Saturday’s fair opened under a sky the colour of dishwater.
By eleven, Poppy had won a pencil, lost a pound and acquired a knitted object nobody could identify. Tom took her towards the cake stall while I helped Beth fasten a sign to the book table.
“Higher on your side,” she said.
I lifted it.
“Too much. There.”
She stepped back, checked the line and nodded. The uncertainty I had seen on Thursday was absent. Give Beth a practical problem and she knew exactly where to put her hands.
“How’s Monday looking?” I asked.
“Still happening.”
“And telling Martin?”
“Less enjoyable than arranging it.”
She smoothed the tape flat. I waited, but she had reached the end of what she wanted to say.
A woman in a camel coat approached the table and paused over Beth’s handwritten price sign.
“Beth Lawson?”
Beth turned.
“Imogen?”
They embraced around a stack of paperbacks. Imogen owned a small cosmetics business and had worked with Beth years before, when an outdoor launch had survived both rain and a missing generator.
“You found us power from a rowing club,” she said.
“They wanted the tea urn back before six.”
“You looked completely calm.”
“I was making different faces behind a tent.”
Imogen laughed. I saw Beth straighten, reminded of a version of herself somebody else still remembered.
“Are you available these days? We’re doing something small next month. Nothing like the old circus.”
“I’m beginning to—”
“She’s taking a break,” Martin said.
He had come up behind her carrying two coffees. He offered Beth one and put his free hand on the back of her chair.
“A well-earned one.”
Imogen’s smile shifted towards polite retreat.
“Of course. I just thought I’d ask.”
“She never knows when to say no,” Martin said. “Someone has to protect her from herself.”
The coffee lid clicked beneath Beth’s thumb.
I recognised the instant in which everyone could agree to let the conversation end. Imogen would go. Martin would remain pleasant. Beth would be left holding a drink she hadn’t requested.
“Beth was answering,” I said.
Martin looked at me.
“Sorry?”
“Imogen asked whether she was available.”
I had not raised my voice. It still sounded loud to me.
Martin gave a small laugh.
“I know. I’m her husband.”
“Yes,” Beth said. “And I’m available to discuss it.”
Imogen looked back at her.
“Brilliant. Shall I email?”
“Use my own address. I’ll write it down.”
Beth took a blank raffle slip and wrote carefully. Martin watched the pen. He said nothing until Imogen had left.
“We said we’d talk about this.”
“We have talked about it.”
“Not properly.”
“I’m talking to her about a job. I haven’t agreed to fly to Australia.”
He picked up a novel from the table, examined the price and put it back.
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when it all becomes too much.”
He walked towards the sponsors’ banner, where a man was waiting with a folder.
Beth let out a breath.
“I shouldn’t have done that here.”
“Answered a question?”
She looked at me and, reluctantly, smiled.
“Thank you. But next time, let me try first.”
The correction stung precisely because she was right.
“I will.”
A few minutes later, Celia brought us cheese rolls in paper napkins. She had seen enough of the exchange to ask Beth whether she wanted company when she finished.
“I’m all right.”
“Offer stands.”
She left without requiring reassurance.
I was grateful for that too.
Tom found me while Beth took a call near the entrance.
“Everything okay with Martin?”
“Why?”
“He said you seemed to have the wrong impression of him.”
“Did he explain how I’d acquired it?”
Tom glanced towards the banner.
“I don’t want us falling out with people before we’ve unpacked.”
“Then perhaps don’t agree with someone about me before you ask what happened.”
He started to answer, stopped and looked at the half-empty book table.
“What happened?”
I told him about Imogen’s offer and Martin answering for Beth. Then I told him Beth had asked me to let her try first next time.
“So nobody was particularly pleased with you,” he said.
“That isn’t the point.”
“No. Sorry.” He looked towards the sponsors’ banner again. “I’ll ask you first.”
Poppy arrived holding the knitted object against her cheek.
“It’s a hedgehog,” Tom told me. “Apparently.”
“It’s a fox,” she said. “It’s been ill.”
Beth laughed from the doorway. Poppy immediately offered to explain the rules of the tombola. They bent over her ticket together, looking for the number of a tin of peaches.
When Beth came back, her face was flushed from the cold.
“Imogen’s sending a brief. A proper one.”
She picked up her coffee. It had gone cold, but she took a mouthful anyway.
Across the hall, Martin was watching us. Beth noticed him, lifted her chin and put the cup down.
“She asked what my fee would be,” she said.
“What did you tell her?”
For the first time that morning, Beth’s smile needed no encouragement.
“That I’d send it in writing.”