She wanted to tell him to take off his coat. He was sweating profusely and his obvious discomfort was making her uncomfortable too. She thought she should probably leave. She didn’t want to be cruel. But that was also the reason why she stayed. The book she was holding now was called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. She held it up to him and he nodded, yes, he’d read it. ‘Apparently he lives within us all,’ she read. ‘That’s exciting then.’ On impulse she dropped the book in her bag. She knew he saw her do it, but he said nothing.

‘Have you read them all?’

‘No. Not all.’ She was about to say that she didn’t blame him, that life was too short to spend it with your head down, that she always preferred to be outward facing, when he added, ‘Three hundred and sixty-eight. I’ve read three hundred and sixty-eight. That’s about eighty-four per cent.’

She managed not to smile. ‘How do you know that?’

More sweat then. ‘Please, take off your coat.’

He coughed into his hand. He said, even quieter than before, that he kept a ledger.

‘You know, Benjamin Tate, that doesn’t surprise me.’ She could so easily place him at the table, writing down each title in alternative coloured inks to make it more legible. She wondered if he wrote down the dates he started and finished reading each book, assumed he did, with identical gaps between each word. ‘Do you make comments too?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Just sometimes?’

‘Sometimes I can’t think of anything good to say.’

She did smile then, but warmly. She wanted, inexplicably, to hug him. ‘Ah, but there’s always something good to say. If you want to say something good, that is.’

At the door she stopped. She tapped her bag, was about to say she’d return his book soon. ‘You come to see me, don’t you, at the café? I mean, that’s why you come to the café. To see me.’ She wasn’t sure when she realised this. Maybe only as she was saying it.

He didn’t respond. He appeared not to be listening. He was staring instead at the new gap on the shelf. When eventually he managed to face her he revealed an expression so full of private things that she felt she should avert her gaze. It excited her. Oh yes, she thought, she’d be back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

He looks older every year. That was the first thing Beth thought when she saw Tim wobbling between the tables towards her. Of course, everyone does, but he looked so much more than just twelve months older. The ageing process, which for so long had strangely seemed to overlook him, had taken hold now and the rate of erosion shocked her. It was the contrast to how he had remained unchanged for so long that was startling and made her, each time after seeing him, hurry upstairs and pull faces in the mirror to be sure the same catastrophe wasn’t befalling her. They saw each other only once a year now, always on the same day, and for a number of years she was made incredulous by how he appeared immune to the wearing qualities of time.

‘It’s because my life stopped when hers did,’ he said with a look that was both sorrowful and proud.

But then, one year, perhaps five years ago, he had emerged behind the window of the restaurant and even from where she sat she had seen that the degradation – is that what it was? – had begun. She’d stared at him aghast and hadn’t been completely able to come to terms with his stricken appearance by the time he sat down.

‘I saw the look on your face,’ he said. ‘It’s no good smiling now.’

She had said to her new husband, for she had remarried by then, that it was as though the steady accumulation of days and weeks and months had finally reached critical mass and all at once come crashing down on top of him, and he had been ravaged by the colossal collapse; he moved gingerly, as though his limbs were constantly bruised, and his skull, now totally devoid of hair, was dented and the lifeless grey skin stretching over it was stained with red blotches. Since that day, each time they met she braced herself for the worst but each time the worst was beyond what she could have imagined.

He teetered in front of her now and then lurched forward as though suddenly shoved in the small of his back by an invisible hand. He gripped the back of a chair to steady himself and then winced. No, not a wince; she realised he was smiling.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are again.’ He released the chair and shuffled around it.

They had started coming here, and on this day, March 3, while still in the painful process of unknotting themselves from the final threads of their marriage – although they hadn’t known then that’s what they were doing – and had, out of habit, out of duty, they never fully understood, continued to do so after their divorce. Beth, in particular, questioned the wisdom of it. She thought it unhelpful, unhealthy even. ‘Don’t come then,’ he’d said, but she always did.

