On Wednesday he brought the wrong thread.
Mara had asked him to collect a parcel from reception. He had come back with two parcels, one of which was for the curtain supplier, and had emptied both onto her table. Now he was trying to separate eighteen white reels into the two sets they had started in.
“Don't,” she said. “The numbers are on the ends.”
“There were nine in each parcel. I checked.”
“The numbers, Elias. On the ends.”
He gave her a look, then turned each reel over. She returned to the hem, pleased with herself for no good reason. She had been pleased since he came in. He'd had his hair cut; she could see the freshly exposed skin behind one ear. An absurd thing to notice about a man doing thread arithmetic.
“Tomorrow evening,” he said. “Are you busy?”
She made a careful small stitch. “Usually.”
“With something you can't move?”
“What are you asking?”
“Whether you'd have dinner with me.”
There it was. She'd had time to anticipate it and still hadn't prepared an intelligent response.
“Here?”
“Somewhere else.”
“With a measurable quantity of food?”
“Yes.”
She pulled the thread through. Too hard. She let it slacken before it could draw the cloth.
“I work for you.”
“I know.”
“You decide whether I get paid for the next five weeks.”
He looked down at the reels. “I wouldn't use that.”
“You'd still have it.”
He set the last one down. She waited through an awkward silence, wanting him to argue and give her a reason to be cross instead of disappointed.
“Can we change that?” he asked.
She turned her needle between finger and thumb. “Probably. I don't want to be paid for a date either.”
“That wasn't what I meant.”
“I know.”
He sat down. It took twenty minutes and one call to the accounts office. The commission became fixed work at an agreed fee, with the completed hours payable now and the next stage payable on delivery. Mara could stop after either stage, with no clawback of earned money. Any dispute would go through the independent exhibition administrator, not Elias. Her photographs and working notes remained hers; she could have the dress moved to another workspace if the hotel became impractical. They wrote it on one page. She changed two phrases and signed after he did.
The money for work already done arrived while she was folding the page into her bag. He did not watch her check it.
She expected relief to make desire simple. Instead it made it more exposed. There was no longer a convenient practical reason not to look at his mouth.
“Now?” he asked.
She raised her eyes. “Now what?”
“Dinner.”
“I want to think for a day.”
He let out a breath. “All right.”
“That doesn't mean no.”
“I understand the difference.”
“Good. I wasn't sure I did.”
He smiled then, properly. She wanted to get up and stand close enough to find out how his face changed when she touched it. Instead she put the needle into its cushion, which was a less satisfying use of her hands.
Noel arrived as Elias was leaving. He brought a folder and the warm air of someone who had never waited outside a door in his life.
“I'm not interrupting?”
“You are,” Mara said. “But he's going.”
Noel laughed as though she'd made a joke. Elias looked at her once before he left. The glance stayed with her even after Noel began speaking.
The folder contained her apology.
She knew it from the first line. It had been a short document. She had spent a whole night making it shorter, striking out objections until Noel told her the letter would do. His solicitor had said nobody was making her sign. She could remember that too, the tidy assurance from someone whose lunch wasn't in danger.
“It's useful to have the full record,” Noel said.
Mara read the page. I acknowledge that the collection I intended to market incorporated ideas developed within Clara Vale's design practice. I regret presenting collaborative work as my own. The blue presentation folder was not evidence of independent development.
At the bottom, her signature looked younger than she did.
The blue folder had been cheap. She could remember every elastic corner. She'd shown Clara her eveningwear drawings at the coat fitting, in a hired room with a cracked mirror. Beside them she'd laid a calico sleeve and side panel, a narrow shape that opened beneath the arm when it lifted. Clara had asked to keep a tracing to consider how it would work in silk. Mara had let her. Consideration wasn't an order; they'd agreed no fee and no use.
Then Clara had shut the folder with her palm on it. “You haven't invented yourself by putting my work in a blue folder.”
Mara had laughed, thinking she was joking. Clara hadn't laughed back. She'd left with one coat cuff still pinned. Mara had bought a black case that evening, as though better stationery could repair the conversation. She'd never forgotten the sentence or who said it. What she couldn't account for was how that private quarrel had become Noel's campaign against a range she hadn't yet sold.
He had claimed the initiative in writing. It was possible Clara had complained and he had made a business threat out of it. That didn't make Clara's words less ugly. Mara looked at Noel, wishing she could ask a question without having to bear how much the answer still mattered.
“That's my copy?”
“Yes. You may keep it.”
She put it flat on the table. “I already have one.”
“I thought you might. This isn't an obstacle. Clara wanted an arrangement that would let everyone move on.”
“The letter in her room says she authorised an inaccurate accusation.”
“She felt responsible. It was her name.” He lowered his voice. “I was the one who had to deal with the shops. We couldn't send Clara out to argue with people while she was trying to get a collection delivered. Then a second name appeared on the same work.”
“My name.”
“Yes. That was the problem we were trying to settle.”
“On my work.”
He looked at the dress. “Let's not have the whole conversation standing up. There's a proper offer coming. I'd rather you read it before you decided anything.”
She wished he would stop speaking as though her decisions were a weather system that might damage the hotel. “You can send it.”
“Thank you.”
When he had gone she took the apology out to her car, so she wouldn't have to keep looking at it. Then she returned to the ballroom and worked until her shoulders ached.
At six she found a message from Elias. Dinner can wait. Pool closes to guests at eight if you'd like a swim. No work discussion.
She stood in the changing cubicle the following evening, looking at the swimsuit she hadn't worn since the last holiday of the marriage. The elastic was still sound. Her body was still her body. She put it on before she could find another objection.