My uncle's holiday apartment has two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a fireplace that draws if you know how. I don't know how. Claire knows how. She's kneeling in front of it, in a sweater that's too big for her, adding wood without paying me any attention.
"You study at the kitchen table," she says, "I read by the fireplace. We won't get in each other's way." That was the plan. My uncle made it, on the phone, in that tone he uses for everything. Finn needs peace for the exam. Claire needs distance. The Isle of Wight has space.
The Isle of Wight has space, he said. The apartment doesn't. I'm sitting at the table with the anatomy atlas, and I hear her turning pages. Every four minutes. I know it's four minutes because I stopped reading and started counting.
“You could have come.”
“I could have.” She moves her feet so I can sit. It is a small sofa. We have been careful about the sofa for three days.
I open the textbook on the arm of the sofa and pretend to read the cranial nerves. She turns a page of her own book and doesn't read it either. The fog outside has swallowed the dunes and the light in the room has gone soft and grey, and I can hear her breathing, which is not something you should be able to hear from a woman who is married to your uncle.
“Finn,” she says, and stops. Then: “Your uncle called. He wants to know if I'm coming home Sunday.” She isn't looking at me. She is looking at her tea. “I told him I hadn't decided.” The radiator ticks. The fog presses against the glass. She turns her head at last, and her knee is against mine on the too-small sofa, and I understand that she has just told me something she hasn't told him, and that I am supposed to say something now.
