Chapter 2The Receipt

The second half of the haddock lay between them on the bench, its batter going limp in the paper. Ruth pushed it along the slats. "Take it. I only ever wanted the batter." Kate didn't take it. Her eyes were on the car, parked half up on the kerb with its hazards ticking, as though it might roll off down the hill without her. "We'll lose the light," she said. "We'll lose it anyway." Ruth propped the crutch against the bench arm; it slid, and she caught it by the cuff before it cracked against the paving. "You've hardly looked at me since we got in the car." "I've been driving." "You've been quiet. There's a difference." Kate reached into her bag for a tissue, and a printed slip came with it, slid off her knee and landed face up by Ruth's shoe. Ruth set her heel on it and waited. "That's mine," Kate said. "Then say what it is." "It's the deposit." "On what day?" Kate's jaw worked. "Thursday." Ruth looked out across the road at a man folding a shutter, and let the silence do its work. "So the whole morning was theatre. The rail in the bathroom, the woman with the clipboard, you standing in the doorway being reasonable. All of it settled before I'd seen a thing." "I paid so the room would still be there when you'd come round. And you would have come round. It just takes you a fortnight and a quarrel." "How much did it cost you?" "Enough." "That isn't an answer, Kate." Kate let out a breath and held out her hand. Ruth kept her foot where it was. "Give me your pen," she said. "What for?" "Because I'm not signing anything you can wave at me later. I'm writing my own terms." Kate dug the biro out and handed it over, and Ruth bent, awkward, the crutch taking her weight, and wrote on the back of the slip in letters that leaned and staggered. Then she passed it up. Kate read. Her mouth did something complicated. "A kettle of my own. Nobody calling me dear. Sunday, not Friday." She stopped. "And what's this last one?" "Read it out." "If I say come, you come." "That's the one that matters," Ruth said, and took the pen back, and folded the slip into her coat pocket, and stood. "Sunday at eleven. Not nine. I'm not getting up at nine for my own funeral." Kate laughed — one short, startled sound, the first all evening — and picked up the last of the fish and ate it standing, in three quick bites, and neither of them said a word about the ring in the drawer.