At the Door

Fenna had already held her hands under the hot tap and still thought they felt cold. She stood in her own bathroom, that same Sunday evening, and didn't know why she was changing for a conversation. She wasn't going anywhere she needed to look good. She put on a clean jumper anyway. The other one still smelt of the room they'd packed up that morning.

His apology was on her phone. He was sorry he'd said she could never just be done with something. She'd read the message three times. The first time she'd wanted to reply that she was sorry too. Then she'd realised she wanted to say it to him. Not from here, in a sentence she could send for him to sit with alone at his table.

She ate something before leaving. She had work in the morning. She was hungry, though she hadn't thought of it until she opened the fridge. Each mouthful made her think of breakfast at the guesthouse, then yesterday's walk again. It hadn't disappeared because today he'd asked for something she couldn't give. She could still feel exactly how cold his cheek had been against her nose.

Outside she walked to her car without a kit bag. There was no reason to take one. It felt as though she'd forgotten something. Only her phone lay on the passenger seat. She fixed it in the holder, chose the route she could now drive without help, then turned the directions off again.

Marten opened the door before she'd taken off her gloves. He wore an ordinary dark T-shirt. His hair was still damp. For a moment it made her unreasonably angry: here she was with the whole afternoon still in her body, and he'd been able to ride and shower. She knew it said nothing about him. She still couldn't get rid of the feeling at once.

'Hi,' he said.

'Hi.'

He stepped aside. She went in. There was no kiss because they both spent too long thinking about the right greeting. Fenna took off her coat and hung it in the place she'd begun using over the last few weeks. Nobody had granted her the right. She'd simply hung it there once, then kept doing it.

Marten asked whether she wanted a drink. She said no. He sat opposite her at the table. There was nothing between them. He'd probably cleared it, but she didn't want to start trying to understand him by reading an empty tabletop.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

He looked up.

'About the last season. And finally having a plan. I know what you're doing, and I don't think it's ridiculous.'

He nodded slowly. She watched him trying to accept the words without immediately having to give her something back. She wanted to touch him. It was still her body's simplest suggestion whenever there was a problem with this man.

'I don't think your plan's ridiculous either,' he said. 'Denmark.'

'I know.'

'But I did act as though you could just choose something else instead.'

She looked at his face. All afternoon she'd rehearsed how to make him understand this. Now he was saying it himself, her clever sentences were useless. 'I don't want to lose you.'

He lowered his head. 'I don't want to lose you either.'

They both sat back a little. There was room in the conversation. Fenna felt the temptation to treat that as an answer: they'd both said sorry, they didn't want to lose each other, so now she could sit beside him. He'd put a hand on her leg. She'd stay the night. Tomorrow would be another day when they had to go away from each other.

'How do we do this, then?' she asked.

He looked up. 'I don't know.'

'What do you want from me?'

It sounded harsher than she'd meant. This time he didn't take offence. He looked at his hands for a while before speaking.

'I want you to stay tonight. And I don't want to spend the whole time thinking about when you have to leave again. I want a week with you in it. Ordinary evenings. I know that's a lot when you've only just met someone.'

'It doesn't feel like that.'

He looked at her. 'No.'

She rubbed her thumb over a little scar on her hand. It was old, from before this winter. She could never have imagined sitting here like this, so sad over a man she'd barely known a few months ago. From their first conversation he'd had her attention as though it had been waiting especially for him.

'I want to see you,' she said. 'There too. Not just call because we once had something. I want you to come, and I want to be glad you're there.'

He breathed out. 'I don't want to begin every visit with half the goodbye already in my head.'

'Don't people do that?'

'Sometimes. I don't know if I can.'

She looked at the kitchen behind him. She knew the drawer where the knives were and the sound the fridge made when it was quiet. Such small things to make her want to hold on to him so badly. Not proof they belonged together, but the life that had already grown between them.

'Would you want to try?' she asked.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She waited. There was no good answer for him, she could see. Saying yes when for weeks he'd been making it clearer that he wanted something else, or saying no to her with her sitting right in front of him.

'I've tried pretending I'd just get used to the idea,' he said. 'Then I started watching you. What time you came. How long you stayed. I don't want that.'

'Neither do I.'

She looked at him and felt anger return through the sadness. Not because he'd said the wrong thing. Because he'd named exactly what she was feeling more and more whenever she opened a message. Plans she was already in danger of spoiling before they began, an amount of time that had to be enough to settle him.

