Ruby bought a coffee at the Sea Glass café because she had forty minutes before the studio, and because going home would have meant carrying the same box back across town again.
The waitress asked whether she wanted a table for one.
‘My friend's parking,’ Ruby said.
It came out without any preparation. She had looked at the occupied tables, the couples sitting close to the window, and suddenly being on her own had felt like something she needed to explain.
‘Take that one,’ the waitress said. ‘She can find you.’
Ruby sat down at a table for two. Nobody was parking. Nobody was coming.
She spent the first ten minutes wondering whether the waitress would ask. The next ten she looked at the sea and tried not to keep checking the door. By the time she left, she felt more conspicuous than she would have if she'd told the truth.
She wasn't going to tell Jonah about it. Not that evening, when they were walking to his flat above the workshop and she wanted him to think she'd spent the day making beautiful things.
He carried her overnight bag without commenting on its size. She had taken half an hour to pack it and then felt ridiculous for packing it at all. They'd agreed she'd come over, see where he lived and stay if she wanted. She did want. The wanting was making her nervous.
‘These stairs are steep,’ she said.
‘I mentioned them in the brochure.’
‘There was no brochure.’
‘That's why you're here.’
He unlocked the door. Ruby came into a small, untidy room with a wide window, two shelves of records and an armchair upholstered in orange fabric.
She went straight to it.
‘What is this?’
‘My chair.’
‘Did you choose the orange?’
‘Somebody else chose it in about 1974. I chose the chair.’
She sat. It was outrageously comfortable. Jonah watched her change her mind and grinned.
‘No comment?’
‘I'm thinking.’
‘You can think standing up. I'm going to take your coat.’
She let him pull her up, but stayed close to him once she was on her feet. He kissed her before taking the coat. She slipped it off behind her without looking for somewhere to put it.
They spent an hour going through the records. Ruby discovered he liked a singer she had assumed nobody liked on purpose. He discovered she knew every word of a song she claimed to have forgotten. He played it and made her prove she didn't.
She sang the first line badly. Jonah joined in even worse. They didn't get farther than the chorus.
Later they stood at the window watching the darkening street. Ruby recognised the spot where she'd stopped after returning the support. She looked at it until Jonah put his hand against the small of her back.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing I want to do again.’
She turned and kissed him, taking her time. His hand moved up her back. She put her arms round his neck and let herself be wanted without checking what her face was doing.
When he asked whether she wanted to stay, she said yes.
The room was unfamiliar in the dark. She was aware of where her bag was, where she'd dropped her socks, the window left slightly open. Then Jonah touched her cheek, and she stopped thinking about the room.
In the morning she woke to him opening the curtain a few inches, then quietly closing it when he saw the light fall across her eyes.
‘I'm awake,’ she said.
‘You didn't look pleased about it.’
She stretched an arm across the space he'd left. He came back to bed. Ruby laughed when his cold foot found hers, then pinned it between both of her legs to warm it.
‘This is generosity,’ she said.
‘I appreciate it.’
She lay there listening to the traffic begin below them. There was no rush to turn the night into a conversation about what they were. Jonah had a customer coming at ten. Ruby had bowls to finish. She could still keep him here for a few minutes.
She got home late enough that Mae had changed her clothes and early enough that Mae pretended not to have been waiting.
‘Nice time?’ she asked, looking at the overnight bag.
‘Very.’
Mae smiled, but it didn't stay quite long enough. Ruby set the bag down and sat on the sofa.
‘I'm not going to give you details.’
‘Thank God.’ Mae sat beside her. ‘I'm allowed to be worried and still want you to have a nice time.’
‘I know.’
Mae touched Ruby's arm. Ruby leaned back against the cushion. Her happiness wasn't as easy to talk about here as she'd hoped. To fill the space, she told Mae about the orange chair, and then about the café.
‘I actually told her someone was parking,’ she said. ‘At the Sea Glass. Yesterday afternoon. Nobody was coming. I sat opposite an empty chair and kept checking the door like an idiot.’
Mae turned towards her. ‘Oh, Rubes.’
‘I know. It's pathetic.’
‘It's not.’
‘It felt pathetic.’
Ruby pulled at the loose seam in the cushion. ‘Dan always knew someone. We couldn't buy a bottle of shampoo without him stopping to talk to three people. I used to complain. Now I go somewhere and I'm just the woman with the box.’
‘You're allowed to be the woman with the box.’
‘I don't feel very interesting as her.’
Mae rested her head against Ruby's shoulder. ‘You are to me.’
Ruby let her. She hadn't told Jonah about the waitress. It was easier telling Mae, who'd seen her cry in a supermarket car park and once watched her walk into a glass door.
After a while Mae got up and brought Ruby's overnight bag to the sofa.
‘Unpack,’ she said. ‘Then tell me whether the chair really was as orange as you say.’
Ruby found the picture she'd taken of it. Mae's laugh came easily this time. Ruby laughed too, and the empty chair in the café stopped feeling quite so important.