”

Anouk laughed, unexpectedly relieved. “We’re all becoming terribly grown-up.”

“It happens to people in their forties. Briefly. Then they buy a cupboard without measuring.”

“Zadie told you?”

“Everyone told me.”

They carried Meriel’s bag into the bedroom. Anouk had moved her own things into one corner, but Meriel insisted she keep the room for the final nights she had paid for and took the sofa without drama. Friendship, Anouk thought, was sometimes a matter of letting another person keep the bargain they had chosen rather than improvising generosity at their expense.

That evening Orson came for supper. Meriel hugged him, demanded the truth about the table and put him to work finding a corkscrew before remembering that the bottle was sparkling apple juice with a screw cap.

“I’ve been walking,” she said. “My brain is in my feet.”

“You should rest them,” he said.

Anouk watched the ease between them. He had known Meriel for years as a neighbour and friend. She had entered a life already full of connections; she was not the person who had finally made him exist. That was comforting, and a little humbling.

They ate from mismatched plates. Meriel wanted every detail of the peach disaster. Orson supplied a defence so sober that she laughed harder than Anouk had on the headland.

“You bought ripe peaches for a walk?”

“I was optimistic.”

“Dangerous in a man.”

Anouk touched his knee under the table. He turned his hand over on his lap so she could take it.

Meriel saw, and looked away kindly.

· · ·Scene break

On the walk to his house, Orson carried the leftover bread. Anouk was staying with Meriel that night; they had planned a late conversation, the kind friends could not conduct while hosting someone else. He had offered to walk her back after collecting a book she’d left at his.

“You can come to mine for the last two nights,” he said.

She stopped walking.

He turned. “What?”

“Do you mean because Meriel’s home, or because you want me there?”

He thought. “Both.”

“Which would you have said first?”

“The helpful one.”

“Say the other one.”

He looked at her for a moment, then smiled without quite hiding the ache.

“I want you there.”

“Then I’d like that.”

They resumed walking. It was a small correction, but she could feel how much it changed. She would not be sheltering in his house because the borrowed flat had become inconvenient. She would be spending two nights with a man she wanted.

At his kitchen table they looked at the October fares on their separate phones, showing each other the screens. No purchases yet. Orson had four days he could take without cancelling classes, and enough saved for the trip if he chose modest accommodation and didn’t spend the rest of the month pretending he had more money than he did.

“You could stay in my room,” she said. “The owner allows a guest if I arrange it.”

“Would you want that?”

“Yes. I would.”

He smiled. “Then I would too.”

She wrote the dates down. He showed her the leave request he’d already checked with work, and she felt the weight of those four days differently. Her location changed around work. His did not. He would be using time that could not also be used for something else.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to become the only place you go.”

“You aren’t deciding all my holidays.”

“No.”

“And I would like this one.”

She nodded. There was a boundary in his voice, gentle but actual. She was pleased to meet it, even while it made her uncomfortable. Care could become management on either side.

They made the booking after checking the dates twice. Orson paid his fare. She arranged the guest stay from her own accommodation budget. It wasn’t a grand gesture. It was an expense each had chosen, and that made it feel more durable.

When the confirmations arrived, they sat quietly for a minute.

“Now I have to clean the room before you come,” she said.

“I have seen your desk.”

“Then you know the seriousness of the task.”

He laughed, and she kissed him across the corner of the table. The blue bowl was between them, empty except for one apple. He moved it aside before drawing her closer.

She stayed ten minutes longer than she meant to, then went back to Meriel.

· · ·Scene break

The following afternoon she began packing. It was usually soothing. Anouk had learned the order over years: clothes rolled, cables in one pouch, papers flat against the back, shoes wrapped, the objects that made a room bearable placed where she could find them on arrival. This time every item seemed to contain an argument.

The second hook went into the side pocket. Her toothbrush, now one of two because she’d bought another without announcing it, remained in the washbag. A book Orson had lent her sat on top of the clothes.

“You’re packing as if the case has insulted you,” Meriel said from the doorway.

“I’m negotiating.”

“With what?”

“Volume.”

Meriel came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to tell you to stay?”

“No.”

“Good. I wasn’t going to.”

Anouk stopped folding a shirt. “Do you think I’m being unfair?”

“To whom?”

“Orson.”

“I think he’s a grown man who knows the dates.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

“Does he?”

“Yes.”

“Then you may have to let him mean what he says.”

Anouk sat beside her. “What if wanting me makes him agree to something that hurts him?”

“It probably will hurt sometimes. That doesn’t mean you’ve tricked him.”

“I’d like a version that doesn’t.”

“So would everyone.”

They sat quietly. From the street came the rattle of a delivery van and somebody calling thanks. Meriel leaned her shoulder against Anouk’s.

“You’re allowed to find out,” she said. “You aren’t allowed to know for him.”

Anouk thought of the good chair, of how she had asked him to stop deciding her comfort. She had not expected to need the same instruction.

That night she carried a small bag to Orson’s. The rest of her luggage would stay in the flat until departure morning. Meriel would see her off there, and Orson would walk with her to the station. All arranged. All ordinary. None easy.

He opened the door before she’d finished knocking.

“I was passing,” he said.

“By your own front door?”

“Very plausible route.”

She smiled and stepped inside. Her second toothbrush stood in the bathroom, where she’d left it the previous week. She did not put it in her bag.

At supper they talked about the October booking, then stopped talking about it because there were still two days here. Orson had made soup. She had brought bread from the grocer’s and a packet of his terrible biscuits. He held them up in silent triumph.

“Temporary surrender,” she said.

“Recorded.”

Afterwards they sat in the garden until it grew cool. He fetched a blanket, then asked if she’d like it rather than laying it over her automatically. She opened it across both their laps.

“Improved arrangement,” she said.

He put his arm around her. She leaned against him and looked at the square of light from his kitchen falling over the step.

She wanted this. She wanted the room in Varelle too. For once she did not ask one desire to discredit the other. She sat with both, warm under the blanket, while the evening remained theirs.