On Friday morning, Mary took the hotel folder down from the shelf. It had slipped behind a cookbook. She had to move the book to get it out, a small nuisance that made her start crying before she'd even opened the folder.
She sat at the table until she could read the page. The twelfth of June. The cancellation date was there in the terms she'd asked for before paying.
She rang the Fernleigh and said she wanted to cancel. The woman asked for the booking, then went quiet while she found it. Mary knew there were questions she might be asked. She didn't want to explain her mother, or Adam, or how little she had known while choosing the room.
“We aren't getting married,” she said when the woman came back.
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
The kindness was ordinary. Mary nearly cried again.
The woman could send the cancellation form by email.
Mary said she'd come in. She was tired of looking at the room in her head. She wanted to go there once without pretending it was still hers.
At the hotel, people were checking out with overnight bags. A man waited beside a suitcase while his companion went back upstairs for something she'd forgotten. Mary stood behind them, holding a folder for a stay she would never make.
The woman at the desk directed her to a small table and brought the form. It confirmed the loss of the nine hundred pounds, the release of the rooms and the return of the unused four-thousand-pound advance directly to Ruth. There was no need for a long conversation. Mary read it, signed, and kept her copy.
Nine hundred pounds gone. She could still pay her rent and buy groceries. Losing it would hurt when work was quiet. It wasn't the largest thing she'd lost, but it was real and it was hers.
“May I look in the garden room?” she asked.
The woman checked that it was empty, then showed her through.
The tables were arranged for an ordinary lunch. Beyond the doors, someone was sweeping the terrace. Mary stood where she'd stood beside Adam, pretending not to show how much she liked it.
She had imagined June here, moving her chair to talk to someone. Her mother helping with the dress. Adam reaching for Mary's hand while they both tried to eat without being interrupted.
None of those pictures had to be taken down. They had only been in her head. That made losing them feel strangely lonely.
She walked to the doors, then back. The room was still lovely. She didn't need it to turn ugly to justify leaving it.
At reception she thanked the woman and put the folder in her bag. Outside, the sun was bright enough that she had to narrow her eyes. A car passed with music playing through an open window.
Mary went home.
There were people who needed to know. She wrote one short message to the wedding guests. The wedding on the twentieth was cancelled. She was sorry. She would speak when she could.
June answered that she was there if Mary wanted her. Mary sent back Not yet and put the phone down.
Her mother's dinner invitation was still in the calendar for tomorrow. Mary looked at it for a long time. She could cancel that too. She could turn one terrible evening into not seeing either of them for weeks.
She didn't want to do that with Ruth. She also didn't want to go simply because it was there and her mother had planned it.
Mary picked up the phone.
I'll come tomorrow, on my own. Adam won't be coming. I want to talk to you.
Ruth replied that dinner would still be at seven.
Mary read it without answering. She didn't know whether her mother understood that the meal had changed. Tomorrow she would have to find out.
She put the hotel copy into the folder and the folder into a drawer. Not because it had become unimportant. Because she didn't want it looking at her every time she reached for a book.
In the kitchen she made toast and ate standing up. She had wanted to learn how to make a particular dinner for two, something she could do on an ordinary Friday. She hadn't wanted every meal to become proof that she could manage alone.
She took the plate to the table and sat down instead.
The date was gone.
Mary washed her plate, opened the living-room window and let the sounds of the street into the flat.