From the street the restaurant appeared tiny inside, but it was even smaller than that. The ceiling hung low and the tables crowded together so the backs of the chairs touched. When Tim had finally managed to fold himself into his place opposite her their knees bumped briefly beneath the table and she sidled subtly back in her seat.

‘You look well,’ he said, ‘life must be kind to you.’ She didn’t answer him, she was trying not to stare, and he rephrased it. ‘Is life being kind to you?’

It was a trap, of course. She knew that by now. He had asked her something similar a few years ago and she had made the mistake of answering openly. Her eldest had measles, she’d told him, and he’d not missed a beat. ‘Your eldest? But surely you mean your second eldest?’ He’d looked at her triumphantly.

‘Tim. Please–’

‘This is why we meet, see? Otherwise you’d forget her completely.’ She had slapped him hard across the face then and stormed out while he shouted after her, silencing the other tables, that ‘at least measles won’t kill you,’ that ‘you don’t die from the measles anymore, Beth.’

‘I asked if life is being kind to you?’ he persisted.

‘It’s fine,’ she said flatly. ‘Surviving.’ She winced at her choice of word and hurried on before he could react. ‘And how are you? And please stop fidgeting. It makes me nervous.’ She looked at his fingertips. ‘Are you smoking again?’

He closed his hands into a fist. ‘No. But maybe I should. If it speeds things along, I mean.’

She concentrated on not reacting. This is what these meetings had descended into now, an exercise in neutrality and restraint. Because it was always like this: if I was a horse they’d shoot me; life’s awful and then you die; no one else cares so why should I? An endless stream of bleatings. How long was she meant to put up with it? She wondered if he was always this person or if he became it just for her, which she suspected, as though, even now, he was competing with her for their daughter’s affection.

‘And Natalie?’ she asked. ‘Are you still together?’ He stared back blankly. ‘It was Natalie, wasn’t it?’

He blinked and then made an elaborate performance of remembering. ‘Oh, yes. Was. Past tense is right.’ That wince-cum-smile again.

Ten years ago she might have leant onto her elbows and said, ‘Oh no, what happened?’ A few years before that she might have cared what he said in reply. But now – now, already, she wanted to leave. This would, she promised herself, as she always promised herself, be the last time. She looked away from him. A sky-emptying rain was falling on the window and she stared at two dry spots on the surface of the glass, inexplicable islands untouched by the deluge. Why could he not accept it and move on? Until then she would never be wholly free of him, of it. Maybe he needed to die too. He looked about ready. But no, he’d persist, out of stubbornness, out of spite. She watched the rainwater bulge against the invisible edges before washing them away with one great surge.

‘Forgive me, Beth,’ he said. She looked back at him. He was staring at his hands resting on the table. They were shaking. ‘Forgive me,’ he said again, not daring to look up. ‘I know how I must seem, what a strain it must be for you. But–’ He did look at her now, and she was disturbed to see his eyes full of tears. ‘But I see her in you still. Sometimes I can hardly stand to look at you.’

Outside on the pavement they stood uncertainly beneath the shelter of a canopy considering the weather as if seeing rain for the first time. It bounced off the tarmac and splashed the toes of their shoes.

‘What I want to know is,’ he said, ‘what we did to deserve this.’

Her stomach constricted with irritation. Her children would be home from school soon. She wanted to be there when they arrived. ‘We did nothing wrong. You seem to think we’re being punished. We lived, that’s all we did. We lived a normal life, and what happened to us is a normal thing. Maybe not that exact thing. But tragedy is normal. We haven’t been singled out for special punishment.’

‘That’s easy for you to say. Look at you now. It’s like none of it ever happened, like the three of us, together I mean, as a family, were never even here.’

She bit down to hold in her first response. ‘That really is a dreadful thing to say to me. I’m not sure how you can even say it, even if you don’t believe it and are just trying to hurt me. I miss her every day. But I focus on the good things now. When I think of Ruby,’ – saying her name out loud always shocked her – ‘I think of rock pools. I don’t know why. I can’t remember where we were, which beach, we must have been on holiday somewhere. But I know it was very warm. And the water had been in the sun all day and was warm too. You must have called us because I’m looking over my shoulder and can see her little wet footprints on the big boulder.’ She glanced sideways at him and decided to take a chance. ‘She had been with me and not you for once, maybe that’s why I remember it.’ The corner of his mouth twitched, but not enough to tell. ‘All I’m saying is, think of the good. It’s easier.’

