On Wednesday morning Leah painted the word Open backwards on the inside of a florist's window and enjoyed concentrating on something that had a correct answer.
She had agreed to finish the job before Owen left. She had nearly cancelled. Now she was glad she hadn't. The owner put the light on for her, then left her to work. Nobody asked how she was coping.
When she returned to Anna's house that afternoon, Daniel was sitting on the bottom stair, tying his boots.
‘Are you going out?’ she asked.
‘To the old mill path. There's a bird I want to look for.’
‘A particular bird, or will any bird do?’
He straightened. ‘A kingfisher. Someone saw one yesterday.’
Leah looked towards the dining room. A sheet of green fabric hung over the door, pinned to a notice saying not to remove it.
‘Anna's at the theatre,’ he said. ‘She'll be back later.’
‘Right.’
She had planned to sit upstairs and answer the rest of her messages. One was from a friend asking what time the wedding, still three months away, would start. She could face it after a walk.
‘Could I come?’
‘Yes.’ He said it before she had finished asking. ‘You'll want shoes you don't mind getting dirty.’
The path began ten minutes from the house. Leah had been there as a child but had never thought of it as somewhere a person would deliberately spend an afternoon. There was a river, an abandoned mill and a bench with a view of a concrete wall.
Daniel stopped before they reached the bench.
‘Listen.’
Leah heard traffic, water and something that sounded like a squeaky gate.
‘That?’ she asked.
‘That's a moorhen. I'm waiting for a higher sound.’
He had a small pair of binoculars, which he passed to her. She put them to her eyes and saw two enormous blurred circles.
‘Move the middle until it's one picture.’
She did. The concrete wall leapt towards her, covered in cracks and tiny plants. She lowered the binoculars.
‘I can see every unattractive thing much more clearly.’
‘Try the branch below it.’
A small brown bird sat there with a leaf in its beak. Leah watched it turn its head. For the first time she could see the delicate movements instead of a general flutter in a tree.
‘Oh.’
Daniel stood beside her. ‘Wren.’
‘It's very serious about that leaf.’
‘It should be. It's bigger than its head.’
She handed the binoculars back. ‘Do you always know their names?’
‘No. Quite often I have to look them up.’
‘I imagined you being born knowing.’
‘I started with ducks. Ducks were manageable.’
He looked along the river while she watched his face. At the house he tended to look towards whoever was speaking. Here his attention settled on something beyond both of them. She liked seeing him want something that did not involve helping anyone.
They walked until they reached a fallen tree. Daniel took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and spread it on the dry part of the trunk.
‘You draw them?’ Leah asked.
‘When they'll sit still.’
There were three little birds in pencil. One was only a head and a foot. Another had been crossed out with a single line. The third seemed about to hop off the paper.
Leah sat beside him. ‘That one's lovely.’
‘That's the one that kept moving.’
‘It looks as if it knows it annoyed you.’
Daniel smiled and took out a short pencil. He drew the curve of the branch beneath the finished bird, then stopped to look at the river again.
‘Can I look through the book?’ she asked.
He hesitated before taking it out of the other pocket. It was small and battered, with an elastic band round it.
‘Some of them are just notes.’
She turned the pages slowly. The drawings were not all good. That pleased her too. He had kept the unsuccessful ones. There was a heron like a folded umbrella, a row of feet, a bird that had become little more than an angry oval. Then a whole page of the same bird turning on a railing, its bright eye visible in each pose.
‘I'd put this on a wall,’ she said.
‘You'd have to explain why there were seven of it.’
‘I paint words on walls for money. People can cope with seven birds.’
He leaned closer to see which page she meant. His shoulder touched hers. Leah felt the warmth through their coats before she registered how close his face was.
She could have moved. She stayed where she was.
‘That's on the coast,’ he said. ‘Anna and I went there about four years ago. It rained until the day we left.’
Leah turned the page.
Anna. Of course Anna had been there. Daniel was her husband. There was no innocent way to forget that because he had remembered a poster and asked her to look at a river.
‘Did she enjoy it?’
‘She liked the amusement arcade. She won a purple bear we couldn't fit in the car.’
‘I remember the bear. She brought it to my flat and said it was a housewarming present.’
‘That's where it went.’
Leah laughed. The pressure in her chest eased, though she still felt where his shoulder touched her.
‘She wouldn't leave it behind,’ Daniel said. ‘She spent ages trying to push it into the boot. In the end she put its seat belt on.’
He smiled down at the drawing. Leah could hear affection in his voice. It made her both glad and ashamed.
She gave him the book. He tucked it away and stood.
They waited beside the water for nearly twenty minutes. Daniel did not apologise every time the kingfisher failed to appear. Leah could look at the moving light without deciding what it meant for her life.
Once, a dog ran ahead of its owner and shook muddy water across their legs. Daniel looked at the splashes on his trousers. Leah pressed her lips together.
‘You can laugh,’ he said.
She did, and could not stop immediately. It was too much laughter for a wet trouser leg. She turned away, embarrassed, but Daniel laughed with her until she could breathe.
Then he caught her sleeve.
‘There.’
A flash of blue crossed the river. Leah saw it too late to follow it. Daniel raised the binoculars, then lowered them with a pleased expression that made him look younger.
‘Was that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It didn't give us much time.’
‘It doesn't know we're waiting.’
She liked that answer. She liked him saying it, with mud drying on his boots and no need to turn it into advice.
On the walk home, he asked about her work. She told him about the florist's window and the woman who had once wanted a gold sign so shiny that the sun made it unreadable.
‘Did you tell her?’
‘Yes. Then I did it anyway.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted her to like it. She didn't. That's the exciting end of my story.’
Daniel looked at her. ‘Will you show me a sign you do like?’
She pointed across the road to the bakery. Her dark green letters curved above its window.
‘Those?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He slowed down to look. There was nothing for her to do while he looked. He was not complimenting her to hurry her away from a painful subject. He was examining the little flourish at the end of the name.
‘I like the last letter,’ he said.
‘So do I.’
They carried on. Leah felt a small, stupid burst of pride.
Anna was home when they reached the house. She sat on the stairs with a pair of trousers across her knees, talking into her phone. She waved them past.
‘No,’ she said to the caller, ‘you can't solve it by bending less. You have to walk onstage. Give me an hour.’
Daniel pulled off his muddy boots.
Anna finished the call. ‘I'll eat at the theatre. Don't wait for me.’
He nodded. She looked up at him. ‘Did you see it?’
‘Briefly.’
‘That counts. You waited three days for one on that awful holiday.’
‘You enjoyed the arcade.’
‘I enjoyed the arcade because you put me in a hut in the rain.’
‘You chose the hut.’
Anna considered this, then laughed. ‘I did. It had a pretty roof. Never choose accommodation by its roof.’
She stood and held the trousers against Daniel's legs.
‘Too short,’ he said.
‘I know. I'm judging how much.’
Leah went upstairs while they argued mildly about whether an audience could see ankles from the back row.
In her room she answered the wedding message. It isn't happening. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner.
Then she sent Mira a proper answer about Thursday. Yes. Cinema. I need to see your questionable woman.
She sat on the bed with her phone in her lap. Owen used to make her laugh until strangers looked round. She missed him so much that her mouth hurt.
She had enjoyed being wanted beside the river. That was true as well, and harder to excuse.