At Ada's workshop, Daniel put the key in upside down.
Julian waited without correcting him. The restraint made Daniel more embarrassed than a correction would have.
The little unit stood behind a row of shops, beside a bicycle repairer and a café that closed at three. The sign in its window said VALE LETTERPRESS in lettering Ada had cut twice because the first version was too handsome. She had shown Daniel both and said the better one looked as though it wanted a mortgage.
Inside, the press stood beneath a strip light. Type drawers filled one wall. A dozen invitations hung on a line, their pale green leaves interrupted by a smear where something had slipped. On the bench lay a lunchbox, empty except for a fork.
“She was here Saturday,” Daniel said. “I brought her lunch.”
“What did you bring?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. Sorry.”
Daniel went to the small sink. A rag hung over the tap, stiff with blue ink. The window above it was his first job for her: three unequal pieces of textured glass that turned the alley's ugliness into moving light. She'd wanted the bottom pane clear enough to see who was coming. He had tried to persuade her to make the whole thing match.
“She wouldn't let me tidy it up,” he said.
Julian stood beside him, studying the window. “She can be very firm about what she wants.”
Daniel checked beneath the bench, behind a stack of card, inside the lunchbox though he had already looked. Ada's phone wasn't there. Her large orange mug sat on the press bed. It had a little chip in the rim which she called a place for her thumb.
Julian took it off the press.
“She shouldn't leave things here.”
“She wasn't going to run it with a mug on it.”
“I meant it could fall.”
He set it on the bench. Daniel felt foolishly protective of the original position.
The bicycle repairer had seen Ada on Saturday, not Sunday. The woman at the café remembered her arguing cheerfully with a customer about whether a wedding invitation could say “no gifts, especially your presence”. They had laughed together. No one had seen an anxious woman, a man following her, anything Daniel could use.
Julian asked to see the invitations. He ran a finger along the edge of a card without touching the ink.
“This green is new.”
“How would you know?”
“She used to hate green.”
“She doesn't now.”
“No,” Julian said. “Apparently not.”
They walked down to the beach because Ada sometimes went there when she couldn't get a print right. She would bring home a stone she claimed was the exact colour she'd been trying to mix. The stones sat in a jam jar on their kitchen sill, none of them very green.
At the steps Julian held out a hand when Daniel slipped on sand. Daniel took it. His boots were work boots, absurdly heavy for this walk. Julian wore shoes which ought to have been useless on the beach but somehow weren't.
“Did she say she lived alone?” Daniel asked.
“She said she needed space to work.”
“And you believed that for eleven months?”
“She came home.”
The answer stopped Daniel.
“How often?”
“Sometimes twice in a week. Sometimes less. She said you were a friend helping with the workshop.”
“Did she tell you my name?”
Julian looked out at the water. “I didn't understand who you were.”
Daniel wanted a cleaner answer. Instead he looked at the slope of the beach and saw himself walking it with Ada on a night she'd said she had finally finished a job. He had been proud of how little he needed to ask.
They bought coffee from a kiosk. Julian paid before Daniel could find the right pocket. He ordered his own without sugar and Daniel's with milk, then glanced at him.
“Milk?”
“Yes.”
“Lucky guess.”
“Most people take milk.”
“Most people aren't this difficult to buy a coffee for.”
Daniel laughed despite himself. Julian smiled, then winced when it pulled at his cheek.
“Does it hurt?”
“Only when I'm charming.”
They stood with the paper cups between their hands. A gull landed on the bin and watched them with a contractor's impatience.
Daniel's phone vibrated. Calla, returning a message he'd left before dawn. He moved several steps away.
“Any news?” she asked.
“I don't know how to call it news.”
He told her. Saying another husband made it sound like a cheap joke he was trying out.
“Daniel.”
“I know.”
“Have you heard from Ada herself?”
“No.”
“Then you don't know yet.”
He was grateful until she added, “That doesn't mean the version you want is right.”
“I didn't say it did.”
“No. You never say it.”
He watched Julian pick a blown napkin off the sand and put it in the bin. An unnecessary kindness, performed without an audience until Daniel turned.
“I'm sorry I rang you so early,” he said.
“It's all right. I need to go. I've got someone coming to look at the boiler.”
“Are you still in the flat?”
“Yes. It still has a boiler.”
He heard himself smiling. Calla did not want to be brought back into their marriage by a missing woman. He could recognize that much.
“Let me know when you hear,” she said.
He ended the call. Julian didn't ask who it had been.
They walked back past Ada's unit. Daniel wanted to open it again. He wanted to find a job she had left half done, a reason she had to come back before the ink dried.
Julian said, “Would you mind if I used your bathroom?”
The request was so small that Daniel felt the whole day tip towards it. Someone needed something he could actually provide.
“Of course. We're going back.”
At the house Julian took his coat off and held it over his arm. Daniel made no move to take it.
“Do you want me to keep calling places?” Julian asked.
Daniel looked at the stairs, at a pale sock on the third step.
“I think I'd like you to stay for a bit.”