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell her, could hardly tell himself, that he wished she’d never even lived, that three years and eight months could never contain enough joy to make up for what had come since then.

‘I need to go,’ she said, feeling her wrist absently where once she wore a watch. She turned a full circle and stood facing him again. ‘Tim, you’re not still stalking him, are you?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Benjamin Tate hunched over the table as though protecting what was in front of him from prying eyes. Can you be alone yet observed? He felt you could. Occasionally he peeked shiftily over his shoulder at the television. Things moved behind its screen. It watched him more than he watched it. On the paper in front of him was a mishmash of calculations. He’d worked out that twenty years comprised 175,000 hours, give or take a few, or more than ten million minutes. He’d estimated that as he’d never missed a single day at work about 38,000 of those hours had been swallowed up in that dim basement, while he’d slept through a further 58,000. That left a balance of 79,000 hours, which equated to 3,291.6 days recurring. Recurring! Even the terminology poked fingers. But so much time. What had he done with it all? He had often heard those around him moan about how busy they were, how hectic and fast-paced their lives, they complained about having too little time and too many things to fit into it, a surplus of things, things left over. He couldn’t comprehend that.

Of course, a certain percentage of those missing hours would have been absorbed by the natural physiology of things. The human body demands some degree of upkeep; nails keep growing, teeth need cleaning and hair cutting, the digestive system never desists from its function of filling and flushing, filling and flushing. But even all that together, it would only have occupied a small percentage.

He put his pen down and gazed out the window. A flock of blackbirds, or were they crows, clustered along the ridge of a roof. Suddenly all but one of them swooped down the slope and disappeared. Benjamin Tate watched the single bird that was left behind. It hopped along the tiles to the edge and then bounced up and down on its twig legs. It opened its wings slowly, experimentally, then closed them again in defeat and crouched back down.

He contemplated it absently. He supposed that many of those unaccountable hours had been squandered doing nonsense like this, gazing dolefully out at things, pointless things, everyday things that paid him no heed. What did he know? He knew when tiles blew away in storms and when they were replaced. He knew when certain windows were given new curtains. He knew about the dog that had sashayed along the driveway to meet its owner every evening until one day it didn’t appear. For a month or more the lonesome owner, lonesome in Benjamin Tate’s eyes at least, had traipsed to the door alone. Then, miraculously the dog was back. Its hind had been shaven completely, as though it was naturally hairless and had slipped on a furry jumper against the cold, and it was missing a back leg. He knew who had stolen the bicycle left outside, when the skyline had filled with aerials and other such monstrosities, and when the man with the dog had slammed the door and sped away for the last time. It wasn’t much of a return really, knowing these things, not for 79,000 hours of life. What might he have done instead? It took 10,000 hours to master a new skill, yet he’d not learned a musical instrument, had never picked up a paintbrush, didn’t even know the rules of chess.

The flock of crows or blackbirds – or were they ravens, what was the difference, was there a difference, why had he never found out, with all that time on his hands? – had returned now, had settled around its flightless friend so it could no longer be told apart from them. That pleased Benjamin Tate, relieved him in some obscure way. He stood up and opened the window. He had a vague idea he might applaud. A thin branch that had been bowed against it twanged into the room. The movement scattered the flock for a second time and again he found himself watching the solitary bird that remained. Was it the same one?

‘Be brave.’ That’s what he’d written in his ledger, alongside the entry for Jonathan Livingston Seagull. ‘You can still fly high. There is still time.’ The letters, in blue ink, were all the same height and comfortably spaced. But he’d come back to it that day, or a later day, and in angry red writing that broke the lines he’d scratched: ‘You don’t deserve it!’