Graham was sitting beside the reception desk when Claire reached the Lantern. The coat lay over his knees. She stopped with her bag still on her shoulder.
“Leave it here,” she said.
“It's hers. I'd like to give it to her.”
Beth and Vivian were already upstairs with Caroline. Claire could hear the lift returning. A receptionist looked up from her screen, waiting to know whether this was trouble.
“I'll ask if she wants it brought up. Wait here.”
“Fine.” He laid a hand on the coat. “Ask her.”
Claire took the stairs. She was rehearsing how to tell Vivian that Graham was downstairs without admitting that she'd shown him the room he had come to stop her entering. On the first-floor landing she took out her phone. She could text Beth before opening Caroline's door.
From inside came a laugh, then Caroline saying she wasn't coming out until Beth promised not to look disappointed. Claire put the phone away. She would let the fitting finish first. She could send him away afterward, without making Beth spend another appointment thinking about him.
Caroline Dace did not want to step away from the mirror.
She had come out of the bathroom holding the dress up beneath her chin, certain it would not fit, and Beth had persuaded her to let it fall properly before deciding. Now she stood in the green skirt and ran both hands down her sides.
“It feels different,” she said.
“You can lift your arms.”
“I didn't want it loose.”
“It isn't. You can still lift them.”
Caroline did, slowly. Beth watched the shoulder seam, not her face, while Vivian held the lower fabric clear of the carpet. The dress moved, settled, stayed where it should.
“Oh,” Caroline said.
Claire knew that oh now. She kept the camera down. The picture could wait until the woman knew how to inhabit what she wore.
They were in a large bedroom at the Lantern Hotel, with a window facing the back garden instead of the river. Caroline had apologized for the light as though she had installed the window. Claire said it was good, which it was. Beth had cleared space near a standing mirror and spread a sheet to catch stray threads. A tray of untouched tea occupied the desk.
“Turn for me,” Beth said.
Caroline turned. Vivian let the hem go and stood.
“That's lovely,” she said.
“You don't have to say that.”
“I didn't yesterday.”
Caroline laughed. Beth touched the back of the dress, a tiny adjustment Claire would never have seen from the chair.
“You were going to have something taken in at the waist,” Caroline said.
“I changed the seam here instead.”
“Can I see?”
Beth turned the seam out far enough to show her where she'd taken it in. Caroline leaned closer, then felt along the stitching with her fingertip.
“I've got another dress at home,” Caroline said. “Quite different. Would you do that too?”
“Send me a picture first.”
“And my niece—she's always complaining she can't find someone who understands what she means. I'll tell her.”
Beth smiled without looking away from the seam. “I'd like that.”
When Caroline was ready, Claire took three photographs by the window. Ordinary body. She asked the woman to look toward the garden, then talk to Beth. In the second picture Caroline was laughing, one hand resting easily at her hip. She asked to see it and went quiet in a pleased way.
“That's me,” she said.
“It is.”
“Not the way I usually look in pictures.”
Claire left the answer to her. Caroline handed the camera back gently, as though the image could spill.
There was a knock at the door.
Claire glanced at the clock. Forty minutes since the lobby. She had not asked Vivian about the coat.
Beth went to open it, expecting the extra tea Caroline had ordered. Graham stood in the corridor holding a dark coat over one arm.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to interrupt. Vivian left this.”
Vivian had turned before he finished her name. Claire saw her face close, the ease of the last half hour gone.
Beth remained in the doorway. “We're working.”
“I can see. Just a minute.”
“Leave it with me.”
He smiled past her at Caroline. “Your dress is wonderful.”
Caroline pulled her hand from her hip. “Thank you.”
“Viv, can I speak to you?”
Beth didn't move. “After.”
“It's about the samples.”
Vivian looked at him, then at the clock on the desk. It was a little before three. Evan was due at half past.
“What about them?”
“I have to decide whether to cancel an order.”
“You can tell me here.”
His eyes flicked toward Caroline. “I'd rather not.”
Claire stepped closer. “I told you to wait downstairs.”
“I saw where you went.” He adjusted the coat over his arm. “I wasn't going to sit there all afternoon.”
“You knew she was working.”
Graham looked at her. “Yes. You told me.”
Beth turned.
The room became quiet enough to hear the fan in the bathroom. Claire held the camera at her side and felt its weight as if she had just taken it out of the bag.
“Claire?” Beth said.
“I told him you'd be here. Not that he could come.”
“I didn't need permission,” Graham said, still almost pleasant. “I brought a coat.”
