Daniel came in with a small padded envelope and stopped when he saw Leah in the hall.
‘Anna's told me,’ she said.
He did not ask what about.
‘She's leaving tomorrow.’
‘Yes.’
‘You knew when you welcomed me here.’
He put the envelope on the table beside the photograph. ‘I did.’
Leah looked at the photograph too. Her father leaning against a gate. They were all meant to gather beneath it tomorrow, in a house where nothing was as she had thought.
‘Why didn't you tell me?’
‘I thought Anna should tell you. She asked for that. And I didn't want you to walk in and see a failed marriage.’
‘Was it six weeks ago?’
‘Six weeks before you arrived. She told me she wanted to leave. I asked her to take some time. She agreed to stay until after tomorrow.’
‘Did you think she'd change her mind?’
‘Yes.’
He sounded almost angry with himself. Leah had not heard that from him before. Daniel usually made a difficulty smaller by naming the thing that could be done next.
‘I didn't know,’ she said.
‘No.’
He took off his jacket. Beneath it his shirt was creased at the shoulder, and there was a little streak of pencil on the cuff. He must have been drawing before he went out.
Leah followed him into the sitting room. She could have gone upstairs. She wanted to stay near him instead. Knowing Anna wanted to leave made the want stronger and more troubling. She could see the opening her mind had found, and she was ashamed of how quickly it found it.
Daniel stood beside the window. The light lay across his face.
‘I'm sorry you found out like that,’ he said.
‘Everyone keeps being sorry I found out.’
He looked at her. ‘You're right.’
She folded her arms. He did not reach for her.
‘I liked the walk,’ she said.
‘So did I.’
‘I wasn't only interested in the bird.’
He stayed very still.
Leah could hear Anna moving something in the dining room. A trunk lid closed. It was a reminder she ought to have needed less.
‘I know you're married,’ she said. ‘I knew that on Wednesday too.’
‘I should have been more careful.’
‘That's not what I asked you to say.’
He turned from the window. ‘I wanted you there. I wanted you to enjoy it with me. I wanted you to look at the drawings again.’
There was no polished promise in it. Just the particular things he had wanted. Leah took a step towards him.
She touched the mark on his cuff with her thumb. He looked down at her hand, then put his fingers round hers.
It was different from Owen. Daniel waited long enough for her to pull away. She did not. She could feel the quiet attention she had liked beside the river, but now all of it was on her.
He bent his head.
Leah wanted the kiss. She wanted to be the woman someone leaned towards, the person whose arrival changed a room. For a few seconds she let herself move closer.
Then she put her free hand against his chest.
‘Wait.’
He stopped. His hand opened immediately.
She kept her palm against his shirt until she could make herself step back.
‘Anna's in the next room,’ she said. ‘You're married. I kissed Owen today and I still don't know what I'm doing.’
Daniel moved away from the window. The space between them was suddenly large.
‘I didn't know you'd kissed him.’
‘I don't owe you not kissing him.’
‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘You don't.’
His voice had become firm, as though he needed to say it to himself as well.
Leah sat on the edge of the sofa. Her heart was beating hard. She had stopped because she wanted to stop, not because the desire had gone. That made it harder to know where to put her hands.
‘What did you expect me to do when Anna left?’ she asked.
Daniel remained standing. ‘I hoped you might stay.’
‘In the room?’
‘Yes. For longer.’
‘How much longer?’
He looked towards the door. ‘I don't know. I hadn't thought it through.’
‘You'd thought about something. Tell me.’
He rubbed the back of his neck.
‘Ruth said you were wondering about staying. After Anna went. She said you'd raised it yourself, that you could imagine making a home here. I knew it couldn't be that simple. I liked hearing it anyway.’
Leah stopped moving.
‘Mum said I'd raised it?’
‘On Wednesday. After we came back from the river. She called while you were upstairs.’
‘I didn't even know Anna was leaving.’
Daniel looked at her. The embarrassment on his face changed to something more serious.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I never said that to her.’
He sat on the chair opposite, slowly.
Leah looked around the room: the bookcase where the piano had been, her bag beside the sofa, the door through which her mother had invited her into a safe place.
‘Did Mum put me here to take Anna's place?’
Daniel did not say it was a terrible thing to ask.
‘I don't know what she intended. But she told me you could see yourself staying when Anna left. I should have asked you what you meant.’ He swallowed. ‘I should have asked whether you'd said it at all.’
Leah stood up.
‘Did she know you wanted me to stay?’
‘I said I couldn't decide your life for you. But I didn't tell her to stop saying it.’
‘Why would she be so worried about you leaving here?’
He looked down at his hands. ‘When Anna told her, Ruth asked me whether I'd keep the house. I said I couldn't promise to stay in it on my own. It's big. I don't know what I'll want.’
Leah saw the greenhouse door, her mother's muddy boots under the bench, Daniel holding her coat. She had thought Ruth wanted Anna and Daniel happy because she loved them. Perhaps she did. She had also looked more frightened at Daniel asking her to leave than she had when Leah accused her of lying.
‘I'm going to ask her,’ Leah said.
She went straight into the dining room.
Anna looked up from the costume. ‘What is it?’
‘Mum told Daniel I'd said I could see myself staying here after you left. Like this was going to become my home.’
Anna put down the needle.
Daniel stopped in the doorway behind Leah. ‘That's what she told me.’
‘I hadn't said anything,’ Leah told her sister. ‘I didn't know there was an after you left. I'm going to Mum's now.’
Anna stood. ‘I'm coming.’
‘So am I,’ Daniel said. ‘I need to be there when she answers that.’
Leah took her jacket from the chair. She called Ruth as she walked into the hall.
‘I'm coming over,’ she said when her mother answered. ‘Anna and Daniel are coming too. I want to know why you told him I'd asked to stay after Anna left.’
‘Leah—’
‘We'll be there in a few minutes.’
She ended the call and opened the door.