Mara kept her hand against the door when the latch lifted. It opened only as far as her arm allowed. Through the gap she saw a shirt cuff darned with darker thread and the side of a face she had last seen without grey in its beard.
“What happened to the saucepan?” she asked.
The man looked down at the envelope. “Which saucepan?”
“The one I brought you. Wrapped in a towel.”
“The handle came loose.”
Anyone could have guessed that. She pressed harder against the door.
“You said the woman downstairs stole it.”
“I said she borrowed it. You said stole. Rather loudly, while she was downstairs.” He shifted his weight. “I burned milk in it. She took it to scrape out and found your money.”
Mara said nothing.
“Under the handle plate. Two shillings folded in your laundry list. I thought it was packing until she unscrewed it.”
“You sent it back.”
“You needed boots.”
“I needed you to stop sending things back.”
He rubbed his thumb over the edge of the door. That, too, she remembered: his inspection of an object while deciding whether an argument was worth having.
“It’s still upstairs,” he said. “The saucepan.”
She lowered her arm. Carrying the route book open to the old carbon, Mara stepped across the threshold into fourteen.
The passage inside smelled of lamp oil and boiled onions. Umbrella ribs stood in a chipped crock beneath the stairs, though the shop door was shut. Tomas moved aside for her bag with the old, automatic care for other people’s parcels. He was thinner through the neck. One front tooth had a small brown chip.
Mara put the envelope and fresh receipt set on the stair tread. Then she took his wrist.
“Cold hands,” he said.
His pulse knocked against her fingertips. She pushed back his cuff and found the pale oval where he had caught himself with a hot soldering iron at nineteen. He tried to help by turning his arm. She gripped harder.
“Leave it.”
He left it.
She had prepared herself, on various nights over seven years, to identify a coat, a belt buckle, a bone. His wrist had hair on it. There was dirt along the edge of his thumbnail.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“All this time?”
“Yes, Mara.”
She let go and caught him round the middle, striking his chin with her forehead. He made a small bitten-off noise, then put both arms around her. His shirt smelled of washing dried indoors. For a while neither found a comfortable place for their feet.
“You’ve gone bony,” she said into his shoulder.
“You’ve brought a satchel full of corners.”
She moved the satchel. She did not move away.
Upstairs, the saucepan sat beneath a leak, with a saucer inside it to soften the dripping. Tomas took the letter and laid it unopened beside his cup. Mara retained the fresh receipt set.
There was bread under an inverted bowl, a narrow bed, and a patched curtain that stopped short of the sill. On the table lay a pencil shaved almost to its middle. She had expected dust in a room abandoned for seven years. There were crumbs instead.
“Who brings your food?”
“Someone who can find the door.”
“I’ll need a better answer.”
“I know.”
She pulled out the second chair. One of its joints creaked, and Tomas reached to steady it before remembering she could do that herself.
“They put your name on stone.”
He looked at her.
“Breakwater memorial. Third panel. I paid toward it.”
“I didn’t know about the stone.”
“What did you think I thought?”
He opened his mouth, then reached for the cup. It was empty. He set it down again.
“I tried to get out.”
“How far?”
“Dock Lane. Usually.”
She stood. “Show me.”
“You’ve only just—”
“Show me while I can still ask properly.”
He put on a coat hanging from the bedpost. Mara slipped the unsigned delivery receipt into her inner pocket and kept the route book open. They went downstairs together.
Outside, the council workers had gone. Their ladder had left pale scrapes in the dirt. Tomas walked beside her as far as the curb at Dock Lane, where water trembled in the gutter each time a cart passed.
“The warehouse steps,” Mara said. “We’ll go there.”
He nodded, watching the opposite pavement with an attention she disliked.
Mara crossed first. At the warehouse steps she turned. Tomas stood on the far curb, his right foot extended over the gutter. He set it down, brought the other forward, and was still beside the same drain.
“Again,” she said.
“It won’t improve with repetition.”
He tried anyway. She watched his boot descend toward a pale cobble in the roadway. It landed on the curb. His knee buckled and he caught the lamp post.
A carter called for Mara to clear his unloading place. She moved two steps sideways. Tomas was still across the lane.
She went back to him.
“Did you see me reach the middle?” he asked.
“No.”
“Sometimes it feels as though I do.”
She took his hand, then stopped before pulling.
“Would this help?”
“I don’t know. Don’t haul me into a cart to establish it.”
A cart was indeed coming. They waited through the clop and wheel-rattle, still holding hands.
“What have you been told?” she asked.
“That public crossings require a recognized residence and a living witness. My lodging no longer counts.”
“I’m living.”
“You are. I don’t know what they would ask you to sign.”
She looked at the warehouse steps, ordinary and wet, then led him back to fourteen.
Inside the passage, Tomas took a folded scrap from his coat lining. Its edges were soft except for one straight, old tear. Printed boxes survived on it, and a number: 6418.
“Part of my receipt,” he said. “Take it.”
“For what?”
“Removing the lodging from the register.”
“You asked them to?”
“I signed. That’s as much as I can say accurately without starting badly.”
Mara held out her hand. Tomas gave her the receipt fragment numbered 6418, and she placed it in the buttoned compartment of her satchel.
Then she brought out the delivery slip. Tomas stepped back.
“It only says you received an envelope.”
“Let me read all of it.”
She passed him the whole attached set. He examined the front, lifted the top sheet without separating it, and turned it over.
“Why must the carbon stay attached?”
“Orrin insisted.”
“Did he explain?”
“No.”
Tomas returned the set. “Then I won’t sign another paper nobody will explain.”
“That costs me a delivery fee.”
“I’m sorry.”
She put the unsigned set away. Upstairs, a drop struck the saucer in the saucepan.
“I’ll bring someone,” she said. “Someone who can watch us try, and ask questions I haven’t thought of.”
“Who?”
“I need to choose.”
He looked toward the street. “You could stay a little.”
She sat on the bottom stair, the open route book across her knees. He sat beside her, leaving room for the satchel. For several minutes they listened to a man outside failing to persuade a dog to walk.
When Mara finally stood, she checked the satchel button and the old carbon page. Tomas remained inside fourteen, holding the door. She stepped out into Wren Passage and turned so he could hear her without leaning after her. “I’ll come back with an independent witness,” she said. “I promise.”