On Friday, Mary worked until three and then stopped, though she hadn't finished. She couldn't keep a wedding deadline in one corner of her head and a client's layout in the other without making mistakes in both.
She saved the file and took the hotel folder to the kitchen table.
Ruth had rung that morning about the four thousand pounds. Mary had asked her to wait until the deposit was paid, then send it directly to the Fernleigh. The hotel had reminded Mary that the date would be secured when her deposit arrived before five.
Adam came at half past three. He had paint near the cuff of his shirt and a tired crease between his eyebrows.
“Long day?” she asked.
“A ladder that wouldn't sit where I wanted it.”
He kissed her, then looked at the folder. The crease stayed.
Mary opened the payment page. Nine hundred pounds. She had put the amount aside, but it looked larger when it was about to leave her account.
She turned the laptop towards him. Adam read the booking details without speaking.
“You look uneasy,” Mary said.
He sat beside her. “There's a lot happening.”
“Are you having doubts about us?”
“No.”
She waited.
He looked at the screen. “I know how I was after January. I don't want you thinking that's what this is. Another person I'm trying to hold on to because somebody else didn't want me.”
The name he had refused came back between them. Mary could remember his palms moving against his trousers, her own anticipation of seeing him disappearing into the argument.
“I still don't know who she was,” she said.
“I know.”
“And I haven't suddenly become happy about you refusing.”
He looked at her. “I know that too.”
She would have liked him to put the missing answer on the table without another question. He didn't. He could sit here while she chose a future and still keep something from her. The fact wasn't smaller because he looked sorry.
Mary moved her hand away from the keyboard.
“I don't want her to keep being brought out whenever you need to explain something,” she said. “You can tell me you want me. You can show me what you do when we disagree. But she doesn't answer it for you.”
“You're right.”
She wasn't asking to be told she was right either. She looked out of the window, at the narrow strip of sky above the opposite building.
He kept his hands in his lap as Mary drew the laptop back towards her.
She looked at him beside her and pictured him waiting in the room at the Fernleigh. She wanted to walk towards him. She wanted it now, while there was still time to choose otherwise.
“I want this,” she said. “There are things I'm not satisfied about. Paying doesn't make them disappear.”
“No.”
She entered her details. At the last button, she paused, felt how much she wanted to press it, and pressed it.
The confirmation appeared at four seventeen.
For a moment nothing else changed. Her kitchen was still too small. The laundry still needed folding. Then Adam reached for her, and she stood up into his arms.
“We're getting married,” she said against his shirt.
“We are.”
She leaned back to look at him. He was smiling now. She kissed him, relief and excitement arriving together, and wanted to call June and tell her she could put the date in her calendar.
They read the confirmation once. The twentieth of June, two o'clock, ceremony and garden room. Mary saved it, then sent it to Ruth with a message that the date was secured.
Her mother replied that she would make the transfer now. By the time Mary and Adam had decided what to eat, the hotel had acknowledged Ruth's advance too. Mary saved that separately before shutting the laptop.
He asked if she'd like to go out to celebrate. She wanted to stay. She had food, and they could eat here, in the kitchen she'd pictured sharing long before she'd met him.
“Here?” he asked.
“Here.”
He took the folder off the table to make room for plates. Mary put it on the new shelf, where it wouldn't have to be moved every time she wanted breakfast.
For that evening, she let herself cook dinner with him and be glad.