Ruth had laid the table for two on Saturday. Mary noticed it before she took her coat off. There was no extra chair waiting to be explained away.
“Thank you for coming,” her mother said.
Mary nodded. She didn't want to thank Ruth for letting her decide who came with her. She had nearly brought that irritation into the room before either of them sat down.
The food was something she liked. Her mother remembered all the things she liked. Mary could still be hungry and grateful and angry enough that the first mouthful was difficult to swallow.
For a little while they ate. Ruth asked if Mary had managed any work yesterday.
“Some.”
“You shouldn't have had to.”
“The work was still there.”
Ruth looked down at her plate. She was trying to find an ordinary beginning. Mary had come for something that wouldn't fit inside an ordinary conversation.
“I didn't come to hear what you think about Adam,” she said.
Her mother put down her fork.
“I came because I want to know what happens with us.”
“You're my daughter.”
“I know. That's why I'm here.”
Ruth folded her hands together. Mary watched her searching for words and resisted the impulse to help. She had helped her mother make explanations comfortable before. Tonight she wanted to hear the uncomfortable version.
“I thought telling you would destroy something good,” Ruth said.
“It changed what I knew about it.”
“I saw how happy you were.”
“I keep hearing that.”
Her mother winced. Mary hadn't meant to raise her voice, but she didn't lower it into reassurance.
“I was scared,” Ruth said. “I'd put off explaining him before you came home. Then you were seeing him, and the longer I left it, the worse it looked. By the time you said you were engaged, I didn't know how to tell you without losing you.”
“So you helped pay for it.”
“When I saw him with you, I thought perhaps it really could be yours. If I paid for the room, I'd be helping you, not standing in your way.” Ruth looked towards the kitchen. “I kept saying that to myself while I made the transfer.”
Mary looked at the table. Her mother had laid it carefully, without making it formal. This was what Ruth could do when frightened: provide something useful, something Mary could accept with thanks.
“It was already real to me,” she said. “You didn't need to buy more of it.”
Ruth's eyes filled. Mary felt the familiar pull to put her arm round her mother and tell her she hadn't meant it quite like that.
She stayed in her chair.
“I wouldn't have needed to approve who you were with,” she said. “Back when I asked. I might have had questions. I might have been awkward about it. But it was your life.”
“He's only six years older than you.” Ruth rubbed at the mark her glass had left on the table. “I could hear myself trying to introduce him. I thought you'd look at me and wonder what I was doing.”
“I might have been surprised. You could have found out.”
Her mother wiped beneath one eye with a finger.
Mary took a drink of water. Ruth reached for the jug, but Mary's glass was still nearly full.
“I don't want Sundays to be assumed anymore.”
Ruth looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Lunch. You don't need to make it for me unless we've agreed.”
“I wasn't going to force you to come tomorrow.”
“You expected me.”
Ruth didn't answer.
“I can see the extra vegetables in the kitchen,” Mary said. “There's enough for tomorrow.”
“I thought you'd want company.”
“I might. But I want to decide.”
Her mother looked towards the kitchen, then back. “So I wait for you to ring?”
“For now.”
“And if you don't?”
Mary's throat tightened. She didn't want her mother sitting alone beside a meal nobody came to eat. She also didn't want that picture to choose her Sunday for her.
“Then you make your own plans.”
They sat in the quiet. Mary could hear the clock in the hall. She had once measured dinners here by it, waiting until she could politely leave. Now she was looking for the moment when she could leave without first making her mother feel better.
Ruth stood to collect their plates. Mary helped because she wanted to, then came back for her coat.
“I could come home with you,” Ruth said. “Stay tonight. You shouldn't be alone after all this.”
Mary stopped with one arm in the sleeve.
She wanted someone to make tea while she changed out of clothes that had begun to feel stiff. She wanted to hear another person moving round her flat. Her mother knew where everything was, mostly. It would be so easy to say yes and let the evening finish in familiar care.
“No,” she said.
“I wouldn't fuss.”
“I know you would try not to. I still don't want you to come.”
Ruth's face fell. The loss was visible, and Mary hated having caused it. It was also exactly the thing she'd said.
“And please don't just turn up,” she added. “Ring first. Ask.”
“I've always been welcome.”
“You're still my mother. You aren't always invited.”
The sentence sat badly between them. Mary didn't improve it. She put her other arm into the coat.
Ruth opened the door. She didn't hug Mary or tell her to text when she got home. Perhaps she was angry. Perhaps she had finally heard the request not to arrange the next thing before Mary had chosen it.
“I do love you,” she said.
Mary looked at her. “I know.”
Then, because it was true and she wasn't refusing every true thing, “I love you too.”
It didn't let either of them out of the evening.
Mary walked home alone. At her building she found her key without calling anyone. Upstairs, she put the kettle on, changed her clothes and took the tea into the living room.
She cried there, quietly enough that nobody would have known to come through the door.
Tomorrow there would be no Sunday lunch waiting for her to attend. She didn't know yet what she'd do instead. She would have to choose when morning came.