The florist said she could remove the word love, but there would be a charge.
Mara looked across the kitchen table at Theo. He had drawn a very small coffin around the word FLOWERS on their list.
“We're not asking you to remove it,” she said. “We're asking whether any of the money comes back.”
“The letters have already been made.”
“Right.”
“They are bespoke.”
Theo wrote BESPOKE DEATH under the coffin and turned the paper toward her. Mara bit the inside of her cheek.
On speakerphone, the woman continued explaining the letters. They were tall. They were illuminated. They were designed to stand behind the cake table, which was also bespoke, although presumably usable by people who had never met Mara or Theo. Mara remembered choosing the letters on a wet November night. She had shown Theo the picture and said it was appalling. He had asked whether they were getting it, then. They had eaten a whole packet of biscuits while looking at increasingly enormous ways to say something they already knew.
“Could you change love to vole?” he asked.
Mara pressed a fist to her mouth.
“I'm sorry?”
“Same letters. For a wildlife event.”
“The arrangement is fixed.”
“Unfortunate for the vole.”
The woman waited. Mara could feel her trying to work out whether one of them was drunk. It was eleven in the morning. There were two untouched cups of tea on the table, and Theo's blue holdall beside the back door.
“Sorry,” Mara said. “It's been a strange morning.”
“I do understand. These things happen.”
It was the third person who had said that. Mara wondered what the woman pictured. An affair, probably. A terrible last-minute discovery about a secret family. Something sufficient to explain the day being thrown away. Not the conversation they'd had last night in this kitchen, both of them so careful at first that it had taken half an hour to say anything new.
The florist offered to email the possibilities. Mara thanked her and ended the call.
Theo leaned back. “I liked her. Very firm about the vole.”
“We're keeping the letters, apparently.”
“We could have them here.”
They both looked toward the narrow patch of garden beyond the door. A neighbour's football had been lying against their fence for weeks. LOVE would fill the entire patio.
“The neighbours might object.”
“Not if we explain we've separated.”
She laughed, and for one lovely, foolish second she forgot why they were sitting there.
Then he picked up his tea.
There was a place on the handle where he'd chipped it. She knew exactly how it would feel against his thumb. Last night he had held that cup with both hands while she said she couldn't marry him and keep waiting to become someone who wanted the same thing. He had put it down very gently, as though the table were another person he didn't want to hurt.
“Who next?” he asked.
Mara turned the list over. “The hotel.”
“Big one.”
“We can do a small one first.”
“Let's do the big one.”
They had already asked about postponement in the months before, when postponement still sounded like a respectable way to remain engaged. There were particular booking terms, dates after which particular sums were committed. Mara had read them before paying. She had put tidy ticks next to the things she understood. Somewhere there was a younger version of her who believed understanding a document might be enough to prevent whatever it described from happening.
She found the number and called.
The coordinator at Casa Brisa remembered them immediately. Elena had a warm voice and excellent English and had survived their debate about whether the welcome supper needed to feel welcoming to people who disliked aubergines. She listened without interrupting while Mara said there would be no wedding.
“I'm very sorry,” Elena said. “Would you like a moment?”
“We've had quite a few.”
Theo lowered his eyes. Mara wished she hadn't made that particular joke.
Elena offered to go through each booking with them. The guestrooms. The villa. The terrace and evening reception. The food order. The payments already made for suppliers. She didn't pretend it was good news. Nor did she make them explain why.
Mara wrote numbers beside Theo's drawings. He rubbed his face once and then took the pen when her ink stopped working. His pen always worked. It was among the things she had loved about him before she understood she loved him. On their first night together, in a pub with sticky tables, he had produced a working pen for the quiz and refused to surrender it to a man who wanted to write an answer they all knew was wrong.
Six years later she was watching him record the price of not marrying her.
“The accommodation would still be available,” Elena said. “If your guests choose to travel.”
“Even without us?”
“Of course.”
Mara pictured eighty people having an excellent holiday while she stayed in Bristol with the illuminated letters.
“And us?” Theo asked.
She looked at him.
“Your villa is booked, Mr Grant.”
“Yes. Right.”
Elena said they need not decide everything on the call. She would send a clear account of what could be changed and what remained available. They thanked her. Mara turned off the speaker, and the kitchen became very quiet.
