Joan approved the evening on Wednesday, with two conditions: no champagne and no speeches longer than three minutes.
“The second condition may be harder,” Priya said when Iris read out the email.
“Hugh’s been warned.”
“I meant you.”
Iris looked at her over the paper. Priya grinned and escaped downstairs with the poster before she could be given a job involving ladders.
It was a good poster. The old store photograph had been cropped so the faces could be seen, and beneath REMEMBER WHAT YOU WORE sat the date, the free booking information and a plain sentence about an evening of clothes and the people who had worn them. They had room for fifty seated guests. More would be unsafe in the aisle. Iris had resisted an urge to say they could always squeeze in a few extras.
By lunchtime, eighteen seats had been booked.
Daniel came down with a different kind of good news.
He had found a buyer for the two mirrored display islands and six unused garment rails. Four thousand two hundred dollars, collection included. It was considerably better than the auction estimate once removal costs were allowed for.
“That’s excellent,” Iris said. “Monday after we close?”
“Thursday of show week.”
She looked at him. “The show is Friday.”
“I know.”
“We’re using the islands.”
He put the offer on her desk. “Were they part of the approved proposal?”
“They’re on the drawing.”
“Our working sketch? We didn’t send that with the proposal.”
She pulled the folder toward her, already irritated by the fact that he might be right. The written proposal said main aisle, fifty seats, photographs. It did not say the estate would retain particular fixtures until afterward.
“They’re the backdrop,” she said.
“All right.” He sat opposite her. “Then we need to look at another backdrop.”
“Or another collection date.”
“I asked. He’s fitting out a shop the following week. The transport is already coming through this area Thursday. He can’t take them later and still use them.”
“There’s always a reason.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “In this case it’s a reasonable one.”
She looked at the figure. An appraiser’s good news. The end of the aisle, where people would have their photographs taken, reduced to a question of when it could be loaded into a van.
“He could buy the rails now and leave the islands.”
“He could. He isn’t offering to. The mirrors are why he wants the lot.”
“Then we keep them for another buyer.”
“That’s an option. It may cost the estate two thousand dollars or more after removal and sale fees. I can’t recommend that simply because we’d prefer the room to look a certain way.”
The words stung. “It isn’t simply a room looking a certain way.”
“I know what the evening means.”
“Do you?”
His expression tightened. For once he did not let the question pass as an invitation to be reassuring.
“I’ve spent three days finding someone who wants these here, now, in this condition. Not what I wish they were worth. What a buyer will actually pay. That’s my work, Iris.”
She went quiet.
He looked down at the drawing, then back at her.
“The estate let the sale run because you made an honest case. You didn’t ask them to pretend the numbers didn’t matter. I don’t think you want me to start doing that.”
She didn’t. She also wanted him to be wrong, which was much less comfortable to admit.
“Joan approved the evening,” she said.
“Yes. We can give her both options. Keep the fixtures for it, with the likely cost. Or change the setup and take the offer. She decides.”
“And what will you recommend?”
“The offer, unless we find something we haven’t considered.”
He said it plainly. No apology for holding a professional opinion that would disappoint her.
Iris looked toward the open door. Priya was at the counter, putting the evening poster in a clear holder. Eighteen bookings. People already imagining where they would stand.
“Give me until Tuesday to work out what changing it would involve.”
“The buyer needs an answer Tuesday morning.”
“Then Monday evening.”
He considered, then nodded. “I can hold it until then.”
She pulled the drawing out of the folder and laid it flat.
“I liked it this way.”
“I can see why.”
He did not say it would be just as good without them. She was grateful enough for that to meet his eyes before he left.
Mrs. Hallet phoned to ask whether she should bring shoes.
“Wear some,” Iris said. “Beyond that, I leave the choice to you.”
“I meant for the coat.”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“That would be slippers.”
“Then bring those as well.”
It was the first conversation Iris had enjoyed about shoes since she was a teenager trying to persuade her grandmother that boots could be formal if the skirt was short enough.
At two, Tess sent the written answers about Mason Street. Approved customer use, subject to the ordinary registration and insurance Iris was arranging. Small lettering on the entrance door, no illuminated sign. Painting permitted in an agreed pale color. Wiring and the structure the landlord’s responsibility, damage caused by her own equipment hers.
