Iris asked for fresh coffee. Nora took the mug to the kitchen, relieved to have been given something she could do right.
“Stronger,” Iris said.
“I remember.”
“You don't always.”
There was enough humour in it that Nora smiled. She rinsed the mug, warmed it and made the coffee the way Iris wanted. Iris watched from the doorway, then came closer when Nora struggled with the packet.
“I'll open that.”
This time Nora let her. Iris took it, tore along the fold and set it down without making the help into an occasion. Nora had missed that, too: someone seeing a small difficulty and not explaining the person who had it.
“Have you eaten?” Nora asked.
“Yes.”
“I've got bread.”
“I've eaten.”
They stood by the counter. The apartment was warmer than it had been when Iris arrived. Nora could feel a dangerous ease growing in the pause, the possibility of behaving as if enough had been said and the rest could wait until later.
“Where are you staying now?” she asked.
Iris told her only that it was temporary.
“A friend's?”
“Someone I know.”
“Is it all right?”
“It's a bed. It isn't mine.”
Nora nodded. There was a way into the offer which sounded like concern because it was concern. She could see Iris in a room chosen by someone else, careful not to put things where they hadn't been invited. She wanted to fix it. She wanted the other things that fixing it might buy.
“I could help you get somewhere.”
Iris looked at her.
“How?”
“Money.”
“You have money.”
“I have some.”
“Of his.”
Nora nodded. She couldn't make it a wage, a loan from a generous stranger, anything that had not begun in the drawer at Wren House.
“It was supposed to be shared,” she said.
“Then it's not helping me. It's giving me what we said.”
“All right.”
Iris took her coffee back to the chair. Nora followed with her own. She sat opposite, carefully, keeping the arm from brushing the cushion.
“How much?” Iris asked.
“Eight thousand.”
It was what Nora could move without asking Cal. A rent deposit, time to find work, ordinary things which would let Iris stop being a guest. It was also the part of the showroom Nora hadn't yet promised away, the possibility of finishing what still needed doing.
Iris looked at her for a long moment.
“You can give me that now?”
“Yes.”
“Not when you've spoken to him?”
“No.”
“Not a little at a time?”
“No.”
Nora could feel the offer becoming real in the room. Iris had not rejected it. She was working out what it could do, just as Nora had when the cash first became more than a story about Dominic.
“I could get a place,” Iris said.
“Yes.”
“Somewhere decent.”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn't have to take whatever came first.”
“That's what I mean.”
Nora leaned forward. She wanted Iris to see she could mean it without every part being ugly.
“I don't want you living like that.”
Iris looked at the scarf, then the bedroom doorway.
“I wasn't always living like that.”
Nora sat back. She deserved the reminder.
“No.”
“What do you want me to do?”
The direct question made the offer harder to keep kind.
“I want us to stop making it worse.”
“Who?”
“Both of us.”
“And Cal.”
“Yes.”
Iris drank some coffee. Nora waited, watching the mug tip, a small, ordinary movement which seemed to hold too much of her future.
“They know I was there,” she said. “They know you hurt me. They know we're not strangers. But the rest of it doesn't have to become something else.”
“It is something else.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You don't want them to know about the money.”
Nora looked at her own mug. She had not drunk from it.
“No.”
“And you want me not to tell them.”
“I want us to speak to people before we decide things. Your solicitor. Mine. We don't have to keep adding—”
“You want me not to tell them.”
“Yes.”
The word was harder than she'd expected. It did not become a smaller bargain because she had admitted it.
Iris put her mug down. Her hand remained near it, fingers spread on her knee.
“And what happens to me about the shove?”
“I can tell them I don't want—”
“They don't have to do what you want.”
Nora stopped. She knew that from the interview, from Mercer's refusal to treat her being alive as the end of the matter. Still, she'd brought it into the offer as if her preference were another form of payment.
“I'll tell them the whole thing about the argument,” she said.
“Except what we argued about.”
“I mean I won't make it sound like you came there to hurt me.”
“I didn't.”
“I know.”
Iris looked at the arm again. This time she did not look away quickly.
“I don't want that on me,” she said.
“What?”
“What happened to you. I don't want to be a person who did that.”
