The Dog in the Window

Fenna was already inside when Marten reached the restaurant. She wore a green jumper with a neckline he hadn't seen before, which was an absurd thought: he knew almost none of her clothes. He noticed himself looking anyway. Her hair was down. Without a helmet her face seemed less sharp, and her mouth more dangerous.

'You're on time,' she said.

'I waited in the car so I wouldn't look desperate.'

'How long?'

'Four minutes.'

She checked her phone. 'Eleven for me.'

It was a good start. He kissed her cheek and felt her hand briefly close round his upper arm. When the woman at the door asked about their reservation, he almost forgot his own name. He told her a table for two had been booked, information that would undoubtedly help the business along.

They were given a table beside a cabinet of large jars of pickled vegetables. In the bottom one was something that might once have been a cabbage. Fenna leaned towards it and raised her eyebrows. She didn't have to say anything. Marten laughed and pushed the chair he had pulled out for her back under the table, since she had already sat down on the other side.

The menu was short. That suited him. He didn't want to spend the evening ashamed of a bad choice while Fenna got something much better. He pointed to the special and said it was supposed to be good here.

'Who told you that?'

'A man I know.'

'Has he eaten here?'

'Probably.'

'You're making it up.'

'It's an extremely well-founded guess.'

She lowered her menu a little. 'I think you're just hungry.'

It was true. They ordered different things. A stew for him; for her, a dish the waitress said came with celeriac. Fenna said she would give it a fair chance, at least. When the woman left, she looked at him with a satisfaction that had nothing to do with their order.

'You don't need to know what's good here,' she said. 'I can cope with a disappointing meal.'

'Very reassuring for the rest of my plans.'

'What else did you have planned?'

He took a sip of water. 'I thought we'd eat first.'

She smiled. It was even nicer than her laugh at the track. Quieter too. Since Wednesday he had been building a small stock of answers in case she said something to which all he could manage was nice. Now she was opposite him and he couldn't remember a single one. She held his gaze until he had to smile again.

She asked about last Friday. He had told her he was going to look round a bike shop. She had remembered that he hadn't found the idea exciting, though he didn't think those were quite the words he'd used.

'A woman brought back a bike she'd only just bought there,' he said. 'She said there was something wrong with the gears.'

'And?'

'She meant she had to pedal harder on one stretch than another. Koen went outside with her to try it out. She came back beaming. So did he, but he looked as if that were part of the job.'

'You're smiling about it.'

'It was fun. I nearly started explaining something much more complicated. Completely unnecessary, as it turned out.'

He told her about the rest of the visit. He had watched, had coffee, listened as Koen advised someone against a more expensive model because the cheaper bike was better suited to what the customer wanted to do with it. Not heroic, perhaps not even unusual. It had made him think, though. There would be something he could do there that actually helped somebody, rather than waiting for his next turn to show how fast he could ride.

Fenna turned her glass. 'Are you going to do it?'

'I'm having another look. A proper look this time.'

'You didn't only go for the coffee, did you?'

'No.' He rested his hands flat on the table for a moment. 'But as long as I don't do it, I can still become all sorts of things.'

She pulled a face. 'That's exactly what's so annoying.'

He had expected a joke. Instead she told him about a winter when she had almost decided to work less and train more. Almost had proved a very elastic word. She had taken on extra work to pay for it, kept that up, then been too tired to gain much from it. She told the story without making herself sound pitiful, but he noticed how much he wanted to say something to the woman she had been then.

He leaned towards her a little and asked how she had stopped.

'By sitting down against a stack of boxes and swearing very loudly. It didn't help, but it was a start.'

Their food arrived. Fenna studied hers with the concentration of someone checking a race draw. There was a small pan beside his plate. She had a glossy piece of vegetable between something crisp and something the description had called a cream. She tapped the celeriac with her fork.

'You don't have to give it a head start,' Marten said.

'I want to see what it does first.'

She took a mouthful, chewed and pointed her fork at him. 'Good.'

'Now I'm happy.'

He got a piece and she got a spoonful of stew. They settled into it almost at once, without discussion. They ate and talked over each other. About the first time he had had to speak to a room full of people as a boy, and halfway through could no longer remember his own surname. About the PE teacher who had tried to explain to her that you didn't have to win every game, whereupon she had asked why they were keeping score. He could picture her. Twelve years old, offended by a world that let you run but wouldn't let you be pleased when you got there first.

