Thursday began with a mirror delivery that made Maris look as though Claire had brought her a disappointing relative.
“It's narrow,” she said.
“It's lighter.”
“So is a spoon.”
Beth stood it near the fitting carpet and tilted it until the angle was right. She stepped back, turned, checked the side of her trousers.
“I can see everything I need.”
“You're narrow too,” Maris said.
“Ruth won't be.”
“Ruth has a better opinion of herself now. She may not need it.”
They laughed, and Claire put the delivery receipt in her bag. Paying for the replacement had hurt less than she expected. She could make a concrete loss better. It pleased her more than a sensible person should be pleased by spending money.
Beth had a dark green dress ready for the next afternoon. Its owner, Caroline Dace, was staying at the Lantern Hotel while visiting family and wanted the last fitting there. She had paid for Beth's time and for Vivian to help handle the heavy skirt. The dress was for a family anniversary dinner. Caroline had been through a bad year and did not want a discussion of her body disguised as admiration for an alteration.
“She said she wanted it to feel like hers,” Beth told Claire. “Which is rather more useful than wanting to look twenty.”
Claire had been asked to take a few photographs after the fitting, for Caroline herself. No page, no advertising. Beth made sure Claire heard this twice, and Claire promised to hear it a third time if needed.
Vivian was pressing the skirt while Beth packed the sewing kit. Her phone lay beside the iron, screen down. Claire wondered if she had put it there to keep the warmth away from her hands or because she didn't want to look at it.
“Evan would like to speak again,” Claire said.
Beth stopped packing.
“He told you?” Vivian asked.
“He still wants to know what happened after you called Graham.”
“So do I.”
“You could tell him that.”
“I did.”
Claire leaned against the window ledge. She had kissed Evan the evening before. It wasn't relevant. It had made the conversation feel as though it concerned her more, nevertheless.
“Not at his house. Not with Graham there. Somewhere you could actually talk.”
“Here?”
“It's Beth's work.”
Beth looked at her. “You remembered.”
“I was thinking after the fitting tomorrow. The hotel lounge. You'd be there anyway.”
Beth closed the sewing kit, then opened it again to put in another reel of thread.
“That's also my work.”
“After it.”
“In the same place.”
“I wouldn't involve Caroline.”
“You can't just use a paid fitting as somewhere to put everybody.”
Vivian moved the iron off the cloth. “I could talk to him there.”
Beth turned to her. “Do you want to?”
“I'd rather it wasn't someone's house. I can leave a lounge.”
The answer was reasonable. Claire felt grateful for its reasonableness and only afterward noticed how badly she wanted Beth to accept it.
“One conversation,” Vivian said. “I'm not agreeing to anything else.”
“No one asked you to.”
“People ask by waiting.”
Claire looked down at her bag. Evan's ordinary picture was in the camera, the one he preferred. She had made him smile last night. She wanted to give him a room in which nobody lied.
“After Caroline is finished,” Beth said. “Not before. He doesn't come up to the room.”
“Of course.”
“And Caroline isn't in a single picture that gets sent anywhere except to her.”
“I know.”
“Let me say it.”
She called Evan from outside. He sounded pleased to hear her before she mentioned Vivian. The change made her wish she had called only to say hello.
“Tomorrow afternoon?” he asked.
“After the fitting. Half past three should be safe.”
“Does she know I'm coming?”
“Yes. She agreed.”
“All right.”
She waited.
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“You didn't talk her into it?”
“I suggested it.”
He was quiet a moment. “I'll be there.”
She looked at the studio window. Vivian had hung the green dress in its bag and stood beside it, both arms lifted to ease the fastening over the rail. There was a purpose to her movements again, something that wasn't only fear.
When Claire went back in, she took the used body out of her bag.
“What are you doing?” Beth asked.
“A picture of the work. Vivian with the dress.”
Vivian looked at the camera. “Do I have to?”
“No.”
Beth watched them both. Claire lowered it a little, letting the offer remain an offer.
Vivian put one hand against the hanging bag. “I'd like that, actually. There's not much evidence I did anything this week except make trouble.”
“The fabric layout,” Beth said.
“Not finished.”
“Still work.”
Claire took the photograph. Vivian's face was tired but more open than it had been at the meeting. The green dress behind her looked dark through the clear panel of the bag. Beth didn't enter the picture, remaining beside the table, watching.
That evening the next-day image appeared at the first transfer.
Claire recognized the lounge immediately. She had photographed a birthday dinner at the Lantern Hotel the previous winter and spent an hour looking for a place the overhead lamps wouldn't turn everyone yellow. The large round window faced the river. There was a three-branched brass lamp beside two green chairs, and behind them a row of little framed prints whose spacing offended her.
Vivian sat in one of the chairs. Evan was opposite her, turned slightly forward. His injured eye was visible. Vivian held something folded across her lap, perhaps a coat, perhaps a bag. Her face was directed toward him. The moment was quiet enough that Claire felt a relief out of proportion to anything the image could actually tell her.
Tomorrow afternoon. After the fitting. Almost exactly the time she'd suggested.
No road, no blood, no hand trapped beneath wood. Two people in a room she'd put them in, doing the thing she'd hoped they would do.
She looked at Vivian's face, trying to decide whether she was speaking. The lips were slightly parted. Evan wasn't smiling, but why should he be? What Claire wanted was not a cheerful photograph. She wanted the conversation to happen, to give him the missing part, to end the waiting that entered every pleasant hour they spent together.
She called Beth.
“It shows them there,” she said.
“Shows what?”
Claire described it.
“That doesn't tell you what she says,” Beth replied.
“I know. But they meet.”
“They might.”
“It's the time we arranged.”
“We moved the mirror.”
“Exactly. We can help things happen too.”
Beth didn't answer immediately. Claire looked at the lamp, the chairs, the reassuring ordinary carpet.
“Don't make it more than it is,” Beth said.
“I'm not.”
Claire sat looking at the lamp between the green chairs. For once she had a picture with nobody on the ground.
When Beth hung up, Claire saved a copy to her phone. She told herself it might be useful if anyone tried to stop the meeting.