Dan looked at the closed back-room door, then back at Ruby.
‘I paid her to help,’ he said.
‘Help you do what?’
‘Get a chance to talk to you. Work out what you needed. I couldn't do it by sending another message you'd leave unanswered.’
Ruby's mouth felt dry. ‘So you paid my friend instead.’
‘She needed money. It could help both of us.’
‘How much?’
‘Six hundred.’
‘You've paid her six hundred pounds?’
‘Four hundred so far. Two lots of two hundred. The last one was for when we'd got through the launch.’
Ruby put her hand flat on her own leg. She could feel every seam of her jeans.
‘Got through it how?’
Dan hesitated. ‘Together.’
‘And when did this start?’
He named a week. Ruby counted backwards without meaning to. It was before Mae had arrived with the bags Ruby carried upstairs for her. Before the long night she'd cried with relief at having someone else in the flat.
‘Before she moved in?’
‘A few days before.’
She looked at him until he looked away.
‘Did you ask her to move in with me?’
‘No. She already needed somewhere. I didn't arrange that.’
‘What did you arrange?’
‘For her to let me know how you were. What might make you willing to see me. I didn't ask her for anything horrible.’
‘You asked her for things I wasn't telling you.’
He moved the folder away from the edge of the table. Ruby watched him straighten it and wanted to push it onto the floor.
‘She said you'd been frightened about the display stuff. That you felt as if you'd be borrowing from everyone and nobody would take you seriously. I had the risers. I could do something useful.’
‘And you thought paying her made that all right?’
‘I thought you knew. She told me she'd explained it as practical help. She said you were softening, but you didn't want to be rushed.’
Ruby stared at him. The room smelt too strongly of flour now. The faint warmth from the ovens pressed against her face.
‘I told you on the phone,’ she said. ‘I'm not coming back. My stall, my sign, no joint launch. What part of that sounded like softening?’
‘You were willing to use the equipment.’
‘After I told you exactly what it meant.’
Dan's jaw tightened. ‘I wanted to believe her. Is that what you want me to say? I wanted to believe I hadn't lost you completely.’
He sounded like himself now. Sad, frustrated, impatient with a thing he couldn't fix by doing more.
Ruby stood up. The chair caught against the cupboard. She moved it clear before picking up her bag.
‘I came here because I thought I could borrow two things without borrowing our life again.’
‘You still can.’
‘No.’
‘Ruby, the things are just things. Don't make the market harder than it needs to be.’
She could see the risers in the hall store. Her bowls in clean rows. Her own name above them. She had tried to make every condition simple enough to be understood.
‘I'm not deciding the equipment now,’ she said. ‘I'm going home.’
Dan got up too. ‘Let me talk to her.’
‘Don't ring her before I get there.’
He looked at her, then towards his phone on the table.
‘I need to ask her myself,’ Ruby said. ‘You owe me that much.’
‘All right.’
‘And don't give her the last two hundred.’
‘I wasn't going to, if—’
‘If what?’
He stopped. Ruby didn't help him finish. They both knew what he'd been about to say.
She went to the door. Before she opened it, she turned back.
‘Did you tell her to cancel Jonah's stall?’
Dan looked genuinely startled. ‘No. I didn't know she'd done that.’
‘She has.’
‘I didn't ask her to.’
Ruby believed him about that. It didn't improve anything else.
In the shop, someone moved aside to let her pass. She kept her face still until she reached the street. Then she stopped at the corner and pressed her hand over her mouth.
Mae had sat beside her when she'd talked about the café. Ruby remembered her head resting on her shoulder, the way she'd said she was interesting to her. She'd told her because the story was embarrassing and small, because Mae could be trusted with things Ruby wouldn't say out loud to anybody else.
She thought of Mae taking pictures of the stall. Mae telling Dan not to come to the flat. Both had happened. She had heard the second one herself.
Ruby couldn't make them sit beside the money.
Her phone rang. Mae's name filled the screen.
Ruby answered.
‘How did it go?’ Mae asked.
Ruby watched a woman lift a child over a puddle. Everything around her kept moving.
‘I'm coming home,’ she said. ‘Will you be there?’
‘Yes. Are you all right?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Of course,’ Mae said.
Ruby ended the call before she said anything else. She walked home with the bag pulled tight against her side, taking the direct route, past all the familiar shops.