Mara slept for part of the drive to the airport, head resting against the window, her hand loose in her lap. Theo watched the passing road rather than her face until her sunglasses slid down her nose. He caught them before they fell.
She opened one eye.
“Thank you.”
“Entirely self-serving. You'd have woken everyone looking for them.”
There were only the driver and Theo to wake. She smiled anyway, put the glasses into her bag and closed both eyes again.
He let her sleep. His own tiredness had become something soft and heavy, less likely to produce sleep than make every movement require consideration. The road changed, buildings appearing where there had been more open space. His phone buzzed with a message from his mother: a photograph of her gold shoes beside the little fan, both lying on the bed. Under it she'd written that the shoes were recovering and the fan had survived Bill.
Theo smiled and showed Mara when she woke properly. She laughed. He replied that the performance had been excellent, then left the phone in his pocket.
At the airport they moved through the usual tasks without needing to establish who would do what. Mara held the documents. Theo managed the bags. When she stopped to find something in her case, he stood beside it so nobody would walk into the open corner. She handed him his passport before he asked.
Their bookings still put them beside each other. A member of staff said their names and looked at the screen, unaware that sitting together had acquired any meaning beyond two people who had arranged it months ago.
They found food after the bags were gone. Mara wanted something which did not require a plate. Theo bought two sandwiches, then saw a third option she would prefer and came back with three.
“An ambitious journey,” she said.
“You can choose.”
“We could have bought two after choosing.”
“A less generous method.”
They ate one each and kept the third for the flight. Mara folded the wrapping neatly while Theo failed to make his rubbish fit the opening of the bin. She watched his second attempt and said geometry hadn't been his strength this week.
“An unfair sample.”
“A persuasive one.”
He laughed, pushed the wrapper farther in and succeeded without defending the subject.
They waited at the gate. She sat close enough for their shoulders to touch, reading something on her phone. Theo could see the shape of her concentration but not the words. For years he had asked what she was looking at whenever they waited somewhere, interested and nosy in proportions which varied with his boredom. This time he let it remain hers.
She glanced up after a while.
“A message about a box,” she said.
“Professional?”
“They want the biscuits to look more joyful.”
“Did the biscuits complain?”
“Through representation.”
“A difficult client.”
She smiled and put the phone away. “I'm not answering until tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“They've had a week to think of another word.”
He liked her work stories. The terrible description of a small ordinary object, the very strong feelings people developed about where to put its name, Mara trying to give them something better than they'd asked for without making them notice the disagreement. He would miss the biscuit boxes before he ever looked at one in a shop.
They boarded with the slow patience of people too tired to resent a queue. Mara had the window, Theo the middle seat. A woman at the aisle asked whether she could put a small bag beneath his legs for a moment while she moved something overhead. He said yes. Mara watched him fold himself around the bag.
“Practice,” she murmured.
“The daybed.”
“Excellent preparation.”
The woman thanked him, retrieved the bag and sat. Theo straightened his knees with a satisfaction he would not have understood a week earlier.
After takeoff Mara leaned against his shoulder. She asked whether it was all right, and he said yes before she could move away. The soft weight of her head made him want to remain awake for the entire flight, foolishly, as if sleeping would waste a possession he was required to return when they landed.
He slept anyway.
When he woke, she was still there. One of his hands had settled over hers on the armrest. He looked down at it, then out through the window past her face. The light had changed. He couldn't identify where they were and did not need to.
Mara woke when he shifted to find the third sandwich. They divided it, this time cutting as evenly as they could with the edge of its cardboard tray. Neither piece was particularly attractive. They ate, drank water and complained quietly about having no more room to put things.
The woman beside him borrowed a pen to fill in a note in her book. Mara supplied the one from her bag. Theo watched it pass across him, the familiar blue barrel, and smiled without explaining why. When the woman returned it, Mara put it back.
Later the plane descended. Bristol appeared beneath them in pieces, roads and fields giving way to buildings Theo knew too little from the air to name. Mara looked out with her face close to the glass. He watched the back of her head and felt the journey beginning to end in his body before the wheels touched down.
They waited for bags. Her case came first. Theo lifted it from the belt and put it beside her. The dish had traveled out of sight for hours; she ran a hand over the corner as if she could detect its condition through the shell.
“We'll know soon,” he said.
“It has a terrible face. It deserves to survive.”
His holdall arrived. He lifted it and they went toward the exit, passing a family assembling children, bags and a pushchair into something mobile.
Beyond the doors people waited with flowers, phones, expressions of relief. Nobody had come for Mara and Theo. They'd planned it that way before the holiday, separate routes which had seemed practical in the six weeks when everything needed arranging.
They stopped beside a pillar, out of the way. Theo adjusted the holdall on his shoulder.
“Taxi?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He nodded. He'd get one too, to the rental. They could share part of the route. He could stand beside her a few more minutes, give the driver both addresses, watch the flat's door close before he reached his own.
Mara looked down at her case, then at him.
“I'd rather say goodbye here,” she said.
His chest tightened. He nodded before trying to answer, so she wouldn't need to wonder whether he had heard it as punishment.
“All right.”
She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder. The action was so ordinary it hurt more than the word.
“Your books,” she said.
“They can wait.”
“Not forever.”
“No. I'll get them.”
“And the shower gel.”
He smiled. “A substantial estate.”
She laughed, then put a hand over her mouth briefly. Her eyes were wet. He set down the holdall and opened his arms.
Mara came into them. He held her in the bright public place, her bag pressed awkwardly between their bodies, one hand at the back of her neck. She rested her face against his shirt. There was no need to stop anyone walking past or make the moment look less ordinary than it was.
“I loved the party,” she said.
“Me too.”
“All of it.”
He nodded against her hair. She held him harder for a moment, then loosened her arms.
When they drew apart, he kissed her forehead. She put her hand against his cheek and kissed him properly, brief and warm and not enough. He took her hand from his face, held it once and let it go.
“Bye, Theo.”
“Bye.”
She picked up the case handle. He bent for his holdall. They walked in different directions without arranging another look. He heard the little wheels behind him for a few steps, then somebody spoke and the sound was gone.
At the taxi he gave his address, the one he had to remember rather than say automatically. The driver asked about the holiday, and Theo said it had been very good. He meant it. Then he looked out of the window while the car left the airport.
The temporary rental was still temporary when he reached it. A plain door, a narrow hallway, the lamp he'd used before flying standing where he'd left it. Bill had offered another lamp and a chair; Theo would have to choose which he wanted, then actually go and collect them.
He put the holdall down. The silence here was different from the villa's silence, without another room in which Mara might be looking for an earring.
He opened the bag to take out the shirt around the shower gel. The bottle had survived, though the hat had lost some of its defense against the journey. He lifted the hat, looked at the crooked brim and set it on the back of the kitchen chair.
Then he went to the sink, filled a glass and drank it standing up.