Ben was outside the café before Tess arrived.
She had spent the bus journey rehearsing another apology. When she saw him, the words went out of her head. He wore yesterday's jacket, zipped badly, and held two takeaway cups.
“They've looked,” he said. “Behind the counter. Under the tables.”
“Nothing?”
He shook his head and handed her a cup.
“I didn't know if you'd eaten.”
“I haven't.”
“It's just coffee.”
Tess didn't like coffee. Ben had never needed to remember that. She took it and said thank you.
He led her inside. A man at the counter looked up as though he recognised Ben's expression more than his face. He let them check the table Tess had used and the strips of floor under the railing outside. There was a gap between two paving stones where the ring could have gone, but the gap held dirt and one cigarette end, nothing else.
Tess crouched too long looking at it. Ben touched her shoulder.
“Where did you go next?”
She stood. “That way.”
They started along the river. She had taken the morning away from work and said she was dealing with something urgent. It had sounded grown-up over the phone. Here she was carrying a cup she didn't want, following the route of the best evening she'd had in months while the man she'd wronged watched her feet.
Ben didn't hurry her. He asked where they'd stopped, which side of the path she'd walked on, whether she'd put the tote down. He was trying to find the ring. Tess had expected him to spend the whole morning angry, and his practical questions made her feel worse.
At the first narrowing of the path she stopped.
“I was here. With the bag on my left.”
“Did you change shoulders?”
“I don't remember.”
She could remember Cal's fingers closing around hers. She could remember the little scar on his thumb. Her own bag might have been on either shoulder.
They looked along the edge where the paving met the grass. Tess put her coffee beside a tree and got down to check a scatter of small stones. One had a greenish edge. She reached for it before she could stop herself.
Just stone.
Ben watched her turn it over and put it back.
They reached the bridge. A bird sat on the same stone below the railing, or one like it. Tess didn't tell Ben about the ducks. She pointed to the spot where she'd stood.
“Here. Then we went on.”
He looked through the bars toward the mud.
“Was the bag over the water?”
“No. It was on my shoulder.”
He nodded and stepped back.
At the bench Tess put the tote on the seat exactly where it had been. She checked beneath the slats, then knelt to look under the bench. Ben searched the narrow strip behind it. A crisp packet caught on his shoe; he picked it up, saw what it was and carried it to the bin.
Tess sat down. Yesterday she had been kissed here. Now her knees were dirty and she couldn't make herself believe there was anywhere left that would give the ring back.
Ben remained standing.
“Was it loose?” he asked. “In the cuff?”
“It was folded.”
“But not closed.”
She shook her head.
He looked away. She heard his breath go out sharply through his nose.
“I thought it would be safer than just dropping it in the bag.”
“Why not keep it on?”
“Because I'd told him. I didn't want it sitting there between us anymore.”
Ben turned back.
Tess wished she hadn't said that. It sounded as if Cal's comfort mattered more than Mara's ring.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
He sat at the other end of the bench before she could say it again.
For a while neither of them moved. Across the river, somebody was washing a window. Tess watched the white cloth go back and forth.
“Mara picked that one herself,” Ben said.
“I know she liked it.”
“We went together. Before we had this flat. It was the first time we could buy anything without having to wait for the end of the month.”
Tess remembered Mara coming to her with the ring, touching the green stone every few minutes while she talked. Tess had taken a photograph of her hand. She had forgotten that until now.
“We looked at a few,” Ben said. “I thought she'd choose something bigger. She tried that one and kept holding her hand up like this.”
He demonstrated awkwardly, palm toward his face. Tess nearly smiled, then couldn't.
“We had a good day,” he said.
She looked at the bench under her hands. She had wanted one good evening. The ring had already belonged to theirs.
“I'll keep looking,” she said.
“We have looked.”
“The café could still call.”
“Yes. It could.”
He rubbed his hands together, brushing away grit, then stood up.
They walked back along the route, checking the other side without talking. At the café Tess collected the cold coffee she'd left by the tree and put it in the bin. Ben gave the man at the counter both their numbers.
Outside, he looked at her tote.
“Check that once more when you get home. Everything out.”
“I will.”
He started to say something else, then stopped. Tess waited.
“Come for supper,” he said at last. “We need to work out what happens.”
“Does Mara want me there?”
“She said to ask you.”
He put his phone in his pocket. Then he went toward his bus, and Tess stood at the café railing, with all the morning still ahead of her.