Daniel stood in the kitchen wearing his good blue shirt and no trousers.
Lena put her toast down.
“I need you to make a fair judgment.”
“About the whole outfit?”
“The shirt.”
He turned sideways. A dark triangle ran down his ribs, where the iron had spat water on him.
“You look like you lost a very small fight.”
“I followed your instructions.”
“My instructions were to leave it there and wear another one.”
“That felt defeatist.”
He came to the table, bent over her and stole the corner of her toast. She caught his wrist before he could take a second bite. He kissed her fingers instead, warm mouth against the inside of her hand, and her annoyance went out of her as quickly as it had come.
“Go and get dressed. You're getting crumbs in places.”
“Could be useful later.”
“No.”
He went into the bedroom laughing.
From the open window came the cry of gulls and the low rattle of a delivery truck on the quay. Greyhaven woke early in summer. Their flat was above a closed shoe shop, two streets from the water, with floors that dipped toward the middle of every room. When Lena had first rented it, she had thought the slope would make her dizzy. Now she knew exactly where to stand a glass.
She put Daniel's toast in the frying pan. He liked it crisp on one side and soft on the other, a preference she had originally treated as an attempt to get somebody else to make his breakfast. Three years later she still made fun of him for it. Three years later he still brought her coffee before she opened her eyes on Sundays.
He returned in trousers and the same wet shirt.
“Your work van has heating.” She pointed her knife at him. “You'll dry.”
“I was hoping you'd say it didn't show.”
“It shows. I love you anyway.”
He sat beside her rather than opposite. When the table had room for it, he liked their knees together.
She slid his plate over. “Taste that and tell me whose is better.”
He looked from her toast to his. She had thick butter and strawberry jam. His had an egg she had broken on purpose so the yolk would run into the bread.
“This is a trap.”
“It's breakfast.”
He tried hers, then his, then reached for hers again.
“Absolutely not.” She pulled the plate away. “You made your choice.”
“You asked me to compare.”
“I asked for a fair judgment. Apparently we do those now.”
He grinned, caught the plate and pushed his own into the space between them. They ate both breakfasts with their elbows touching. When she put too much salt on the egg, he drank half his coffee before admitting it.
“You could have told me.”
“You looked proud.”
“That's no reason to suffer.”
“Remember that at the wedding.”
There it was. Not unpleasant, exactly. Just suddenly in the room.
In just under six weeks, they would marry in Jo's café garden. Twenty-eight guests, yellow flowers, a meal Lena and Jo had argued about twice and finally stopped pretending they wouldn't cook some of themselves. Lena would wear a dress hanging at her sister's flat because she did not trust Daniel to resist looking inside the bag.
He said he could resist. Then he asked whether it was the one with the buttons down the back.
This morning she reached past him for the little calendar attached to the fridge.
“Jo needs to know your days off. She's sorting who covers me before the wedding.”
“Didn't we give her the dates?”
“For after. I want Thursday and Friday before it.”
“Both?”
“We have to set things up.”
He finished his coffee. “I can get Friday. Thursday I'm finishing the house on Bell Street.”
“Could you swap?”
“Lena, they're moving in that weekend. I said I'd get it done.”
She had already pictured those two days together. Putting up the strings of lights, collecting flowers, Daniel taking one end of something heavy and her taking the other. The sort of small work people did when they were making a life.
“I don't want to be doing it all with Jo.”
“You won't. I'll come after work.”
“At seven.”
“Six, if it goes well.”
She looked down at the calendar. Beside the wedding date she had drawn two rings. One was much larger than the other, because the pen had slipped. Daniel had added a little wheel to it and said they were marrying a bicycle.
He put his hand over hers.
“Don't do that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where I've ruined a day that hasn't happened.”
“I just want us to have some time.”
“We will.”
She knew he meant the honeymoon. Four nights at a little hotel farther down the coast. She had seen a photograph of its window seat and wanted to sit there in a dressing gown while somebody else thought about breakfast.
Daniel had booked it in February. He had sent her the reservation reference because she was always asking him to check they had the sea-view room.
“It's in your phone as well as mine,” he'd told her. “You can inspect the windows whenever you like.”
She had put the number in the wedding note she shared with Jo. Even remembering the picture softened her a little.
“Could you do Friday and Monday?” she asked. “Before we go away?”
“Monday's already off.”
“And properly help Friday. Not arrive at four and tell Jo she's doing a wonderful job.”
“I can do that at nine.”
She smiled despite herself.
“Helping. At nine.”
“Agreed.”
He touched the tip of her nose with his thumb. There was a crumb on it.
