Chapter 31 — "Ordinary"
820 Words
Nothing happened on Tuesday.
That was the remarkable thing.
No crisis. No Clara. No contract found in drawers. No difficult conversations.
Just a Tuesday.
Maya spent the morning reading.
She went to her father at noon.
He was well.
Better than well.
He had walked to the corner shop by himself for the first time.
He told her about it for twenty minutes.
Every detail. The weather. The man at the till who remembered him. The biscuits he had bought.
The blue tin ones.
Maya listened to all of it.
She was glad for every word.
She came home at three.
Mrs. Park was in the garden.
The house was quiet.
Maya made tea.
She stood at the windowsill.
The bowl. The tin. The sea glass. The stone. Mrs. Park's note still there.
She looked at all of it.
She thought about twelve weeks ago.
About a hospital bill and nine pages and a pen with her father's initials.
About a black Rolls Royce and spilled coffee.
She thought about how none of it had looked like this from the beginning.
How it had looked like nothing good at all.
She drank her tea.
Beginnings were like that. You didn't know what they were until you were well past them.
Adrian came home at six.
Exactly.
She heard the door. His footsteps.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he said.
He came in.
He set his jacket on the chair.
He looked at the windowsill.
"The glass looks good in there," he said.
"Mrs. Park moved the tin slightly," Maya said. "While I was out."
"Of course she did," he said.
"It looks better," Maya admitted.
"Of course it does," he said.
Maya handed him a cup.
He took it.
He sat down.
She sat across from him.
"How was your day?" she said.
He looked at her.
It was such a simple question.
She had asked it before. But tonight it felt different. Less temporary.
"Good," he said.
"Anything interesting?" she said.
"Sophie reorganised my bookshelf," he said.
Maya stared.
"You let her?" she said.
"I did not let her," he said. "I came back from a meeting and it had happened."
"What did you do?" Maya said.
"I moved three books back," he said.
"Which three?"
He told her.
She had opinions about two of them.
She said so.
He disagreed.
They argued about it pleasantly for ten minutes.
Mrs. Park came in.
She listened for a moment.
She put dinner on the table.
She left without a word.
They ate.
Still talking.
About books. About Sophie. About Maya's father walking to the corner shop.
Small things. The kind she hadn't talked about with anyone in a long time.
After dinner Maya washed the cups.
Adrian dried them.
She had not asked him to. He had just picked up the cloth.
They stood at the sink.
Side by side.
The window above it dark now. Their reflections faint in the glass.
"My father bought blue tin biscuits today," Maya said.
"The same ones?" Adrian said.
"The same ones," she said.
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
"I put the rest of ours in the cupboard," he said. "There's still half a tin."
"I know," she said.
"We could have some," he said.
"After washing up," she said.
"After washing up," he agreed.
They finished the cups.
Adrian got the tin from the cupboard.
He put it on the table.
He opened it.
Maya sat down.
She took a biscuit.
He took one.
They sat at the kitchen table.
The bowl on the windowsill.
The tin beside it.
Another tin open between them.
The clock ticking.
Outside the city going on as it always did.
Inside the kitchen warm and quiet.
Maya ate her biscuit.
She thought about what ordinary felt like.
She had spent so long in extraordinary circumstances — the bill, the contract, the mansion, the rules — that she had forgotten.
This was what she had wanted.
Not the money. Not the adventure.
This.
A kitchen.
A tin of biscuits.
A man who dried cups without being asked.
"Adrian," she said.
He looked up.
"Thank you," she said.
He looked at her.
"For what?" he said.
Maya thought about it.
"For this," she said.
She gestured.
Not at anything specific.
At everything. The kitchen. The biscuits. The windowsill. The cups. The ordinary Tuesday evening.
He looked at what she was gesturing at.
He looked back at her.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?" she said.
He smiled.
The real one.
"For this," he said.
The same gesture. The same everything.
Maya looked at him.
They had both been looking for the same thing.
They had just found it in the same place.
She took another biscuit.
He took another biscuit.
They sat.
The clock ticked.
The kitchen was warm.
Neither of them got up.
- Writer
