On Saturday they slept late and found the owner's cat sitting outside their door as though breakfast was a service they'd forgotten to offer.
Daniel said they mustn't feed it. Lena agreed, then dropped a crumb of egg onto the step.
He watched the cat eat it.
“Accident?”
“Terrible.”
They took their coffee to the bench. Lena had brought her small drawing book, buried under spare clothes as if it were something embarrassing. She took it out now and opened to a clean page.
Daniel stretched his legs into the grass.
“Do I have to stay still?”
“I'm drawing the gate.”
“That's disappointing.”
“You can stand beside it and look useful.”
He stayed on the bench, occasionally reaching to hold a corner of the paper when the wind tried to turn it. Lena drew slowly. She liked the bent latch, the rough line where someone had repaired a slat rather than replacing it. She shaded the owner's cat into the bottom corner and made it too fat.
Daniel said it was a very fair likeness.
They spent the day walking the cliff path. He wanted to follow it farther than she did; she wanted to stop at a little shop selling old glass and photographs. They split the difference without naming it, staying twenty minutes in the shop before walking to the next headland.
Lena bought a blue glass bowl that neither of them needed. Daniel carried it wrapped in a newspaper against his stomach, careful all the way back.
That night they ate bread, cheese and tomatoes in the tiny kitchen. He washed the bowl and put the tomatoes in it, turning her unnecessary purchase into a useful thing without a joke. She kissed his cheek for it.
On Sunday morning she woke before him.
She lay looking at the light on the ceiling. The previous day had been so easy that she wanted to carry it home intact. She wanted more mornings in which the first thing she felt was his hand, not a question.
When he opened his eyes, she smiled.
“What?” he asked, smiling back.
“Nothing.”
“That isn't nothing.”
“I was thinking we could make Sundays like this.”
He rubbed his face. “We already sleep on Sundays.”
“I mean ours. Breakfast, a walk, no picking up jobs for people. Jo knows it's my day off. You could tell people too.”
“Every Sunday?”
“Most.”
He moved onto his back.
“What if something comes up?”
“Obviously not if somebody's house catches fire.”
“Or if I want to do something else.”
She looked at him.
“Without me?”
“Sometimes.”
He heard the hurt before she meant him to. He reached for her hand, but she pulled the sheet up instead.
“I didn't say we had to spend every minute together.”
“I know you didn't.”
“I just want time we don't have to beg work for.”
“I want that too. I don't want another day assigned before it starts.”
She sat up. “We're getting married, Daniel. That isn't an unreasonable thing to want.”
“No.” He sat up beside her. “It isn't.”
But he didn't sound convinced. She hated the little space after his answer.
They ate breakfast inside because it had begun to rain. The owner knocked to remind them they could stay until noon. Lena thanked her too warmly, then started packing at once.
“You don't have to hurry,” Daniel said.
“I'm not.”
He folded one of his shirts. She shook sand out of a shoe harder than necessary.
They had planned to drive home after lunch. Lena looked out at the rain easing over the grass and remembered a sign she'd seen for an old house with public gardens.
“We could go there,” she said. “It's open. Not far.”
Daniel glanced at the little map beside the kettle.
“I was looking forward to a quiet drive. Maybe stop for coffee.”
“We can get coffee there.”
“Lena.”
“It might be nice.”
She wanted to give them something good before the weekend ended. She wanted the morning's argument not to be what he remembered. The gardens were a thing she could offer, a place with paths and room to laugh again.
He put the shirt in his bag.
“All right.”
She reached for the garden leaflet before he could change his mind.
The gardens were beautiful. Tall white flowers grew beside a stone wall. A pond held three solemn ducks and a little fountain that failed every fourth burst. Lena liked the old glasshouse best, warm and damp, with leaves larger than her hands.
She made Daniel stand beside one. He gave her a face for the photograph, pretending the plant had offended him.
They laughed. She took another picture because she wanted his actual smile.
For half an hour it worked. Then she asked whether he wanted to see the house as well.
“I think I'm ready to go,” he said.
“You haven't seen the inside.”
“No. I don't need to.”
She looked at the doorway, then at him.
“It's only a few rooms.”
“Then have a look. I'll wait in the car.”
He wasn't angry. That made it harder to admit she was.
“I don't want to walk round on my own.”
“Then don't.”
A family moved past them. Lena stepped out of the path and felt, suddenly, how childish she would look if she stood here arguing over a house neither of them had wanted to visit an hour ago.
Daniel walked toward the car. She stayed beside the house door long enough to let another family go in ahead of her. Then she followed him, staring at the damp marks on her shoes.
They went back to the car. The blue bowl was on the back seat between their bags. Daniel checked it hadn't tipped before he started the engine.
Lena watched the garden gate disappear behind them.
“Is it me?” she asked.
He turned the radio down.
“What?”
“The things that feel wrong. Is it being with me?”
He pulled into a quiet lay-by rather than answering while he drove. For a moment she feared that he had done it because the answer would be terrible.
He reached across to her.
“I love you.”
“I know that isn't always the same thing.”
He looked through the windscreen. A little rain began to spot it again.
“I get frightened when I think of everything decided,” he said. “Where we go. When we're together. Who needs what next. I feel as if I'll always be letting somebody down if I want a different day.”
She thought of the wedding calendar, of Jo's lunch, of the house she had tried to pull him into ten minutes earlier.
“I don't mean to do that.”
“I know you don't.”
She let his hand close around hers. She was tired of finding the right words and still feeling wrong.
“I want a home with you,” she said. “I don't want to trap you in it.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it.
They stayed there until the rain stopped. He didn't tell her she had imagined the problem. She didn't ask for a fresh promise.
At the next village they stopped for coffee. Lena waited while he chose where to sit, then chose the cake herself. They shared it, though neither wanted to call that a solution.
On the way home he drove with his free hand resting near hers. She kept the drawing book on her lap, opening now and then to the page with the gate. It was a good drawing. The weekend had been good too, even where it had hurt.
She didn't know how to keep one part without the other.