The Dress in the Other Room

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“Send it,” Ada said.

Julian stared at her.

“I'm not asking permission. I'm telling you that threatening me won't work.”

“Is it a threat to let people know the truth?”

“No. It's a threat to use it as a leash.”

She could feel people looking towards them. She wanted to disappear into the kitchen. Instead, she stayed where the light was.

“I ended our engagement yesterday. I kissed Leo today. You don't have to like it. You don't get to make it something else.”

Julian's face tightened.

“My mother took the photograph. She thought I deserved to know.”

“Then she should have spoken to me instead of photographing me in my own house.”

Ada held out her hand, not for the phone but towards the door.

“You can have your ticket refunded.”

“You're throwing me out?”

“I'm asking you to leave because you're trying to frighten me.”

For a moment, she thought he would make a scene. Then he looked beyond her, at the tables and the phones resting beside wineglasses, and understood that a scene might not belong entirely to him.

He left.

Ada stood still until the door closed. Her hands were shaking. That annoyed her, too.

Leo had stopped playing. She looked towards the stage and lifted one finger. Give me a minute.

He nodded. Then he began a song everyone knew.

The room breathed again.

In the kitchen, June handed Ada a glass of water.

“Was I awful?” Ada asked.

“Not nearly enough for my taste.”

Ada drank. “His mother took a photograph.”

“I hope she got your good side.”

“There may not be a good side to this.”

June put a hand against her cheek. “You can make a choice that hurts someone without making a cruel choice. Those aren't the same thing.”

“I didn't mean to hurt him.”

“I know. Don't let that become a promise never to disappoint him.”

Ada returned to the dining room before she felt ready. A guest asked whether she was all right. She said yes, then corrected herself.

“I will be. How's the fish?”

“Excellent.”

There were worse foundations for an evening.

After supper, people pushed their chairs back. The old dance floor appeared as if it had been waiting beneath their feet. June found a partner who complained about his hip and danced anyway.

Leo played faster. Ada watched the room come alive.

Her mother had wanted this: people arriving alone and leaving with someone to say goodnight to, children asleep under coats, strangers arguing cheerfully about the last dance. No one needed a private treatment suite to make the building valuable.

When Leo invited her onto the stage, she shook her head.

He asked once, then moved on.

That was what undid her.

She stepped up beside him at the end of the song.

“One,” she said.

“One what?”

“Song. Don't look so pleased.”

“I'm professionally pleased. It's different.”

She chose a tune her mother used to sing. Leo found the key after three notes. Ada's voice shook at first, then steadied against the guitar.

Halfway through, she forgot to worry about whether she looked foolish. She looked at Leo instead.

He was listening to her as though listening were something he did with his whole body.

When the last note ended, the applause startled her.

Leo leaned close enough for only her to hear.

“Useful voice.”

She wanted to kiss him in front of everyone. Wanting it frightened her less than it had that afternoon.

She did not do it. She wanted that choice to belong to them, not to the room.

Near the end, a woman Ada barely knew caught her beside the terrace.

“I came because I felt sorry for you,” the woman admitted.

Ada braced herself.

“I'm booking next month because of the music.”

The woman squeezed her arm and went to find her coat. Ada stood there with the words warming her. Pity might have brought some people through the door. It did not have to be what kept them coming back.

She found Leo packing his guitar.

“Thank you for not insisting I sing.”

“I wanted you to want to.”

“You make that sound easy.”

“It isn't. I'm practising.”

He passed her the empty microphone stand. She carried it into the cupboard with the strange, expanding feeling that she might be allowed to practise too.

Inside the cupboard door, an old set list was still taped beneath a shelf. Her mother's handwriting had faded almost to the colour of the wood.

Ada had checked that list before every dance, even when she was only carrying glasses. She knew the order by heart: something cheerful, something slower, something everybody could sing badly together.

Leo came to collect the spare lead and found her looking at it.

“You don't have to pack everything away now,” he said.

“I was wondering what I'd choose.”

“For next time?”

“For me.”

She took a clean order slip from the shelf and wrote the name of a song she had loved at college. Her mother had never performed it. Julian had once said it was the sort of thing people sang after too much wine.

Ada added it anyway.

“Good song,” Leo said.

“You're not obliged to agree.”

“I know. I could insult your handwriting instead.”

She held the slip beyond his reach. He laughed, and the small, unreasonable pleasure of teasing him made her feel younger without making her feel foolish.

“Why did you stop singing?” he asked.

She looked at the old list.

“I thought keeping the room exactly the same was a way of keeping her.”

He waited. Ada liked that he did not tell her what her mother would have wanted. He had never known her well enough to borrow that authority.

“I'd like there to be room for both of us,” she said.

She left the old list where it was and put her own slip in her pocket. When Leo stepped aside to let her pass, she touched his wrist, briefly and deliberately.

“Come outside when you've finished,” she said.

After the guests left, Ada counted the takings with June. They had covered the evening and paid the staff. There was a modest amount left for the roof, not a miracle, but enough to make tomorrow possible.

June went upstairs. Leo stayed to sweep.

At half past midnight, Ada found him on the terrace, barefoot, his shoes beside the door.

“Blisters?” she asked.

“Vanity. Terrible occupational hazard.”

She sat beside him and took off her own shoes.

The sea was invisible beyond the garden. They could hear it working against the rocks.

“I wanted to hit him,” Leo said.

“Thank you for not making that my problem.”

“I wanted to make a speech too.”

“That might have been worse.”

He laughed. Then his face became serious.

“Are you sorry?”

“About the wedding?”

“About kissing me.”

She looked down at their bare feet.

“No. I'm frightened that not being sorry is going to make everything harder.”

“It probably will.”

“You're very bad at seduction.”

“I used to make promises. I'm trying a new approach.”

Ada touched the scar on his knuckle. A small thing, but it stopped his breath.

“I don't want a promise tonight.”

“What do you want?”

“You. Without pretending that fixes anything.”

He turned towards her slowly.

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we talk. We don't disappear.”

“I can do that.”

She kissed him with the sea moving beyond the garden. This time, there was no staircase to negotiate, no box of bulbs between them, no need to pretend the wanting was accidental.

When they stood, Leo offered his hand. Ada took it.

At the door to her room, she paused. The wedding dress still hung inside.

“Wait here.”

She carried the dress into the old music room and hung it where morning would find it. She did not tear it or drop it on the floor. It had cost months of savings. She would decide what to do with it later.

When she returned, Leo was exactly where she had left him.

The sight moved her more than any speech could have.

“Still here,” he said.

“For once.”

“For once.”

She opened her door and drew him inside. Their laughter quieted as they kissed. When she closed the door, the house kept its own counsel.

Later, with the room dark and Leo sleeping beside her, Ada listened to rain beginning against the glass. She did not feel rescued. She felt awake in her own life, which was both better and much more frightening.

She reached for her phone to silence it.

There were messages from guests thanking her for the evening. A photograph of June dancing. A note from the gardener asking about next month's music night.

Then a message from Julian's mother appeared.

Ada read it twice.

Ask Leo why Julian paid him to come back.

Beside her, Leo stirred and reached for her hand.

For the first time that night, Ada pulled away.