Theo went to make fresh tea. She watched him empty the cold cups and start again without asking. She had never once minded that assumption. Tea was easy. Tea was a thing they both wanted.
“We don't have to finish today,” he said.
“I don't want to spend the whole week making these calls.”
“No.”
“Or six weeks.”
The kettle was loud enough that she could pretend he hadn't heard the next thing she said.
“I wish it had been awful.”
He turned.
“The weekend,” she said.
He knew which one.
They'd looked after his friend Niall's daughter while Niall and his wife went away. Iris was four and knew the names of more dinosaurs than Mara could reliably distinguish from pasta. On the Saturday they had made a cardboard island in the sitting room. Theo had provided a volcano. Mara had designed packaging for a dinosaur rescue kit, including a solemn picture of an animal that Iris informed her had never existed.
“It's been rescued from extinction,” Mara had said.
“That's not what extinction means,” Iris told her.
Theo had laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor.
It had been a wonderful weekend. Pancakes. An unreasonable amount of cardboard. Iris falling asleep halfway through a book Mara had secretly wanted to finish. When Niall came to collect her on Sunday, Mara had hugged the small warm body, accepted a slightly sticky kiss and felt the house open around her after the door closed. She wanted wine. She wanted Theo. She wanted an evening whose shape did not have to be good for anyone else.
He had stood with the abandoned dinosaur in his hand and asked if they should put the things away.
She had said yes. Too quickly, perhaps.
For days afterward they had talked about the funny things Iris had said. It had been easy to remain inside the part they both loved. Then Theo had said something about doing it again, and Mara heard the careful, waiting quality in his voice. The same quality she'd been hearing for years, under questions they answered with later and perhaps and not yet.
“I liked all of it,” he said now.
“I know.”
“Even the bit with the bath.”
The bath had involved a plastic triceratops whose name was apparently Bathroom Triceratops, although it spent most of its time in the kitchen. Iris had wept when Mara used a different towel from the one Theo had promised. Mara had understood the problem, apologized to the dinosaur and privately felt sixty years old.
“I liked her,” Mara said. “I still like her.”
“I know that too.”
He brought the tea back. She moved the list out of its way.
Last night she had finally said no without giving it a date after which he might ask again. He had listened. Then he had said he wanted children without adding that they had plenty of time, or that he wasn't certain, or that she mattered more than something that hadn't happened yet. She mattered enormously. He hadn't stopped wanting the other thing.
She had been furious with herself for crying. It made the answer sound less sure than it was. He had come around the table to sit beside her, and she had put her face against his shoulder, which made everything worse and better in a way she couldn't do anything about.
“We did know,” she said now.
He nodded.
“We kept being nearly honest.”
“Very good at nearly.”
Outside, someone came to the fence and retrieved the football. Their neighbour called an apology through the open window. Theo said no problem in his usual voice.
Mara looked at the blue bag again. It held enough clothes for a few nights with his friend Kit. Not everything. Nobody had known last night how to pack everything.
“Shall we do the band?” she asked.
The bandleader was in a car. He pulled over to take the call and gave them several possibilities they didn't need: a later date, a smaller celebration, an event in a completely different year. When Theo said they were separating, the man paused, then said the band could do something very tasteful.
“How tasteful?” Mara asked.
“Background. Piano, for example.”
They had hired a six-piece band after watching a video in which the saxophonist climbed onto a chair during a song neither of them liked. Mara had loved him. Theo had pointed out the apparent strength of the chair, and then said yes before she could make a proper argument.
“That would be an expensive piano,” Theo said.
“Or we can still do the full evening. People have anniversary parties. Other things.”
“Do they have separation parties?”
“I'm sure they do.”
He sounded less sure than he intended. Mara wrote FULL EVENING on the list. Theo watched her do it.
When they finished with the band, they sat for several minutes without speaking. She was hungry. It seemed disgusting to be hungry, with all that money laid out before them, but she had eaten nothing since yesterday's lunch. Theo opened the fridge and took out cheese, tomatoes and something in a bowl that neither of them immediately claimed.
“Not that,” she said.
“Agreed.”
