The Station with No Trains

Saltwick first appeared between two warehouses: a thin piece of grey water, gulls hanging above it, the white end of a pier. Clara had imagined this arrival so often that for a moment she felt the old excitement before remembering she no longer had the place it belonged to.

Arthur glanced towards the sea.

“Looks cold.”

“It generally is.”

“People swim in that?”

“People do all sorts of things you disapprove of.”

“I don’t disapprove of swimming.”

“Only of doing it in water.”

He smiled and followed her directions past the harbour.

The Old Station stood at the top of a short hill. There were no tracks now, just a strip of grass where the platforms had been and an iron canopy over a locked blue door. Clara had loved the canopy. She had pictured herbs in old enamel containers beneath it, customers sitting outside with coffee, the kitchen window opening to let out heat.

A new notice had been taped inside the glass.

VIEWINGS BY APPOINTMENT.

Arthur pulled in.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the entrance for deliveries?”

“There isn’t one.”

“Round the back?”

“No. Arthur.”

He turned off the engine.

Clara watched a gull pull at something caught beneath a parked car. She thought she might manage to tell the story better if she began with the first email from the landlord, but that would mean making him wait through five minutes of circumstances before arriving at the fact she had withheld.

“I haven’t got it,” she said. “The place. I’m not opening here.”

His hand remained on the key.

“Not Friday?”

“Not at all.”

She told him about Mia’s job. About the money. About the landlord’s refusal. She gave dates because dates were what he would ask for, and because they made it impossible to pretend this had happened during the journey.

“You knew before we left.”

“Yes.”

“Before we took the table apart.”

“Yes.”

He looked out through the windscreen. There was a chip in the glass near the bottom, filled with resin.

“What were we doing, then?”

“Bringing the table.”

“Where?”

“To me.”

“Where were you planning to put it?”

“Rosa said she’d store it at the café. Until I worked something out.”

“Rosa knows.”

“Yes.”

“Eddie knows.”

“Yes.”

He nodded once, then twice, as if confirming a measurement.

“I was going to tell you.”

“You had plenty of opportunities.”

“I know.”

“Was the hospital interview true?”

“Yes. It’s three or four days a week, depending on the rota. I need something steady.”

“Then you should take it.”

“I haven’t been offered it yet.”

He gripped the keys. She could hear the little metal ring clicking against them.

“Why not tell me?”

“Because you were already expecting it to fail.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You read the plan like it was a thing somebody was trying to sell you that you didn’t want.”

“I was looking at the figures.”

“You only looked at the figures.”

“They mattered.”

“I know they mattered.”

A woman walking a terrier passed the van and looked in. Clara lowered her voice.

“I know. That’s why I’m sitting here looking at a sign instead of opening a restaurant. You don’t have to win.”

Arthur stared at her.

“Win?”

She wished she hadn’t said it. She was still angry enough not to withdraw it.

He took a long breath and let it out through his nose.

“How much would you have needed?”

“Don’t.”

“I asked how much.”

“I don’t want your house money.”

“You don’t know what I was going to offer.”

“You can’t afford to live in your own house. I’m not taking money so I can fry onions under a pretty canopy.”

“That isn’t all you’d have been doing.”

“No.”

The gull abandoned its investigation of the car and took off, scattering something pale across the road.

Arthur put the keys in his pocket.

“I need to get out.”

She watched him open the door.

“Are you going home?”

He looked back, confused by the question.

“No. I’m going for a walk.”

“All right.”

“I won’t go home without telling you.”

He shut the door carefully. It would have been easier, somehow, if he had slammed it.

Clara sat in the van with the table behind her and finally sent Mia an answer.

Told him.

Then she added:

Badly.