Noel offered eighteen thousand pounds.
Mara had expected a number designed to insult her. This was worse. This was a number she could use.
He set the paper between the sugar bowl and her coffee in the hotel's small public lounge. Saturday visitors were coming in from the coast path, wet dogs moving around their legs. At a nearby table a man was trying to remove a child's glove without taking the child's biscuit. Mara watched him for a moment while she worked out how not to look grateful.
“That's for past use,” Noel said. “Future consultancy would be separate.”
She read the conditions. The acknowledgement of her “technical and creative contribution” would be confined to a private agreement. Existing descriptions would be amended where practicable without further announcement. She would undertake not to discuss the dispute or Clara's proposed restitution with third parties, except advisers.
“Where's the public design credit?”
“We've left the exact language open.”
“You've left my name out.”
“The point is to let everyone move forward without a new controversy. A direct payment, something useful. You wouldn't have to spend it defending yourself.”
He had done his homework. Mara thought of the damp patch at the back of the workroom. Of a reliable machine, a proper cutting table, six months when the rent wouldn't be due like a personal accusation. After the divorce she had discovered that savings could disappear without buying anything memorable. Deposits. Moving costs. A car repair. Ordinary safety, paid for in advance and used up before she'd felt safe.
He stirred his coffee after the sugar had dissolved. “Clara had a figure in mind. This includes an adjustment for the work we're asking you to do now.”
“Does Elias know?”
“We've discussed settling the provenance questions. This is the sensible route.”
The child at the next table dropped the biscuit and began a silent, indignant preparation to cry. The father retrieved it, blew on it and offered it back. The child considered and accepted.
Mara wanted something as simple as that. A thing fallen, a thing returned.
“I'll take advice,” she said.
“Of course.” Noel pushed a second sheet toward her. “These people know the archive. They could move quickly.”
“I'll find my own.”
His smile thinned. “Certainly. But I should say the exhibition deadline can't move. If we can't agree before then, other options become difficult.”
She folded both sheets without answering. He had said “of course” with remarkable ease for a man who immediately needed to supply a consequence.
Outside the lounge Elias stood by a notice on the lift. OUT OF SERVICE. An engineer was kneeling beside the open panel while Inez arranged help for a guest with luggage. Mara was glad to see something had actually been done. The hotel could not keep asking people to trust its intentions.
Elias had his phone against his ear. “Monday, then. Leave the current packet in place until we have a response.” He listened, looking down at the carpet. “Yes. I'll deal with that.”
He ended the call and came toward her. “Did you get what you needed?”
“A number.”
He looked at the folded papers. “Will you consider it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She disliked the relief in his voice. The kiss had made her foolishly expect he would understand the answer cost her something.
“It would mean not telling anyone,” she said.
“You should take advice on the wording.”
“I intend to.”
He put his hands in his pockets. They stood in the draught from the front doors while a couple came through carrying the smell of wet wool and the sea.
“The restaurant can't do Sunday,” he said. “Would Friday at seven be any use? The place along the quay.”
She wanted to go. She wanted to sit opposite him somewhere he wasn't responsible for the food or the electricity and find out whether he could flirt without a thread order to hide behind.
“I'll meet you there,” she said.
At home she put the offer beside her laptop and made a list of what eighteen thousand pounds would do. She put tax at the top, because she was capable of being sensible even when somebody was buying the wrong thing from her. Then she made another list of what she would have to stop saying.
The first list was longer. That seemed a poor reason to accept.
She opened Elias's message confirming the restaurant and looked at the small pool of pleasure it made in her chest. She had let herself want him before knowing which list he had made. She wasn't sure whether that was courage or merely a new variety of the same old habit.
At ten she sent Noel a request for the proposed exhibition caption and the full settlement language. Then she went to bed and lay awake remembering the pressure of Elias's mouth, disliking how little the rest of her objections diminished it.