On Thursday afternoon Mary had rung Ruth to ask about the café in Brighton. They were thinking of going for their day away. Ruth couldn't remember its name while she was out shopping; she told Mary to stop by later and said she'd put something out for them to eat.
Now she put the salad in the middle of the table and apologised for not having made anything more elaborate.
“We're coming on Saturday,” Mary said. “You don't need to feed us properly twice.”
“I can manage salad.”
Adam moved a glass to make room. Mary watched her mother sit down. Dinner here had become easier since that first formal evening. Ruth asked about work, Mary asked about the hall, and nobody needed to pretend they hadn't heard the answers before.
There was bread, cold chicken and the last of a cake Ruth had bought for a friend. Mary cut the cake into three uneven pieces and took the smallest before her mother could object.
“Did you remember the café's name?” Mary asked.
Ruth poured water into her glass. “There are lots of places.”
“The little café. You went in November,” Mary said. “You stopped because you didn't want to do the uphill walk. Then there was that pudding he bought. You complained and ate it.”
“They brought two spoons anyway,” Adam said.
Ruth looked at him. He picked up his glass.
Mary turned towards him. “Did she tell you about it too?”
He took a drink before answering. “I know the place.”
It had been the younger man, the one whose name she hadn't been given when she'd asked in October. Mary knew that. The story wasn't a trip Ruth had taken alone.
Adam's fork lay beside his plate.
Ruth could have told him the story at the hall. They knew each other there. But he'd answered about the spoons without looking at her, as though he could see them on the table.
The January relationship. A woman he'd wanted enough to rush the next relationship after she left. A name he wouldn't give because he didn't want a conversation with that woman about him. Her mother, who knew him through the hall and had been so careful at their first dinner.
It was a possibility, and it made her feel suddenly cold.
“Adam.”
He looked at her.
“Were you the man who went with Mum that November?”
Neither of them spoke.
Mary could hear the radio in the other room. Ruth had left it on quietly. Someone was discussing the weather for the weekend, a voice continuing into the silence as though this were still an ordinary Thursday.
“Were you her partner?” Mary asked.
Adam's hands lay on either side of his plate. He could tell her no. She had a remembered story and a possibility, not a photograph of the two of them. She waited for him to tell her she had misunderstood.
He looked at Ruth, then back at Mary.
“Yes.”
The answer was small. It was nothing like the size of what it did.
Mary's eyes went to the kitchen doorway. She could see him standing there on the first evening, bringing dishes while she washed her hands upstairs. She had been worried her mother didn't like him. She had wanted them to know each other better.
They had known each other all along.
“It was before you,” Ruth said.
Mary turned towards her.
“Before you met. There wasn't anything going on behind your back.”
“You were with him?”
Ruth put her glass down. “Yes.”
“The man you wouldn't introduce?”
“I didn't know how.”
Mary stared at her. She had respected that answer once. She had left her mother room to decide when to tell her. Now she was sitting in that room with a ring on her hand and no idea what either of them had allowed her to choose.
“When did it end?”
“January,” Adam said.
“The eighteenth,” Ruth added.
Mary remembered him sitting opposite her, refusing the name. He hadn't wanted her having a conversation with this woman about him. They were having it now, all three of them at a table her mother had laid.
“You knew who I meant when I told you I was dating him,” she said to Ruth.
Her mother closed her eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“Not when he came to dinner. Before.”
“When you told me his work.”
Mary had shown her the photograph of the ridiculous pots. Ruth had laughed. She had cautioned her about taking time, then let her arrange the dinner as though a family introduction would be a new thing.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I thought it would end. At first.”
“And then?”
Ruth looked at the ring. “You were so happy.”
Mary drew her hand into her lap. She didn't want her happiness offered back as the reason she'd been kept ignorant.
“I was happy because I didn't know.”
“You were happy with him,” Adam said quietly.
She looked at him. The familiar face wasn't another face now. That was part of the horror. She still knew the man who laughed at her bowling score, who slept on her sofa beneath a blanket. He was also the man who had wanted her mother and refused to tell her.
“You could have said her name,” she said. “When I asked.”
“I could.”
“Before I paid. Before you proposed.”
“Yes.”
She pushed the chair back enough to give herself space. Neither of them reached for her. For once, she was grateful for what they didn't do.
There was another question, older than the proposal. He had asked June to put them together. He had known her name, her work, her face when they met.
Mary put both feet firmly on the floor.
“When you asked to work with me,” she said, “did you already know I was her daughter?”