Separate Evenings

On Monday I picked up my phone seven times to tell Gethin things that could wait until Wednesday.

A customer had approved a proof upside down. The café by work had replaced its excellent sandwiches with a smaller sandwich described as generous. I had found the second earring in my purse after searching the kitchen for it, forgetting he had already given it back.

None of those things mattered. Their usual destination did.

He did not write. I resented him for obeying me until I caught myself, then went back to work and trimmed a stack of cards with more attention than they needed.

At six Fenna rang.

“Do you fancy a walk tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ve been looking at numbers all day. If I look at another one, I may start charging it rent.”

I said yes before considering whether I ought to sound less grateful.

“No programmes,” she added.

“I wasn’t going to bring any.”

“You might have one concealed about you.”

Her joke was almost the one from Sunday. It did not hurt in the same way. I knew she was inviting the woman she teased; she had not made my place conditional on my laughing.

“I’ll submit to a search,” I said.

“Six, by the library.”

After we hung up I made supper, a proper one. I took the cheese I had bought for Gethin out of its paper and put some on my plate. It was still good cheese. I refused to let it become a relic of an evening we had not had.

His toothbrush was not in my bathroom; mine was in his. Such a small imbalance to notice. I brushed my teeth with the old one and went to bed thinking about whether I had said too much on the bench, then whether I had said enough.

By morning I was tired of my own evidence.

· · ·Scene break

Fenna had chosen the path past the allotments. She walked briskly until we reached the first gate, then slowed without explaining why. I matched her pace.

There were late beans drying on poles behind the fence. A man in an enormous sweater was turning soil with the air of someone who had come to enjoy a private complaint.

“He looks how I feel,” Fenna said.

“Do you want a fork?”

“I want everyone at work to read the line above the one they keep asking me about.”

She told me about a form that had been sent back four times because the same box was empty. I told her about the upside-down proof. We walked for ten minutes inside the old ease of making each other laugh about work.

Then she said, “You’re very quiet in between.”

I could have blamed tiredness. It would have been true.

“Gethin and I had an argument on Sunday. We’re taking a few days.”

She kept walking.

“About me?”

“No.”

“About Fridays, then.”

“A remark somebody made at Sunday. He made a joke of it. I minded.”

Fenna stopped beside the gate. “What remark?”

I told her. I gave her my own part plainly: I had wanted him to stop treating my belonging elsewhere as something to make harmless through humour; he had defended his intention before he heard me.

She listened without interrupting. That was a kindness I noticed more than any answer she might have prepared.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” she said at last.

There it was, the door she could open for me: come back, agree that wanting him had been a mistake, let this be an unfortunate excursion from a life which still knew how to receive me.

But she had not actually said any of that. I had supplied it because I was tired and wanted somewhere easy to stand.

“I’m surprised by how much I miss him,” I said.

Fenna looked through the gate.

“Those aren’t opposites, are they?”

“No. Apparently not.”

We started walking again.

“You can tell me if he hurts you,” she said. “You don’t have to keep making him sound reasonable because I’ve been difficult.”

“I know. I am telling you.”

“I know.”

Her answer mattered. She was accepting that I had told her something difficult, without requiring me to tell her more.

We reached a bench under a tree whose leaves had started to gather along the slats. Fenna brushed a space clear for herself, and I did the same beside her.

“Why does he need to keep doing it?” she asked. “He has his room. People go. What does he want from ours?”

I thought of Gethin at my kitchen table, the unanswered invitation beside his plate. I knew an answer that would have made us both gentler for a minute, perhaps: that he wanted to be missed, that he feared finding everybody happy without him.

I had promised him that room would remain private.

“I can’t tell you everything he thinks,” I said.

“I’m not asking for a transcript.”

“No. But there are things he told me when he wasn’t defending himself. I don’t want to bring them here to explain him.”

She was quiet. I could see how that might sound: he had an inner life I must protect; she had to be satisfied with whatever could be spared.

“You have things I don’t tell him too,” I added. “This conversation, for one. You don’t have to become fairer in it because I might report back.”

Fenna leaned against the bench. After a moment she said, “Good. Because I was about to become much less fair.”

I laughed, and she did too, reluctantly.

“I am angry with him,” I said. “I’m not trying to make you stop being angry so I can stop.”

“What would make you stop?”

I watched a leaf turn across the path.

“Hearing that he understands what he made me carry. Seeing him do something different when it isn’t just the two of us. Not a performance at the anniversary. Before that. With his own friends.”

“Have you told him?”

“I’ve told him what hurt. I haven’t written instructions for the repair.”

Fenna nodded. She could understand that. We had both spent too many evenings doing a job while someone asked how to help with every small part of it.

“Do you still want him there on Friday?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I want to want him there.”

She looked at me then, fully, and I let her see that the uncertainty cost me more than being proved right would satisfy her.

“You can come on your own,” she said. “If that’s what you decide.”

“Thank you.”

She did not say where I would sit. She did not offer me my old role back. I was glad she had not made the invitation a transaction, even though some small part of me had waited for it.

We walked back as the light began to go. At the library she asked whether I wanted to eat with her. I had food at home and no wish to be alone, so I said yes.

Her kitchen cupboard still had the handle we had chosen. She made scrambled eggs while I cut bread. We disagreed about how much pepper to put in, solved it by keeping the pepper on the table, and ate without mentioning either dance room for nearly an hour.

When I left, she hugged me. It was brief and familiar and did not mean she had changed her mind about Gethin. I held her just as tightly.

· · ·Scene break

On Wednesday I went to the library after work because my flat had begun to feel like somewhere I was waiting.

I returned a book I had not finished and chose another without consulting a recommendation or promising myself I would improve. I sat near the window and read the first chapter. At seven I went home.

Gethin would be at the café with the blue chairs. I did not pass it to see who was sitting with him. There were several ways to walk home; for once I chose one for an honest reason.

I had been thinking about what I would say if he rang with another explanation of the joke. I knew my first sentence. I also knew how easily I might abandon it if he sounded sufficiently sorry or said he missed me.

I missed him. I wanted his mouth and his laugh and the concentrated way he listened when he stopped trying to be right. Wanting those things did not prove he would give me the other thing I needed. It did give me a reason to hear him.

At home I put the two plates I had laid out on Sunday back in the cupboard. The waiting had become ridiculous. We were going to speak, not dine by arrangement through the furniture.

Then I took out one plate for myself and sat down with my book while supper heated.

When the phone rang at twenty past eight, I marked my page before I answered it.