Vivian moved past Beth into the corridor. Claire followed before she could decide whether following was another thing she had not been asked to do. The door remained open behind them. Caroline stood in a paid-for dress inside a paid-for private room, watching people who had brought something unwanted through it.
“What order?” Vivian asked.
“The printed lengths. The supplier wants confirmation.”
“I told them we needed a day.”
“You told them. The money comes from me.”
Vivian took the coat, folded it over her arm as he had held it. “Then don't pay.”
“You don't mean that.”
“I do.”
He looked at the coat instead of her face. “You've spent months on it.”
“I know.”
“You don't have to lose it because things have become difficult.”
Claire could feel Vivian wanting the words. Graham knew what mattered. He had walked into Beth's work carrying a coat and found the thing Vivian had not managed to leave behind.
“You could come home,” he said. “We could go through it. One hour. That's all I'm asking.”
“She's meeting Evan,” Claire said.
He turned his head toward her. “That's her choice.”
Vivian's face flushed. Claire wished she had not spoken of the meeting as if it belonged to her.
“I haven't forgotten,” Vivian said.
Graham stepped closer. He spoke softly, but Claire was near enough to hear.
“And what will you tell him? That you pushed Sam and drove away?”
Vivian looked toward the open bedroom door. Beth stood there, with Caroline just visible behind her.
“Don't,” Vivian said.
“I'm not trying to hurt you.”
“Then stop.”
“I'm trying to make you think. His brother wants someone to blame. Do you believe one conversation makes that better?”
“She can speak for herself,” Beth said.
“I'm speaking to her.”
“In my client's corridor.”
Graham looked at Caroline and lowered his voice further. “I'm sorry. This wasn't meant to involve anyone else.”
Caroline turned away into the room. Claire heard a hanger scrape against the wardrobe rail.
“You've involved her,” Beth said.
Vivian took a step toward the stair. “I'll talk to him outside.”
Beth caught her hand, not her arm. “You don't have to go.”
“I know.”
“You can stay here.”
“I know.”
Graham waited. It was the waiting Claire hated most, his knowledge that Vivian was deciding between futures and one of them had no printed coat, no supplier order, no way to explain to Sam's brother why she hadn't called for help.
“An hour,” Vivian said to him.
“Of course.”
She looked at Claire. Her face had an anger in it Claire had not yet seen directed toward her.
“You shouldn't have told him.”
Claire began to answer, but Vivian was already going toward the stair. Graham followed a few paces behind her, his hands empty now that she had the coat.
Beth stood in the doorway until they had gone. Then she turned back into the room.
Caroline had removed the dress and was folding her own cardigan over a chair. The green fabric lay on the sheet, no longer occupied.
“I'm sorry,” Beth said.
“So am I.”
“This should never have happened at your appointment.”
Caroline nodded. She looked at Claire's camera, then away.
“Please don't send the photographs today,” she said. “I'll let you know.”
“They're only for you,” Claire said.
“I understand.”
Beth knelt to pick up the dress. She smoothed the green fabric across her knees, marked the tiny adjustment they had found, and accepted the balance of the payment without mentioning the other dress or the niece.
In the lift down, Beth stood far from Claire though there was nobody else in it.
“I wanted him to leave her alone,” Claire said.
Beth kept looking at the closed doors. “You showed him where she was.”
The lift opened onto the lobby. They went into the lounge to wait for Evan. The chairs, the round window, the brass lamp. Claire could have placed him in the exact position from the image. Vivian wasn't there.
He arrived at half past three carrying nothing but his phone. He saw their faces and stopped.
“What happened?”
Beth told him. She didn't mention the forecast until Claire did.
“I showed Graham the picture,” Claire said. “Last night. I thought if he knew they'd meet—”
“Why would you do that?” Evan asked.
She looked at the chair where Vivian should have been.
“I wanted the conversation to happen.”
“She agreed to it.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you need to make him know?”
Because he'd wanted an answer and she wanted to be the person who helped him get it. Because she had been right about Beth's hand. Because the image had made a hoped-for hour look like something she could promise.
“I thought it would stop him trying to prevent it,” she said.
Evan looked at the empty chair. “It told him how.”
No one sat down. A waiter approached, then recognized something in Beth's face and passed them without asking.
They left separately. At home that evening Claire opened the forecast. Vivian remained in the green chair, speaking or about to speak. Evan leaned toward her. The meeting was still there, in the file, although it had never happened.
Beth sent a message after eight.
Caroline doesn't want me to do the second dress. She's not passing my name on.
Claire typed an apology, erased it, and called. Beth didn't answer.