On Wednesday, Daniel put three mugs on the kitchen table.
Then he put one back.
Julian had gone to his flat that morning for clean clothes and a charger. He'd taken the canvas bag with him. Daniel had watched him carry it out and nearly demanded he leave it. The demand would have shown how little trust remained in the meeting he'd arranged. He had let Julian go.
Cole left a message asking him to call about Ada’s report. He played it twice and decided to call after the meeting. He would hear them together first. He did not tell her that Julian had spent another night on his sofa.
He spent the morning downstairs doing no work. A customer rang twice; Daniel sent a message saying he was unavailable. Then he swept the workshop. He found the sliver Julian's bare foot had missed and put it in the sharps tin.
At twelve thirty he took the brass key off its nail and tested the bedroom lock. It turned stiffly. He had meant to see whether it still worked because returning one key did not mean there were no copies, because locks were suddenly things he needed to understand. When the bolt clicked, he stood outside the door with his palm against it.
He left the key on the chest of drawers inside.
Julian arrived just before one. He brought his bag, the charger and a packet of biscuits.
“No,” Daniel said, looking at the packet.
Julian lowered it.
“I wasn't making a point.”
“I don't want lunch laid on.”
He set the biscuits on the workshop bench anyway. Daniel almost put them outside. Instead he led him upstairs.
Ada came five minutes later.
She paused at the stairs, looking at her clogs. She had on Ruth's sweatshirt again, sleeves pushed up. Her bruised wrist seemed more naked for the ordinary lack of concealment.
“Is he upstairs?”
“Yes.”
She checked her borrowed phone.
“Ruth wanted to come.”
“Why didn't she?”
“Because I wanted to speak for myself.”
“Did she say that was a good idea?”
“No.” Ada slid the phone into her pocket. “She knows where I am. I'm calling her after. If I don't, she'll call me until I do.”
“Doesn't sound like Ruth.”
“It sounds exactly like Ruth.”
He almost smiled. Ada saw it begin and looked away before it could turn into anything.
Upstairs, Julian stood beside the table. For an instant the three of them looked like people waiting for someone to put a kettle on.
“Ada,” he said.
“My bag.”
“It's here.”
He lifted the canvas bag onto a chair and opened it. Her smaller bag lay inside, a soft brown leather thing Daniel had bought her at a market. Beside it was her phone, a charger and Julian's laptop.
Ada stepped forwards.
Julian laid a hand on the bag.
“We should talk first.”
Daniel said, “Give it to her.”
Julian looked at him. Then he lifted the brown bag out and set it on the table. Ada reached for her phone. Julian moved it nearer her, not quite giving it into her hand.
“The card,” she said.
“I've kept it safe.”
“Where?”
“In the side pocket.”
He unzipped a narrow pocket in the canvas bag and showed a little plastic case. Daniel hadn't imagined something so small could have occupied the whole house.
Ada reached again.
Daniel said, “Wait.”
She turned towards him.
“We're going to look at it.”
“You said I could get my things.”
“And we are.”
Julian closed the pocket. Ada let her hand fall, but Daniel could feel what that had cost him.
“Where's the camera?” he asked.
“In the bedroom,” she said.
“I want to see it.”
Julian looked towards the door, then took his laptop out of the bag.
“I can show you what you're asking.”
“I asked about the camera.”
“They're different things,” Ada said.
“I know.”
He did not entirely know. That made him angrier.
They moved into the bedroom. Daniel went first, Ada behind him, Julian last with the laptop and both bags. He set Ada's bag and phone on the bed. The room had held two people comfortably enough. With three, the chest of drawers and bed seemed to be in one another's way.
Ada looked at the empty pillow. Her nightshirt was still in the basket. She didn't pick it up.
Daniel touched the carved opening she pointed to. This time he saw it: the tiny round glint set back inside a leaf. He bent close enough that his face became a blur in the mirror. Reaching behind the frame, he found a thin power lead running down behind the drawers to an adapter in the socket, lost among the lamp wires.
“When?” he asked.
Julian set the laptop on the bed.
“When you were doing the hotel windows. You were away.”
“Four months ago.”
“Yes.”
Ada stood with her back to the wall beside the door. “I was at work.”
Daniel looked at Julian's hands. He imagined them moving the mirror, opening its back, placing the little eye inside the black frame. His own bedroom, his own absence, turned into time useful to someone else.
“Did you watch from your flat?”
“No. It wasn't connected to a network. It recorded on the card.”
“And you came back.”
“Once.”
“To change it.”
“Yes.”
Julian began to open the laptop.
“It only keeps so much. It records over the older—”
“Don't explain how efficient it was.”
Julian stopped.
Daniel stood with the bed between him and the two people who knew what had happened to him. He had brought them here so that he wouldn't have to imagine one speaking in the other's absence. Now he wanted one of them gone, and couldn't choose which.
Ada said, “I'm sorry I didn't tell you on Sunday. I should have called you upstairs.”
“You should have called me a long time before that.”
“Yes.”
Julian looked up from the laptop.
“There are things she did call you for.”
Ada said, “Don't.”
Daniel turned towards the screen.
“Show me.”