'Were you an annoying child?'

'Not on paper.'

'An impressive qualification.'

'I could sit still when I had to. Just not without thinking somebody could have organised something better.'

'And now?'

'Now I pay for my own chair.'

He laughed. He wanted to touch her in a way that had nothing to do with sharing food. His hand lay beside his plate. She rested hers on the edge of the table, close enough for him to see a small graze on her thumb. When he touched the side of her hand with his forefinger, she left it there. Then she turned her hand over and stroked his fingers with her thumb. He was thirty-six and immediately felt pleasantly undone by it.

They didn't order dessert. Coffee, though, because neither asked if they should leave. Fenna told him about Denmark once their empty plates had been cleared. Naja had written back. They would speak the following week. The programme wasn't waiting for her name to be added; Naja wanted to meet her first.

'I looked at the message three times,' she said. 'It said the same thing each time.'

'Awkward. You do hope for a surprise.'

'I mainly hoped I hadn't written it myself by mistake.'

He saw how much it meant to her. More than a chance to improve. She sat differently when she talked about it, all her attention reaching ahead. He could remember sitting like that himself. He just didn't know whether it had been last year or much longer ago.

'Six months,' he said.

'Yes. If it happens.'

'You really want it.'

'Very much.' She looked straight at him. 'I did want you to know that.'

'You don't have to convince me.'

'I'm not trying to.'

He nodded. The answer was just enough to make him hear what he hadn't asked about. There was nothing between them yet to build a future on. It was their first dinner together. Yet he had already put himself somewhere in the coming weeks, as though his seat were now reserved. She wasn't pushing him away. She simply still wanted something else as well.

Outside, their cars were in different directions. Fenna put her hands in her coat pockets and asked if he fancied a walk. He pointed towards the wider part of the street. They passed dark shops, a snack bar where two men watched a screen above the till, and a row of parked bikes with wet saddles. There was barely any drizzle. She held her face up as though she wouldn't feel it until later in the evening.

At a crossing he pressed the button. Fenna immediately pressed it again.

'I've done it,' he said.

'I wanted to do something too.'

On the other side she stopped at a window full of lamps. One was lit, a round one on a small table. She wasn't really looking at it. He could tell because she was looking through the glass at his reflection. When he stood beside her, she turned her face towards him.

'I'm not walking any further waiting for you to ask,' she said.

He could have told her he had been looking for a good place for some time. That no place was good while he was thinking about what to do with his hands. Instead he put a hand against her cheek. Her skin was cold from the rain. He leaned towards her and she met him.

The first kiss was brief, mainly because they were both smiling. With the second she pulled him closer by the front of his coat. He felt her mouth warm beneath his. For a moment he forgot the sound of a car behind them and the wet pavement beneath his shoes. Her hand slipped to his neck, her fingers in the short hair there. He couldn't have thought of a better answer for tonight.

When she let go, he stayed close. Fenna looked past him. 'We're rather well lit.'

He turned towards the window. Behind the glass stood a large ceramic dog with a lampshade on its head. They were directly in front of it.

'We can pretend we're part of the display,' he said.

She rested her forehead against his chest and laughed. He put his arms round her. Rain pattered softly on his coat. They stood there until she lifted her face again and nudged his chin with her nose.

They walked back hand in hand. They reached his car before hers. Standing beside it, he didn't want to get in. She rose on tiptoe and kissed him again, more slowly now, without trying to be funny at all.

'Thanks for dinner,' she said.

'I didn't make it.'

'I'd been wondering all evening.'

They arranged to see each other the following week and went to their separate cars. He watched until she disappeared round the corner. In his car he put the heating on and sat for another moment. His phone lay on the passenger seat. He could send her something straight away. Proof that he was good at the part after a kiss, that he wasn't a man who suddenly forgot how words worked after a good evening.

He drove home first. There he took off his coat and hung it beside the bike, on the other hook. Then he messaged to say the dog would probably recognise them on their next date.

Her reply came as he kicked off his shoes. I hope he isn't getting his hopes up.

Marten sat on the sofa and read it again. Outside, the rain grew heavier. He would have to train tomorrow, Saturday; nothing had changed about the morning ahead. He set his alarm and found the photograph he had taken of the window after she had left. The dog looked cheerful beneath its lampshade. Fenna wasn't in it. Yet it had become a photograph of her.