He made toast. She cut the tomatoes and found the good salt. They carried plates to the table, moving the ruinous list to the far end. His first piece broke when he picked it up. She steadied it with one finger, then withdrew her hand because she had touched the cheese and it was hot.
“We're apparently allowed to go,” he said.
“We'd be in the wedding villa.”
“We'd be in Spain.”
“Very expensive to go to Spain and not marry you.”
“More expensive to stay here and not marry me.”
She looked at him properly. His hair needed cutting. He would have been planning to do it nearer the wedding. She wanted to run her fingers through it, spoil the shape he was letting grow out, hear him make his pleased little complaint. She picked up her toast instead.
“Everyone's booked,” she said.
“Everyone can still go.”
“Your mother can still wear her outfit.”
“She's going to wear it anyway. It may be on while we're talking.”
Mara smiled, then frowned at the list.
“They'll think we're getting back together.”
“We'll tell them.”
“We'd have to tell them really clearly.”
“No wedding. Holiday. Party on Saturday.”
It sounded wonderful when he said it. She could see the terrace she'd looked at so often that it had become a place she remembered before she'd ever been there. Warm stone, lights above the tables. People she loved being badly dressed by the sea. Theo in the shirt they had argued about and finally bought because it fitted his shoulders perfectly.
“We don't have to do the table plan,” she said.
He set down his toast. “Now you're talking.”
She laughed. The laugh tipped into something unsteady, and he waited until she could breathe again. Then he reached for the list and put a large question mark beside FULL EVENING.
The photographer called back while they were still eating.
Robin had listened to Mara's message, he said. He was sorry. He could not refund the booking, but he had Friday and Saturday reserved for them and would be happy to discuss what they might want instead.
“We may be coming anyway,” she said.
Theo watched her across the table.
“For a holiday. With everyone. And a party. Without the wedding.”
“Excellent,” Robin said. “I can do the happiest uncoupling of the year.”
There was a pause.
“That sounded better in my head. I am sorry.”
“No,” Theo said. “Aim high.”
Mara was laughing now, holding the phone away so Robin didn't have to mistake it for anything else. Theo grinned at her, and she wanted to say yes to everything that expression offered.
They finished lunch. They called Elena again, then Kit and Mara’s friend Freya, then her sister Leah, who listened for so long Mara had to ask whether she was still there. Leah said she was, and that mature was not the first word she would have chosen, but she understood wanting to use the holiday. She also asked where Theo was going to live.
“We've got six weeks to work it out.”
“You've got tonight to work out.”
“He's going to Kit's.”
“Good. I'll come round tomorrow.”
Theo called his parents from the garden. Mara could see him pacing past the place where the giant letters would not go. She couldn't hear his mother, but she knew roughly where in the conversation she began talking for both of them.
Later they sat together to write the message to their guests. They removed several phrases that sounded like a company apologizing for a delayed delivery. They kept one of Theo's jokes and one of Mara's, though hers was worse. They made it absolutely plain that the wedding was canceled, that they had separated, that nobody was expected to travel for their benefit, but that the paid holiday and Saturday party remained available.
Before they sent it, Mara read it aloud. Halfway through, she had to stop.
Theo reached across the table and held her hand. They sat like that until she could finish.
He left in the early evening, carrying the blue bag and one of the chargers from beside the sofa. She walked him to the door. There was nothing graceful to do with their bodies. They kissed, briefly and then less briefly, and she began to cry against his mouth.
“Sorry,” she said.
He shook his head.
She let go of his shirt. He took his keys from his pocket, removed the front-door key and put it on the little shelf where they kept things they needed to remember.
“You don't have to do that now.”
“I'll only lose it at Kit's.”
It was such a Theo reason that she smiled. He saw it and kissed her forehead, then picked up the bag.
Over the next weeks he found a temporary rental, and she spoke to the landlord about keeping the flat alone. They retained their return tickets, sent another practical message about the holiday and answered people who replied to the first one without reading it. Their paid Saturday gathered itself in Spain. The letters were made. The band rehearsed. The villa waited.
On the Sunday before their flight, Mara packed the dress she'd bought for the evening party. She left the wedding dress in its long bag at the back of the wardrobe.
Then she added the good salt Theo would forget to bring, although there was no reason to believe an entire hotel in Mallorca would be unable to provide it.