Ruth's flat was on the first floor of a converted house, seven minutes' walk from the garden she had sold. Leah had visited often enough to know which stair creaked and how hard to push the door at the bottom.
Anna went ahead of her. Daniel followed, carrying neither a bag nor his sketchbook. Leah noticed the absence. They were all coming empty-handed to a place where they usually brought things to be mended, shown or forgiven.
Ruth was waiting in the open doorway.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Of course you can come in.’
Anna stepped aside at the doorway, and Leah went in first. The sitting room was small and warm. A photograph of her parents stood beside the lamp. On the balcony beyond the glass door there were three plant pots and a folded chair.
Ruth shut the door behind Daniel.
‘Sit down. We don't have to stand about as if something dreadful's happened.’
‘Did you send me to Anna's house so I could take her place with Daniel?’ Leah asked.
Ruth looked at Anna. Her sister stayed beside the armchair.
‘I'm asking you,’ Leah said.
‘I sent you somewhere you'd be loved.’
‘As Daniel's wife?’
‘Nobody said wife.’
Daniel moved forward. ‘You said she'd raised staying after Anna left. You made it sound like she wanted a future there.’
Ruth pressed her hands together.
‘She could have had one.’
Leah felt Anna move beside her.
‘So that was the plan,’ Leah said.
‘I didn't have a plan written down, if that's what you're imagining. I saw two people who could make each other happy.’
‘One of them didn't know you were arranging it,’ Anna said. ‘Neither did the other, properly.’
Ruth turned towards her. ‘You were leaving. You'd made that very clear.’
‘Yes. I wasn't finding a person to leave behind.’
The words came faster now. Anna gripped the back of the armchair. Leah had seen that grip when a fitting went wrong and her sister needed something to hold still.
‘Did you think I knew this?’ Anna asked.
‘No. I didn't think you'd help.’
Leah looked at her mother. That short answer held more than any claim about good intentions. Ruth had known they would refuse. She had gone round them.
‘You told Owen I'd ended it,’ Leah said. ‘You told Anna I wouldn't have him back. Then you put me beside Daniel while telling him I'd asked to stay.’
‘Owen stole from you.’
‘He did. You didn't have to make me say anything to him.’
Ruth looked away. On the low table was the list of Saturday's guests, with two names crossed out and a note about flowers at the bottom.
‘Daniel is family,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Leah said. ‘He's married to Anna.’
‘And Anna doesn't want that any more.’
‘That doesn't make it mine.’
Ruth sat down on the sofa. For the first time since they entered she looked her age. The soft cardigan was the same one Leah had cried against. One button was missing near the bottom.
‘When your father died, I couldn't stand being in that house by myself,’ Ruth said. ‘I hated the quiet. I sold it to them because I wanted someone alive in it. Someone who'd keep going out into the garden.’
Leah had known her mother hated the empty house. She remembered coming on a Sunday and finding the television on in every room.
Ruth looked at Daniel.
‘You didn't make me feel like a visitor. You kept his tools. You asked what he'd grown where. You were interested.’
‘I was interested,’ he said.
‘You still are. You listen when I talk about him. You don't look at the clock and hope I'll stop.’
Daniel's face softened, but he did not move closer.
Ruth turned to Leah. ‘I have my singing. I have people. I know what you're going to say. But those afternoons are different. That's where I can be with him without everyone thinking I ought to have finished.’
Leah could see the greenhouse: the secateurs on the nail, the boots waiting beneath the bench. She had liked seeing her mother have a place. She still did.
‘What happened when Anna said she was leaving?’ Leah asked.
Ruth stared at the guest list.
‘Daniel said he couldn't promise to stay there alone. And I thought, there goes everything again. The house, the garden, seeing him. We'd do the birthday, and then Anna would go and there'd be no reason to keep any of it.’
‘I didn't say I was selling,’ Daniel said.
‘You couldn't promise.’
‘I still can't.’
Ruth looked at him sharply, then back at Leah.
‘When Anna rang about the money that Monday, I thought of you here. I offered the ten days so she wouldn't tell you straight away. Then I rang Owen. If he stayed away, you'd need somewhere, and Daniel was lonely. I thought if one daughter didn't want to stay, perhaps the other would. You always liked him. You'd have a kind man, he'd have someone who appreciated him, and we wouldn't lose the house just because Anna wanted to go.’
Anna released the chair and stepped away from it.
Leah felt something cold and clear settle inside her. Her mother had seen her grief and imagined how useful it could be. She had seen Anna's leaving as an empty space to fill.
‘You wanted the afternoons,’ Leah said. ‘You wanted Daniel. You put us where you'd keep them.’
‘I wanted you happy.’
‘You wanted us happy doing what you needed.’
Ruth's eyes shone. ‘Can both things not be true?’
Leah had no neat answer to give her. Both things could be true. That was why this hurt.
She put a hand into her jacket pocket and took out her phone.
‘Was the message yours?’
Ruth looked at it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The reply about the envelope too. I used the singing-group phone.’
Anna gave a short, disbelieving breath.
‘You denied it last night,’ Leah said.
‘I know.’
Ruth reached into her handbag beside the sofa and took out the little grey one. She set it on the table, not in Leah's hand.
The simplicity was almost offensive after the dread the unfamiliar number had made her feel. Ruth had been sitting somewhere like this, using a phone Leah had seen that afternoon.
‘Why then?’ Leah asked.
Anna answered before Ruth could. ‘Because I told her I was telling you.’
Ruth looked at Anna, then nodded.
‘She called. She said she'd ask you about tomorrow, and she had to tell you her part. I wanted you to ask her before Owen could come in with the money and make it a wonderful surprise.’
‘You wanted me angry with Anna.’
‘You needed to know she kept it from you.’
‘So did you.’
‘I knew you would ask me too.’
‘And you thought you could talk me out of asking him.’
Ruth did not answer immediately.
‘I thought once you knew he was a thief, you wouldn't want him,’ she said. ‘I thought you'd look at the way Daniel treated you and see the difference.’
Leah saw the message arriving beside the coat hooks. Daniel in the doorway, asking if she wanted Anna. Her mother had hoped the house itself would make an argument for him.
‘Did you tell Daniel I actually said I'd stay?’ Leah asked. ‘Not that you hoped it. That I'd said it.’
‘Yes.’
Daniel looked down.
‘And you knew I didn't know Anna was leaving?’
‘Yes.’
Leah put the phone away. She had imagined feeling better when she got an answer from that number. Her mother sat in front of her, and the hurt only grew.
Anna sat on the edge of the armchair. Her hands were trembling, and she pressed them between her knees.
‘You let me believe you were going to make this easier,’ she said. ‘You kept saying we'd find a way for everyone to be all right.’
‘I did find one.’
‘You found a way for me to go while my sister stayed in my marriage. You didn't ask either of us.’
Ruth looked towards Daniel, as if his agreement might still make the idea less terrible.
He remained by the door.
‘I enjoyed hearing it,’ he said. ‘That's my part. I didn't ask Leah. I should have. But you weren't offering me a life she'd chosen.’
‘She likes you,’ Ruth said.
Leah felt heat rise in her face. She did not deny it. Daniel looked at her briefly, then away.
‘That was hers to tell me,’ he said.
Ruth's eyes filled properly now. She put a hand over her mouth, then lowered it.
Leah sat beside the lamp rather than beside her mother. She needed a place to rest her legs. She had expected rage to keep her standing; instead she was suddenly exhausted.
On the table the grey phone lay beside the guest list. The photograph of her parents faced them all. Her mother began to cry, quietly.
Nobody reached for her yet.