The Life He Could Not Give Her

Clara put down her fork.

For months, the future had meant finishing the next drawing, catching the next flight, making it through another night without calling a disconnected number.

Now Julian had set something entirely different on the table.

Cambridge.

Not because it was his destination. Because it was a place she had once looked at on university computers while pretending she was researching somebody else's application.

Libraries. Studios. Time to learn without somebody waiting for a finished report by morning.

"I'd have to prepare properly," she said.

"Then prepare."

"You make it sound easy."

"No. I make it sound possible."

He slid a folder across the table.

She opened it.

Examples of conservation projects, course information, names she recognized from books she had carried from one borrowed room to another.

She touched the edge of a page.

"Thank you."

Behind her, a chair scraped.

She glanced toward the sound, saw only a waiter moving past, and turned back.

Julian watched her.

"Come with me."

She closed the folder.

"That isn't what we're discussing."

"It could be."

"No."

He looked down, smiling faintly at himself.

"You don't leave much room anymore."

"I used to leave far too much."

***

Outside, snow had begun to mix with the rain.

Julian opened the car door for her.

Clara would have preferred to take a taxi. She was tired of weighing the meaning of every ordinary courtesy.

Then he asked whether she knew what had happened to the old apartment.

"I think Owen still has an agent handling it. Why?"

"Some documents. I never collected everything. I need them before I travel."

She called Owen.

He answered immediately.

"Clara?"

"The apartment Julian gave me. Does the building manager still have the keys?"

A pause.

"Yes."

"Good. Can you let them know we're coming?"

"Of course. Are you—"

A horn sounded beside the car.

"Sorry, what?"

"Are things all right?"

"Yes. I'll be back in Briarhaven next week. We need to talk about the next construction tender. Can you find out which firms are applying?"

He answered the work questions, then asked whether he should arrange their transport.

Clara thought he meant the colleagues traveling with her.

"Please. I'll send you the time."

She ended the call.

Julian looked at her.

"You've become a businesswoman."

"I've become a woman with forms to sign."

He laughed.

She wished that didn't make the evening easier.

***

The apartment smelled of polished wood and an empty home.

Lights came on exactly where Clara expected. The curtains were the ones she had chosen. The painting above the sofa was hers.

She opened the door and let Julian pass.

"Study first," she said. "I think your files were in the left cabinet."

He looked around instead.

"You kept it."

"I asked for it to be sold."

"I didn't mean anything."

She went to the bedroom to check the drawers.

He followed.

"Clara."

She stopped in the doorway.

"Don't."

"You haven't heard me."

"I've heard enough to know what you're about to say."

He looked at the room behind her.

"We were happy here."

"Sometimes."

He took that as more hope than she intended.

"I should have done more."

She looked at him.

There it was, years late, simple enough that she had once wondered why he couldn't say it.

Now that he had, it changed nothing.

"Yes," she said.

He flinched.

"I'm not trying to punish you."

"I know."

He stepped closer, and she let him take her hand because she could see how badly he needed not to be rejected at every movement.

Then he drew her toward him.

She put a hand against his chest.

"Julian."

"One more chance."

"No."

For a moment he held her anyway. Not tightly. Just long enough to rest his face near her hair.

She stood still, feeling only sadness and the impatience of knowing she would have to hurt him clearly to finish this.

"It's over," she said.

He let her go.

***

Clara waited until Julian stepped into the study before going back to the bedroom.

The drawer held almost nothing. A spare button in a plastic packet. The small tape measure she had used when the wardrobes were fitted.

She picked it up.

Once, she had stood here measuring a space for his jackets and wondering whether being practical counted as loving somebody. She had thought it did. She still thought so. It simply hadn't been enough by itself.

Julian came to the doorway carrying a folder.

"Found them."

"Good."

He looked at the tape measure.

"Keep it," he said.

She almost smiled.

"It was mine to begin with."

He nodded, embarrassed.

They switched off the lamps one by one. Clara closed the study window that had been left on its latch and checked the kitchen tap without thinking.

At the entrance, Julian held the door.

"Will you let me know what you decide about school?"

"If there's something to tell."

She put the tape measure in her bag and returned the key to the building manager downstairs. It should have felt final. Instead it felt like finishing an errand she had postponed too long.

Across the street, Damian watched the lit window.

Two figures stood close together.

He couldn't hear a word.

He didn't stay to find out what happened next.

By dawn, he was back in Briarhaven.

***

Owen collected Clara the following week.

She read messages for most of the journey. Halfway home, he asked, carefully, "What happened between you and Damian?"

Her phone lowered.

"What?"

"Since he went to Westbridge."

She stared at him.

"He's back?"

Owen's hands tightened on the wheel.

The silence lasted several seconds.

"You didn't see him?"

She shook her head.

"He came to get you."

Clara looked out of the window because she couldn't bear the expression she suspected was on her own face.

He had come back.

He had been close enough for her to touch.

He had left again without telling her.

For the rest of the drive, she said nothing.

***

The silver convertible stood inside the courtyard gate.

Clara stopped walking.

She had seen it outside the restaurant. A brief, admiring glance at the shape of the hood, the soft silver beneath the streetlights.

At the time, she had thought it belonged to someone having a better evening.

She walked around it.

On the passenger seat lay a small cream envelope with her name.

She didn't open it.

"Where is he?"

Owen stood beside her suitcase.

"The club."

"Take me."

He reached for the keys.

But she was already through the gate.

By the time he got the car out, she had turned into the narrow lane where he couldn't follow.

She walked, then ran.

Her coat came open. A shoe struck a loose stone. She caught herself against a wall, scraped her palm, and kept going.

At the Nightingale, the security man didn't recognize her.

"Private event."

"Where's Damian?"

"You need an appointment."

She tried to go around him.

He blocked her.

"Mrs. Wolfe," somebody said behind him.

The man stepped back at once.

Clara went inside, looking down every corridor, opening a door on an empty office, another on a startled man carrying glasses.

"Where is he?"

Nobody answered quickly enough.

Then the people in front of her moved aside.

Damian stood at the end of the corridor.

She stopped.

Longer hair. Darker face. A shirt carelessly buttoned. A coat over his shoulders, a bottle hanging from one hand.

He looked like a man she knew and a stranger she had imagined dying so often she couldn't quite believe him alive.

She walked toward him slowly.

Her hand rose to his cheek.

Warm.

She touched the line beside his mouth, the old scar, the roughness of his jaw.

"You're here."

Her voice broke.

He looked at her hand.

Then he moved it away from his face.

"Do I know you?"