Nora swallowed. The admission made her want to reach across, forgive enough to make something useful possible.
“You didn't mean the glass.”
“I meant to push you.”
“I was holding on.”
“You were.”
Neither said it made them equal. Nora could feel a brief opening where both facts were allowed to stand without one being used to remove the other.
Then Iris said, “I want the money.”
Nora's hope arrived so quickly it frightened her.
“You can have it.”
“But you want it to mean something after I've spent it.”
“I don't.”
Iris gave her a look. Nora heard the lie and let it fall.
“I want to keep the showroom,” she said.
“I know.”
“I put everything I had into it before this. Not just his money. Mine. Years. It isn't as if I woke up and thought I'd like someone else's cash.”
“You did think you'd like it.”
“Yes. I know. But it wasn't all of it.”
Iris waited. Nora wanted her to imagine the room, the customer at the door, Mina's name on the cabinet. All the parts which could be good if they were allowed to exist after the bad beginning.
“I'm good at it,” she said.
“I know you are.”
The kindness in the answer almost undid her. Iris could have sneered, said it wasn't worth anything, made wanting it seem ridiculous. Instead she knew what Nora could do and refused to let that make the bargain innocent.
“You could do it without this,” Iris said.
“Later. Somewhere else. For someone else.”
“Yes.”
“That's easy to say when it's not yours.”
Iris stood. Nora caught her breath, ready to apologize, but Iris only went to the bathroom. The door shut.
Nora remained on the sofa. She could transfer the money now, without the condition, make it a real offer and let Iris decide what to say. But she did not know whether that would help or simply move stolen money to another account while the police followed it. She had hoped Iris would make the choice which let them stop asking.
In the bathroom the tap ran. Nora looked at the phone on Iris's chair, face down. She could pick it up, read the rest, learn something Iris had kept. The thought came so easily she pressed her hand into the cushion to stop herself.
Iris returned and saw where Nora was looking. She took the phone, put it in her pocket and sat.
“I nearly said yes,” she said.
“You can still.”
“I know.”
“You could have somewhere by next week.”
“Or I could be somewhere else because I've kept lying to the police.”
“I don't mean lie.”
“You mean stop before the bit you don't like.”
Nora looked down.
“Yes.”
Iris's face was tired now. She sat with her coat open, wearing a plain dark top Nora remembered buying food with her in. The clothes had survived the night and the nine days after it. They were not evidence Nora could arrange until they showed a different woman.
“I'm going to tell them,” Iris said.
Nora gripped the edge of the cushion.
“What?”
“What happened. The cash. You. Him. What I did.”
“They'll arrest you.”
Iris looked toward the door.
“They might.”
“For coming here.”
“I know why.”
Nora remembered the invitation on her phone, I'm asking. There was no way to make Iris the only person who'd chosen the meeting.
“I didn't bring you here for that.”
“No. You brought me here for something which worked better for you.”
Nora's eyes filled. She wiped them clumsily, angry with herself for making distress the last thing she could offer.
“I wanted to see you.”
Iris nodded.
“I wanted to see you, too.”
Nora wanted to say it again.
Iris stood and fastened her coat. She took the scarf off the chair, hesitated, then looped it around her neck. Nora watched her settle the ends and felt the loss of the ordinary object more sharply than she expected.
“You should tell yours,” Iris said.
“The police?”
“Your solicitor. Start there, if you can't start with them.”
Nora nodded without promising. Iris knew the difference; she didn't ask her to make it sound better.
At the apartment door they paused. Nora stood close enough to see the small dried place at the corner of Iris's mouth. She wanted to touch it, the foolish intimate wish to repair one thing on a face she had hurt in ways she couldn't reach.
“Will you ring me?” she asked.
“I'm not supposed to.”
“I know.”
“Then don't keep asking me for it.”
Nora opened the door. Iris walked down the stairs, one hand on the banister, taking the scarf with her. Nora waited until the outer door shut before moving.
She returned to the room. There was coffee in both mugs, the cushion still on the floor, no scarf on the chair. The transfer had not been made. Eight thousand pounds remained in her account, looking exactly as available as it had before she tried to use it to keep another woman quiet.