Will rang on Thursday at half past two.
Eva watched his name on the screen until it nearly stopped ringing. Then she answered.
“Hi.”
“Hi. How's the new work?”
“It's going all right.”
“Good.”
He paused. She could hear cups behind him. The lunch rush would be ending, dishes stacked beside the sink, one stubborn customer still reading the menu.
“I need a hand tonight,” he said. “After Saturday, people are asking who's running it.”
Eva looked at her notebook. She had been drawing tables, and one looked like a boat because she hadn't turned the page far enough.
“I've finished the handover.”
“I know. I wouldn't ask, but I don't have anyone who knows it like you.”
She let him finish.
“I'm paying, obviously. Just this one. You don't have to stay afterwards.”
Stay upstairs, he meant. She could hear him avoiding the words.
“No,” she said.
There was a clatter at his end. He covered the phone briefly and spoke to somebody.
“Sorry,” he said, coming back. “Nora's not doing the evenings now. She took the other job. I've got cover, but they're new. I've cut tonight to twelve places and I'll have to come out and serve between courses.”
Nora had messaged Eva yesterday to say the café up the hill had offered her four paid shifts a week to begin with. Eva had replied, Good luck. It had taken a while to choose those two words. They were what she'd meant.
“You've got the plan,” Eva said. “I left it where we agreed.”
“The plan doesn't run a room.”
“You do.”
He was quiet.
Eva thought of the toast. How he'd smiled when she brought him water, how easily his hand had found her waist. She had washed the cream top she'd worn to the harbour but hadn't worn it again yet.
“I miss you,” he said.
She shut the notebook.
“I know.”
“You don't even miss being here?”
“I miss lots of it.”
His breathing changed. She could hear hope building out of that small answer.
“But I'm not coming tonight,” she said.
He took a breath, then let it go.
“All right.”
She hadn't expected him to say it so simply. It made her sadder, and also relieved her.
“Everything for the guests is in the book,” she said. “The menu's yours. You know how to cook it.”
“Yes.”
She didn't add anything else for him to ask about.
After they said goodbye, she left the phone beside the notebook. The room was quiet. There was no one to be efficient for.
At four she made the customer call she had promised. They discussed the anniversary cake and the time the parents would arrive. Eva wrote the answers down as they came, then read them back.
At seven, when The Lantern would be beginning supper, she took the cream top out of the drawer and put it on. Jo was coming to collect her for a film, and the other clean things were drying.
When Jo arrived, Eva locked the door with her own key. The spare stayed in the bowl.