The shop had a bowl of sweets beside the reception desk and a sign asking people not to help themselves.
Frankie read it twice.
“For children,” the woman behind the desk said.
“How old?”
The woman looked at her.
Frankie smiled.
“Duncan's expecting me.”
“After closing.”
“I'm early.”
“Yes.”
She was left to decide what to do with that.
The shop was brighter than she expected. Frames displayed on pale shelves, mirrors set at different heights, chairs arranged so nobody could look at themselves without being visible to somebody else. A room devoted to the anxious discovery that a face was not yet finished.
Duncan stood at the far counter beside a young man trying on glasses.
Frankie knew him in a jacket, at dinner, in bed. She hadn't spent much time seeing him work. Claire had preferred to arrive when he could stop.
Now he glanced towards her, then went back to the man.
“These.”
The man looked in the mirror.
“Really?”
“You tell me.”
“My sister said not those.”
“Was she here?”
“No. Photo.”
“Try looking without thinking of the photo.”
The man adjusted them.
Duncan didn't compliment him. He waited.
Frankie looked at the shelves. A frame which had seemed entirely wrong in the display was beginning to make sense on the man's face. Not because he'd changed. Because he had stopped asking it to be something else.
“I do like them,” he said.
“Then we'll see how they sit.”
Duncan worked carefully. Small adjustments, a question, the man looking up and down, the glasses taken off and handed back. Frankie watched the hands which had once put a cup beside her pillow.
She had brought a garment bag.
It looked increasingly absurd.
The receptionist left at five thirty, saying she'd see Duncan in the morning and suggesting, without much subtlety, that he not spend all night on the paperwork.
“I won't.”
“You say that.”
“Then I'll say it differently.”
“No need. Just go home.”
She looked at Frankie once more before taking her coat.
The young man had gone. Duncan locked the front door, leaving the lights on.
Frankie pointed at the sweets.
“Do you ever take one?”
“Yes.”
“Under what name?”
He looked at her.
She lowered her hand.
“Sorry.”
“What's in the bag?”
“A jacket.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
He held out his hand.
She gave it to him. A soft grey jacket, good enough to look effortless, not so good that anyone would think the wearer had been buying importance that afternoon. She'd found it at a shop where people sold clothes they no longer liked being seen in.
Duncan took it out.
“Size?”
“I remembered.”
He looked at her, and she wished she'd said she'd guessed.
He put it on.
It fitted.
Of course it fitted.
She had known his shoulders. She had known how the collar of his coat sat when he came home in the rain. Things she hadn't needed to remember in order to take thirty-six thousand pounds.
He went to the mirror.
“You think I look rich.”
“I think you look as though it doesn't matter.”
“That's expensive.”
“Not necessarily.”
He felt the inside pocket.
“No receipt.”
“I can find it.”
“Keep it. We may need to know what things cost.”
She leaned against the counter.
“I've been thinking about the part.”
“Have you.”
“People won't need to know much. The best patrons don't explain themselves. They know someone, somebody knows them, they arrive.”
“And sit.”
“Precisely.”
“I'm good at sitting.”
“You're good at making people look at you without asking them to.”
He turned from the mirror.
“Frankie.”
She liked hearing the real name from him. It wasn't the voice he had used for Claire. That was part of why she liked it.
“There could be something between us,” she said.
His face went still.
“In the room. A history. Nothing large. Just something they can feel. Gideon would like that. A place where nobody has to explain how they know one another.”
“You want me to be your lover.”
“Not—”
“In the room.”
“Yes.”
He took the jacket off.
She stopped.
“Duncan.”
“No.”
“It wouldn't have to be very—”
“No.”
He put the jacket over the chair.
For a moment she heard the refrigerator, or something which sounded like one, behind the closed door at the back. The noise had probably been there throughout the conversation.
“I thought it might be easier,” she said.
“It would.”
She looked at him.
“For you.”
He went to the counter and picked up a little cloth. He began cleaning a pair of glasses left there by somebody who would come back tomorrow.
Frankie watched.
“We'd be using something which is already there.”
He set the glasses down.
“You don't get to say that and then decide which part I should lend you.”