Three weeks earlier he had said maybe they should leave the wedding for a little while. They had been sitting on the bedroom floor with the guest list between them. He'd rubbed both hands over his face and said he felt trapped by all the dates, all the things people expected them to do.
Lena had heard the tiredness. She'd been tired too. Jo had just told her the first version of the meal would take more staff than the café could afford.
“We don't need anything grand,” she had said. “We'll make it smaller.”
He'd said it wasn't only the size. She'd started crying then, quiet tears that embarrassed her, and he'd pulled her onto his lap. They had stayed there until her legs went numb. By the end of the evening they'd cut the guest list and decided against hired chairs.
He hadn't mentioned postponing again.
Lena didn't want to drag them back onto that floor now. They had a good morning in front of them. He was sitting in a wet shirt eating an egg she'd ruined, because he liked being with her. Not everything had to become a test.
She put the calendar back.
“Friday at nine. I'll tell her.”
“Thank you.”
He said it so gently she leaned into him. He kissed her properly, with one hand at the back of her neck. When she moved away he followed her an inch, unwilling to lose the kiss. It made her laugh against his mouth.
“You're late.”
“So are you.”
“Jo can't sack her sister.”
“She absolutely can.”
Lena stood up. He helped her into her light jacket, then turned her back toward him to do the stubborn middle button. He was always better with small things than she was. Wires, buttons, the clasp on the necklace she never wore unless he was home to fasten it.
Outside, she discovered he had taken her canvas bag down to the van the night before. He handed it over without making a point of it.
“My hero.”
“It had six oranges in it. I was worried about the stairs.”
He kissed her temple, got into the van and lowered the window.
“Beach tomorrow?”
They had promised each other one evening a week that contained no wedding jobs. The previous week they had gone to the cinema and fallen asleep during different parts of the same film. Tomorrow she wanted to buy chips and sit above the beach until the light went.
“Yes. Proper chips. Not the place with the rosemary.”
“I'd already accepted that defeat.”
He drove away. Lena watched until the van turned the corner, then headed downhill toward the café.
The Willow sat at the end of a row of old boat sheds. Its windows looked over the narrow harbour; its garden was sheltered by a brick wall and a crooked pear tree. Jo had named it for a willow that had died six months after she bought the place. She refused to change the sign.
Inside, her sister was kneeling beside a cardboard box.
“If those are more candle holders,” Jo said without looking up, “take them home.”
“Oranges.”
“Good. We can eat those.”
Lena put the bag on the counter and tied her apron. There were chalk menus to change, a tray of rolls to bring through and customers already pressing hopeful faces at the glass. She liked this part: doors opening, the room filling, knowing what needed doing before anybody asked.
She earned a proper wage here, something Jo had insisted on even through the bad winter. It paid for the small flat before Daniel moved in and left enough for the savings Lena refused to call a wedding fund. Some of it would go now, of course. But she liked having a little money that wasn't already a chair, a cake or a dress.
They opened. For an hour the world narrowed to coffee, orders and the old man who wanted his bacon crisp but complained if it cracked.
Then Bea arrived carrying two buckets of flowers.
She set them inside the door and shook rain from her short hair, though the morning was mostly bright. “Somebody up the street washed a window directly onto me.”
Lena took one bucket. “Yellow?”
“For your trial. Jo says six jars, you say twelve. I've brought eight because I enjoy upsetting both of you.”
Jo looked over from the kitchen. “Thank you, Bea.”
“Not taking sides.”
Bea followed Lena out into the garden. Together they put the flowers under the pear tree, away from the lunch tables.
“You look happy,” Bea said.
“I had a good breakfast.”
“That bad?”
Lena laughed and pulled a fallen leaf from the water.
Bea did not laugh back. She rubbed the wet sleeve of her shirt between her fingers.
“What?” Lena asked.
“I was going to tell you last night, but you didn't answer.”
“I was in the bath.”
“Right.”
“Bea.”
“My brother's home.”
Lena kept hold of the leaf. It was soft and dark, falling apart between her fingers.
“Nate?”
It was a stupid question. Bea had one brother.
“He got in yesterday.”
Somebody inside dropped a spoon. A customer laughed. The coffee machine hissed, the same sound Lena had heard a hundred times already that morning.
She put the leaf on the wall.
“For how long?”
“I don't know exactly.”
Lena looked at the yellow flowers. Yesterday they had been only flowers. She had known what the next six weeks were going to be.
“Does he know I'm getting married?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Bea opened her mouth, then closed it when Jo called for Lena.
Lena went inside. She took two plates from her sister, balanced them on her arm and walked toward the window table. She said the right things. She smiled when the old man inspected his bacon.
Only after she'd put both plates down did she notice her hand was shaking.