Julian's flat smelled of oranges and furniture wax.
It wasn't much bigger than Daniel's upstairs rooms, but nothing in it seemed to be waiting for a useful place. Two chairs faced a low sofa. A shallow bowl held three lemons. Even a book left open on the arm looked deliberate.
Ada's coat hung by the door.
Daniel touched the sleeve. The soft grey one she'd said she had lost.
“She keeps things here,” Julian said.
“Clearly.”
He went past Julian into the living room. There was a cushion with a burnt hole near the seam. Ada had brought it home once and asked Daniel to find a matching bit of cloth. He hadn't managed it. Now he wondered how many things he'd failed to recognize because she presented them to him as jobs.
“Do you want coffee?”
“No.”
“Sit down, then.”
Daniel stayed standing. On a shelf beside the window a photograph leaned against a stack of books.
It showed him bent over a green glass panel.
He went closer.
His left hand lay flat on the leading. His right held a knife above a cracked border. In the background the workshop door was propped open with the old blue paint tin. There was a banner in the upper window. OPEN WORKSHOP.
Daniel had cut his hair the week before that day. He'd opened the place to the public because a woman from the local arts group had persuaded him it wouldn't be embarrassing. It had been seventeen months ago. The green panel had gone to a chapel inland a fortnight later.
He remembered a man asking if he could take a photograph for a possible commission. He remembered an expensive coat over one arm.
He turned.
“You came to the workshop.”
Julian looked at the picture.
“Yes.”
“Before Ada.”
“I didn't say we'd never met.”
“You let me think—”
“I didn't know whether you'd remember.”
Daniel put the picture down. The movement was too careful.
“You remembered.”
“Yes.”
“You didn't say.”
“Would it have helped?”
“The job. The window she asked me to make.”
Julian's gaze moved to the lemons, then back. “It was a real job.”
“Who paid for it?”
Silence.
Daniel had worried about the quote. Ada had said she had money put aside. She'd made him give her a proper invoice instead of agreeing to the lower amount he offered because he wanted to see her again.
“Who paid for it?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted the window.”
“No.”
Julian sat on the arm of the sofa. For the first time the flat looked like a place in which someone might get a thing wrong.
“I sent her to you,” he said.
Daniel heard a car outside, a door slam, someone calling goodbye from the pavement. He held on to those noises while he tried to make the sentence mean less than it did.
“What does sent mean?”
“She was interested. It wasn't as if I ordered her to—”
“What was she interested in?”
“You.”
“She hadn't met me.”
“I'd told her.”
The photograph caught the light. Daniel couldn't bear to see his own bent head.
“This was a game?”
“She wanted something different. We both did.”
“And you picked me.”
“She could have walked away after the first meeting.”
Daniel moved towards the door. Julian rose too quickly and caught his arm.
“Don't make it sound like she didn't want you.”
“Take your hand off.”
Julian did not let go at once. The delay was small, but Daniel felt each moment of it. Then the fingers opened.
“I wanted you,” Julian said.
Daniel stayed where he was.
“At the workshop. Before she met you. You were talking to a child about how the colour stayed inside the glass. You let him touch it. You didn't put on a performance.”
“And that gave you the right?”
“No. I thought—”
“What?”
“That you might want us.”
Daniel looked at Ada's coat by the door.
“Us.”
“Eventually. If you knew us. If it happened without everyone being frightened before they'd tried.”
“If I didn't know what you were doing.”
“It wasn't going to stay that way.”
“Sixteen months.”
Julian pulled the cushion towards him and put it back. “She stopped telling me things.”
“Telling you what?”
“Her days. Your days. Then she said she didn't want to bring me in at all.”
“Bring you in.”
“She changed it.”
“She fell in love with me.”
Julian's face tightened.
“Is that what she told you?”
Daniel’s hand closed. Not for the scheme, not yet. For making the same question that had kept him awake sound like a clever answer.
He reached for the door handle.
Julian stood between him and it, one hand against the wall.
“Last night was real.”
“You knew all this last night.”
“I didn't know you'd kiss me.”
Daniel hated that the distinction reached him. The pause before Julian kissed back, the warmth at his wrist. The memory wouldn’t come away clean.
“Move.”
Julian looked at his face and stepped aside.
Daniel opened the door. His knees felt too soft for the stairs. Behind him Julian said, “She isn't innocent in this.”
He went down without answering.
Outside, he took Ada's note from his pocket. He stood beside a parked car and dialled the number with both hands around the phone.
Ruth answered.
“It's Daniel.”
“I'll get her.”
“Don't tell him where.”
“I haven't.”
He heard Ruth move across a room. A chair scraped. Then Ada's breathing was close to his ear.
He said, “I've been to his flat.”
“Oh, Dan.”
“Do not sound sorry yet.”