Nora put the paper on the table. Eva didn't look down at it.
“Will said I could have your job if I got Ben to leave you,” Nora said.
The kitchen made its ordinary noises: the fridge, the little rattle in the extractor, a pan settling on the rack.
Eva looked at Will.
“Is that true?”
He gripped the chair. “It wasn't like that.”
“Then how was it?”
“I knew you weren't happy.”
She kept looking at him until Nora spoke again.
“That's what he said. That you'd been arguing. That if Ben went, you'd stop waiting for him and we'd all get what we wanted.”
Eva pulled out the chair nearest her. She sat because her legs had begun to feel separate from the rest of her.
“You wanted Ben,” she said.
Nora nodded.
“I already liked him. I didn't pretend to.”
“And you wanted my job.”
“I wanted a job I could keep.”
“Mine.”
“Yes.”
Will moved round the table. Eva lifted one hand, and he stopped.
“Did Ben know?” she asked.
Nora swallowed. “Yes.”
Eva had expected a pause, an excuse, a soft word she would have to pull apart. The plain answer hit harder.
“When?”
“Before you went away. I told him what Will had offered.”
“And he was all right with it.”
Nora looked at the paper. “He said he'd leave when I had the offer in writing.”
Eva stared at her.
“He said that?”
“He said, 'Get the job offer in writing first. Then I'll go.' He didn't want to leave your flat and find we were living on his wages.”
Eva heard Ben asking across Jo's table whether Will had confirmed it properly. His voice was so clear in her head she nearly turned towards it.
“You told Will that?”
“Yes.”
“And you wrote it for that reason?” she asked Will.
He glanced at the page. “I wanted her to know there was work.”
“You knew why Ben wanted it.”
Will looked at her, then nodded once.
Nora pushed the page closer. “He gave me this on Friday. Ben saw it that evening. He said he'd pack before you came back.”
Friday. Eva had been on the phone telling Will to finish painting his window. Afterwards she'd rung Ben, who had said he was tired and would see her Sunday.
She looked at the paper now. Her workplace name at the top. A proposed management role after the reopening. The ordinary details of hours and pay. A date from the end of her trip.
There was nothing about her boyfriend. Nothing about him leaving. It was a job proposal. She could have picked it up in the kitchen last week and asked why somebody had been given her work.
“Is the rest written somewhere?” she asked. “The part about Ben?”
“No,” Nora said. “He said it to me.”
Eva looked at Will. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible. It was enough.
She put the paper down.
“How long had this been going on?”
“About six weeks,” Nora said. “When I asked for permanent work. Before Ben and I started seeing each other.”
“The cover shifts. While he was doing the lights.”
“Will gave me more of them.”
Eva looked up. Will was standing beside the table, not sitting. She knew exactly how tall he was now. She knew the feel of his cheek under her palm. Last night she had stood in his flat and imagined her clothes beside his.
“Were you trying to get me upstairs?”
He didn't pretend to misunderstand.
“I wanted you with me.”
Nora's breathing sounded too loud. Eva wanted her to go away. She also wanted to ask everything before anybody could agree on a kinder version.
“Were you paid?” she asked Nora.
“For my shifts. Not for Ben. It was the job.”
“Did he get anything?”
“No money. Nothing like that. He wanted us to have something settled.”
Something settled. Eva had looked at flat photographs with him and been told she planned too much.
She put her palms on the table. The wood was sticky beside one wrist. Somebody had spilled syrup there, and it would need cleaning before the supper.
“You both knew yesterday,” she said. “While I was telling you I hadn't given up my job.”
Neither answered.
“And at dinner on Monday.”
“Yes,” Nora said.
Eva looked at her.
“This morning you said Sunday.”
“I lied.”
“Why tell me now?”
Nora's face folded for a moment, then she pulled it straight.
“Because he's taking it back. Because you won't leave the job. I was going to keep quiet if he gave me what he promised.”
Eva waited, but Nora didn't soften it.
The room felt very small. There were bags of vegetables behind Will. Bread waiting behind the door. Three people with aprons nearby, and not one of them able to begin the day they had planned.
Eva stood.
“I need you out of this room,” she said to Nora.
Nora nodded and picked up the paper.
“Leave that,” Eva said.
Nora put it down again. She went into the café.
Will stepped closer.
“Eva.”
“Don't touch me.”
He stopped. She could see how much he wanted to, and she could still remember wanting his hands on her. That made her stomach turn more than if she'd suddenly found him ugly.
She looked at the proposal on the table.
Ben had waited for this. Will had supplied it. Nora had taken it home.
Eva had been away four days. The space they had made for her wasn't at a supper table. It was upstairs, out of her own job, with the man standing in front of her.