I stood there for a long time.
The silence in the glasshouse was a living thing. It had weight and temperature and a small steady sound, like breathing. Somewhere over our heads, a pane of old glass ticked as the sun moved across it.
I thought of Julian.
I thought, with a precision that frightened me, of every small kindness. The lemon tart. The napkin. The dumpling steamer and the ring in the paper bag. It says we may marry. It doesn't say we have to want to.
I had thought he was the first man in the world who had read the contract and decided to love me anyway.
I had been wrong. He had read it, and he had known about the gap, and he had loved me in the sure and certain knowledge that if it all went wrong, there was a spare.
I did not know whether that made it better or worse.
I on