'But I can't keep talking as though all I ever do is let you down,' she said. 'I didn't lure you into this. I wanted that chance before I knew you.'

'I know.'

'And you're still hoping I'll want something else.'

He nodded. It hurt more than an argument would have. She wasn't confused. She hadn't spent the past weeks mishearing his tone or reacting impatiently to perfectly reasonable questions. He wanted her close, and she wanted to leave without losing him. They were both getting better at saying it. It hadn't solved anything yet.

Marten pushed his chair back a little. 'I could go with you,' he said.

She looked up. 'Would you want to?'

He gave a brief smile. 'That's the question, isn't it?'

She waited. He looked at the window and shook his head. 'No. Not to be looking round again for something to do until you're finished. I want that job. I want to build something here.'

She felt relief, followed by shame. She hadn't wanted him to offer his life as a solution to hers. She'd also hoped there was something other than this conversation. She stood and sat beside him, not because she had an answer but because the distance across the table had become unbearable.

He put his hand on her knee. She took it. She knew his fingers, the broad thumbnail, the spot at the side of his hand she liked to touch with her mouth. Now she only held it.

'We could pretend for another two weeks,' she said.

He looked at her. 'I don't want to.'

'Neither do I.'

She felt the tears before she could hide them. Marten raised his free hand towards her face and stopped halfway, as though he didn't know if it was still allowed. She leaned towards him. He put his arm round her and she rested her forehead against his shoulder.

'I think we need to end this,' she said.

His arm stayed round her. She heard him breathing. It was the sound she'd woken beside last night, simply close, with nothing she had to read into it. Now she was trying to work out from it whether he'd heard her.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'Then we'll end it.'

She sat up and wiped her face. He wasn't crying, but his eyes had reddened. She wanted to do something about the pain she was causing him, but could think of nothing that wouldn't also mean taking back her decision.

'I wasn't only here for the good times,' she said.

'I know.' His voice broke a little. He swallowed and looked at her. 'It wasn't nothing.'

She shook her head. That was easier just now than agreeing aloud. They sat a little longer. Touching hadn't suddenly become forbidden, and it wasn't the same either. She let his hand go when she realised she was holding it so she didn't have to believe her own decision.

In the hall it took a long time to put her coat on. Marten stood by the living-room door. She'd often stood here with her shoes in her hand because she didn't want to go yet. Now she put them on and straightened up.

'We'll still see each other at the track,' she said.

He nodded. 'Yes.'

She didn't want to ask whether they'd behave normally then. She didn't even know what normal was supposed to be. She stepped towards him and kissed him on the mouth. For a moment he rested his hand behind her neck, so familiar that she almost closed her eyes again and stayed. Then he let her go.

She took the door handle herself. Outside she heard him say goodbye. She said it back and kept walking until she was in her car. Only there did she begin crying again. She wiped her cheeks, waited and looked at the street that wouldn't change however long she sat there. Once she could see properly again, she started the car.

At home she put her keys in their usual place. The flat seemed smaller with the empty corner where the first boxes had stood. No boyfriend would send her a joke later tonight about something he'd heard at his sister's. She could call him: her hand had thought it before she'd even picked up the phone. He would answer. That was why she mustn't call.

Her mother had asked how things had gone with her belongings. Fenna rang her back. She didn't start with the storeroom or the curtains. 'We've split up,' she said, and this time her voice did fail her.

There was a brief silence at the other end. 'Shall I come over?' her mother asked.

Fenna looked at the sofa. She didn't want another person in her flat who would then have to leave. She didn't want to stay entirely alone just because that seemed the grown-up answer either. 'Will you stay on the phone a bit?'

'Yes, of course.'

Her mother walked somewhere and sat; Fenna heard the chair on the floor. She rested her head against the back of the sofa. For a while they said little. Then her mother asked whether she'd eaten. Fenna said yes. It was good that it was true, and so nothing else needed arranging.

After they hung up, Fenna showered. She didn't wash her hair, just stood under the water and dried herself slowly afterwards. She laid out her work clothes for tomorrow. Her kit bag was still packed by the door. She pushed it aside to get past and went to bed.

The duvet lay evenly over her whole body. No arm across her, no warm leg to keep her awake. She turned and pulled one of the other pillows against her. Her eyes burned. She stayed where she was and left the light off.