The lawyer’s office returned two suggested changes to the lease wording and a note explaining what they meant. Iris sent them to Tess rather than pretending she understood a clause merely because she could pronounce all the words.
Then she took the afternoon off.
Priya covered the counter; Hugh would close.
Winnie waited by the entrance in a blue coat and a scarf containing at least six contradictory colors.
“Shall we?” she asked.
They walked to Mason Street arm in arm. Winnie kept up a stream of observations about shop windows, unfinished roadworks and the haircut of a man who had paid too much for having too little done. Iris found herself laughing before they reached the barber’s.
Saul handed her the key.
“Your friend?” he asked.
“Winnie.”
“I used to buy shirts from you.”
“You needed longer sleeves,” Winnie said immediately.
He looked delighted. “I did.”
“Still do, if that’s your best one.”
He looked down at his cuffs while they climbed the stairs.
Winnie stopped in the doorway. Iris watched her face with more anxiety than she’d felt during the lease meeting.
“Well?”
“Give me a minute. I’ve only seen the door.”
She walked to the window, tested the light by holding a hand in it, looked at the sockets and the floor. Then she went to the back wall and turned around as if she were a customer deciding whether to take off her coat.
“Mirror here?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll want a proper screen, not one of those things that falls over if someone sneezes.”
“I’ve allowed for it.”
“And a chair. A comfortable one.”
“There’s room.”
Winnie nodded. Then, at last, she smiled.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?”
“Not yet.”
“I didn’t mean the paperwork.”
Iris looked around the room, at the place she had already begun to see in separate hours: morning light on cloth, a customer standing before the mirror, herself locking the door because the work was finished.
“Yes,” she said.
Winnie touched her arm.
They sat on the bare floor because there were no chairs yet, two women old enough to know better and young enough to get up again if they took their time. Winnie had brought biscuits in a tin. Iris laughed when she opened it.
“Buttons?”
“Not today.”
They ate, looking out at the tree. Downstairs the barber’s clippers hummed through the floorboards, a soft, industrious sound.
“I used to think I would have a place like this,” Winnie said.
Iris turned toward her. “You never said.”
“Not everybody tells you everything, love.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, life. I liked having a wage. Then there was Florida. Then I came home and liked having a wage again.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Some days. Not all the days.”
She brushed crumbs from her coat.
“I don’t want you doing it because you think it’ll make every choice you’ve ever made come right. It’s a room. Some work. You still have to go home afterward.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Iris thought of Daniel’s hand around hers in the cinema, Beth’s wet towels, the dining table six inches nearer the light.
“I think I’m beginning to.”
Winnie nodded. “Good. Then buy a decent chair.”
On Friday, the amended lease was ready.
Iris read it again at Saul’s table, checked that the answers she had been given were reflected in it, and signed her name. No music played. No one applauded. Saul signed next, then offered her tea in a mug advertising a plumbing business.
She transferred the deposit from her own savings. Watching the balance change made her stomach tighten. It was the first money she had committed that would not come back simply because she changed her mind.
Saul gave her a receipt.
“First rent due when you take possession,” he said. “I’ll get the spare key cut.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck.”
She took the receipt carefully and folded it into her bag.
Outside, the air smelled of rain and newly cut timber from a shop being refitted farther down the street. She stood beneath the little sign over the side door and looked up at the window.
A room. Some work. Her name on a line.
She called Daniel.
“I’ve signed.”
He said her name softly, and the pleasure in his voice made her close her eyes for a moment.
“Are you pleased?” he asked.
“Yes. Terrified as well.”
“Both seem reasonable.”
“I thought you’d tell me I’d done the sensible thing.”
“I don’t know enough about your life to decide that for you.”
She smiled. “But?”
“But I know what you looked like in the room.”
She leaned against the wall, holding the phone close.
“Could I see you tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. “You absolutely could.”
They celebrated with takeout pizza in her kitchen. Daniel brought flowers, a small bunch of yellow tulips still tight at their tips. She put them in a jug because the vases were all on a high shelf she could not immediately find the energy to investigate.
He looked at the receipt when she showed him, then gave it back.
“Keep that one.”
“I intend to.”
After dinner she took him upstairs. There was still work on the table, washing in the machine and a house to prepare for photographs. None of it disappeared.
For the evening, it waited.