Sam put his keys on the table, picked them up, then put them down again.
“I'll talk to her.”
“I just did.”
“She might listen to me.”
Nell looked at him.
“Not because I'm me,” he said. “Because I'm not involved.”
“You're in the middle of it. She said it was you making me ask.”
“Christ.”
He sat down opposite her. His dinner was on the counter under an upside-down plate. Nell had interrupted him halfway through making it. Now neither of them wanted to eat.
“I could show her your messages,” he said. “All the stuff you sent me. You were happy for her.”
“She knows.”
Nell rubbed her hands together. They still hadn't warmed up. She'd walked fast, furious with her coat, the wind, a woman who had stopped in the middle of the pavement to look at her phone. Now she was here and there was nothing to hit.
Sam came around the table and knelt beside her chair.
“Hey.”
She bent forward into him. He held her until she could swallow without the little jump in her throat.
“I feel greedy,” she said against his shoulder. “I keep saying a hundred and fifty thousand as if anybody owes me that.”
“She promised.”
“She acted like I walked in and took her bag.”
His thumb moved across the back of her hand. “You wouldn't have done this to her.”
Nell pulled away. “I don't know. I've never had three hundred thousand dollars. Maybe I'd turn into an asshole as well.”
“You'd turn into an asshole with excellent shoes.”
She nearly smiled. Then she saw the napkin she'd brought back from his kitchen, folded inside her bag. Their stupid little stand. She'd carried it around like it was already a place they could go.
“We're not buying anything,” she said.
“I know.”
“Even if she says she'll pay for part of it.”
Sam stood. “We haven't heard what she'd offer.”
“I have. She'll work out what I need.”
He leaned against the counter. The plate over his dinner rattled when his elbow caught it.
“It's still money.”
Nell looked away.
“Forget I said that,” he added. “You don't have to take her charity.”
On her phone was a message from Iris.
You left the coat. Please don't stay out just to prove a point.
Nell deleted the reply she'd started. Then she typed a different one and deleted that too.
Sam saw the name on the screen. “What does she want?”
“Me to be less inconvenient.”
“Tell her you can be a lot more inconvenient.”
Nell looked up at him.
He was watching her phone. “She wouldn't like Ben knowing what happened at my birthday.”
For a few seconds she could hear only the hum of his little fridge.
“We said that was over,” she said.
“You said. I didn't get much say.”
“You didn't want me to tell him.”
“I didn't want a fight with some bloke I barely knew.”
He turned a cup around on the counter. Nell remembered the night too clearly: Sam finding her outside the bathroom, his expression so serious that she'd thought he was about to break up with her. Instead he'd told her Iris had kissed him. He'd stepped back. Iris had followed him and tried to apologize before he could leave the room.
Later, at home, Iris had cried into her sleeve. Nell had sat beside her on the bed until almost morning.
Ben had been away that weekend. She'd agreed he didn't need to hear about it. It was one kiss, Sam hadn't wanted it, and everybody was sorry.
“She wants him to move in,” Sam said now. “She wants that nice new house. You know something she'd pay not to have him hear.”
Nell's stomach tightened. “You make it sound simple.”
“I'm not telling you to do it.”
“You just did.”
He put both hands on the counter. “I'm angry too, Nell.”
Her phone lit again.
We can still have everybody round Thursday. Please don't cancel on me.
Iris had arranged a small dinner to celebrate the payment. Nell had agreed to bring bread from the bakery before their talk. Four people around their own kitchen table. Iris wanted it to go ahead as though there wasn't an empty place where Nell's half should be.
Nell picked up the phone.
Sam straightened. “What are you going to say?”
She didn't answer him. She pressed the button for a voice message because typing wasn't going to sound like enough.
“Iris. We made a promise. I want the half. If you won't give it to me, I'm telling Ben what happened at the birthday. I mean it.”
She stopped recording. Her own words sat in a little bar on the screen.
“Listen to it first,” Sam said.
Nell hit send.
The room went quiet. She could no longer decide to be somebody who hadn't done it.
Sam took her phone gently from her hand and set it facedown.
“Come on,” he said. “Eat something.”
He uncovered his dinner and got her a fork. She took three bites because she was hungry, though she hated finding out she was hungry at a time like this.
Iris didn't answer.
Nell stayed at Sam's that night. In bed he held her against him, his mouth warm in her hair. She wanted him, and she wanted not to think. When he asked if she was all right, she pulled his hand closer and told him to stay there.
But later, when he was asleep, she checked her phone.
The message had been played.
She listened to it herself, quietly, holding the speaker against her ear. There was no tremble in her voice. She sounded like somebody she wouldn't want to meet.
She could still take it back. She opened Iris's name and stared at the blank space for a reply.
Then she put the phone away.
In the morning she went home for her uniform. Iris's bedroom door was closed. The coat bag stood where Nell had left it, blocking the chair.
Nell moved it to the floor so she could sit down and put on her work shoes. Then she left for the bakery.