She looked towards the reception desk. The bowl of sweets had been covered.
“What part would you choose?”
He didn't answer immediately.
Outside, a woman knocked on the glass.
Duncan looked up. She held a case in the air and made an apologetic face.
He unlocked the door.
“I know you're shut,” she said.
“Then you're ahead of some people.”
“They've gone strange.”
“The glasses?”
“I hope so.”
Frankie moved away from the counter.
The woman handed them over, telling Duncan she'd sat down without checking where she'd put the case. He inspected the bent frame.
“Not while I'm wearing them,” she added.
“I'd assumed.”
He went behind the counter. The woman looked at Frankie.
“Buying new ones?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Ask him. He doesn't let you buy things which make you look like a startled aunt.”
Duncan lifted his head.
“No aunt guarantee.”
“Well. Mine, anyway.”
She smiled at Frankie, relaxed by the familiar complaint.
He worked on the frame. No magic, no flourish. He knew how far it could move and stopped before his confidence became a new problem.
When the woman tried them, her shoulders dropped.
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Be careful with them.”
“I was careful before I sat down.”
“Extend it afterwards.”
He let her out. She waved through the glass as she went.
Frankie watched her turn towards the street.
“She likes you.”
“She's a customer.”
“Both can happen.”
He locked the door again.
“What did she do when she came in?” he asked.
“Apologised.”
“After.”
“Looked at me.”
“Why?”
“To know whether she was interrupting.”
“Then?”
“She decided she wasn't.”
“Before I said anything.”
Frankie looked at him.
He picked up the repaired glasses he'd left on the counter.
“Most people want a place where nobody's waiting for them to be impressive. Rusk might be bored of people telling him he's welcome.”
“So we don't tell him.”
“We can tell him. Then do something else.”
She smiled.
“There you are.”
“Where?”
“That's the part.”
He looked at the jacket.
“A man who knows who's comfortable and who's pretending.”
“You've just described an optician.”
“Then we'll borrow him.”
“We?”
She paused.
“You.”
He considered it.
“No astonishing background.”
“No.”
“No medical title.”
“Of course not.”
“No history with Celia.”
She hadn't told him she'd be Celia Quinn, the Table's curator.
“Nina told me,” he said.
“Already?”
“You're not the only person with a telephone.”
Frankie laughed.
He put the jacket on again.
At the mirror his face was not a millionaire's face, nor a doctor's, nor anything a person could verify by looking harder. He looked like somebody who belonged in a room because he had never worried whether he did.
“Lorne,” he said.
“Lorne what?”
“Bell.”
“Why?”
“It sounds as though he's already been introduced.”
She tried it.
“Lorne Bell.”
“He doesn't explain how he made his money.”
“If Gideon asks?”
“He did something tedious very well.”
“That could be true of Gideon.”
“Then they'll have something in common.”
Frankie smiled, and this time Duncan did too.
It was a small one. He didn't have to give it to her. She liked that about it, though she had once preferred smiles she could be certain of getting.
She went towards the door.
“You can keep the jacket.”
“Can I?”
“For the part.”
“I'll bring it back.”
“All right.”
He took a sweet from the bowl, unwrapped it and held the bowl towards her.
“Not a child.”
“Neither am I.”
She took one.
Lemon. Sharp enough to make her pull her cheeks in.
Duncan watched.
“They aren't all those.”
“It's fine.”
“You used to make that face.”
She looked up.
He was no longer smiling.
For a moment she could see the kitchen again, the lemon in the bowl, the easy habit of being there. She'd left him with questions about ordinary mornings, whether she had liked the toast, whether she had been tired or merely waiting for him to stop looking.
“I did like being with you,” she said.
He put the sweet wrapper into the bin.
“Don't.”
“It isn't—”
“I didn't ask you to make that part better tonight.”
She shut her mouth.
He opened the door.
Cold air entered the shop.
“Thursday,” he said. “At the hotel.”
She nodded.
Outside, the window showed her reflection beside the rows of frames. Good coat, good earrings, a face which had been wanted under several names.
Duncan turned off a bank of lights behind her reflection.
Frankie walked to the car with the lemon sweet still sharp in her mouth.