Ruth put my case at the bottom of the stairs and asked whether I wanted food or a shower.
“Shower,” I said.
“Food after?”
I nodded.
“Good. Towels are where they always were.”
She didn't ask me to sit down and explain before I could go upstairs. I took clean clothes from the case, found a towel in the cupboard and shut the bathroom door.
The water was hot. I stood under it longer than I needed to, watching a tiny shred of leaf wash away from my ankle. I didn't know how it had got there. I had been working with flowers when the day still looked like a day I could manage.
When I came out, Ruth had carried the case to my room. The box stood beside the bed. I put on soft trousers and a clean T-shirt and sat on the edge of the mattress.
My phone lit up.
Bea had sent, Have you arrived?
I answered, Yes. I'm safe. I said not tonight.
She replied, Okay.
Nothing else came. I put the phone on the desk.
Downstairs, Ruth had made cheese on toast. She'd cut hers in half and left mine whole.
“Less washing up than cooking properly,” she said.
“You could have left it for me.”
“I know. Sit.”
I sat. Her table had a little ring of water beside a jug, and the unopened post was still stacked near the wall. She moved the post aside to make room for my plate.
I ate a few bites before I could speak.
“Bea knew,” I said.
Ruth put her toast down.
I told her about the deposit and six months' rent. About Nate knowing before I arrived. She listened without reaching for her phone or asking whether she should call anyone.
When I finished, she sat back.
“I'm glad you called me.”
“I didn't know who else to call.”
“That's enough.”
I drank some water. I hadn't realised how thirsty I was.
“I don't want to talk about it all night,” I said.
“Then we won't.”
She picked up her toast again. We ate in quiet. I could hear the fridge and a television in the room next door, which Ruth had left on without watching. Someone on it was cheerfully explaining how to make a salad I didn't want.
I laughed suddenly, once.
Ruth looked up.
“Sorry. There's a salad,” I said.
She listened to the television. “There usually is.”
I laughed again, then started crying. It happened so quickly I couldn't put the glass down neatly. Water spilled over my fingers.
Ruth took the glass and moved her chair beside mine. I leaned into her, and she held me while I cried into her sleeve.
When I stopped, Ruth gave me a tea towel because it was nearer than the tissues. It smelled of clean cotton and the cupboard.
“Very elegant,” I said, pressing it to my face.
“Only the best.”
She stayed beside me until I could breathe without catching. Then she got up to find the emergency cake.
“It has waited patiently,” she said.
I couldn't eat much. She cut me a small piece and wrapped the rest. Having something saved for later felt unexpectedly kind.
I went upstairs with my phone. There was a message from the guesthouse manager about Monday: the room would be ready, and she would meet me when I arrived. I had read it that morning without answering properly.
I wrote back that I was still coming on Monday, with Ruth driving me.
Then I opened the photograph she'd sent of the room. A narrow bed, a desk under the window, a wardrobe that looked older than Ruth's car. The window faced the side garden, where somebody had planted lavender that leaned over the path.
It was the room I'd accepted before any of this. Not a place I had to run to because the wedding had gone wrong.
I pictured the lamp on the desk. My coat on the hook. A shift at the front desk, then an evening when I could decide what to eat without being watched.
I wanted that evening.
Ruth knocked and came in carrying the navy dress. She had taken it out of the case and hung it on a hanger.
“It'll need attention,” she said.
“Doesn't everything?”
She put it on the wardrobe door. “This is easier than most things.”
I showed her the room picture. She stood beside the desk and looked.
“Nice window.”
“It opens.”
“Luxury.”
“I could get the bus back tomorrow,” I said.
She looked at me instead of the screen. “Do you want to?”
I thought about it. Leaving Bellmere tomorrow would mean not walking past the house again, not seeing the flowers or the chairs or anybody's face when they asked what I was doing on Saturday.
It would also mean changing a plan I had liked because I couldn't bear to sit in the same town for two more days.
“No,” I said. “I want to keep Monday.”
“Then we'll keep it.”
“And I'll stay through Saturday. Here.”
“All right.”
I looked down at my phone.
“I'd like to say goodbye to Nate before I go. When I'm ready.”
“All right,” Ruth said.
“It doesn't mean I'm going to the wedding.”
“I didn't think it did.”
She touched the top of the wardrobe to check the dress wasn't caught, then went downstairs.
I unpacked the case. Not all of it. Just enough to stop living out of a bag. I put the books on the desk, the clothes in the drawer and the blue fish clip on the windowsill beside the paperback I'd left here in the summer.
The key to Bea's flat wasn't in my pocket anymore. I noticed its absence when I bent to lift the empty case. Then I noticed the weight of the books, the sound of Ruth moving around downstairs, the room that was here without anyone asking me to smile first.
I plugged in my phone and climbed into bed.
On Monday, Ruth would drive me to the coast. Tomorrow I could wake up in this room, eat breakfast and decide what I wanted to do next.