She did not mention the third cup in the morning. She made breakfast. She set the table for two. She did not pour tea into the third cup. She did not clear it. She left it on the table, and the third cup sat there all morning, and neither of them spoke of it, and the tea in it went cold.

He said, after a long time: do you want to talk about it.

She said: no.

He said: all right.

She said: I will tell you about Daniel.

He said: all right.

She said: Daniel was an architecture student. He was the kind of architecture student who carries a small black notebook and draws buildings he has not yet been to. He was tall. He was the kind of tall that one does not notice, because he did not move in a way that used his height. He was quiet. He was kind.

He said: kind.

She said: kind. He was kind in the way that one is kind when one has not yet been hurt in the way one is going to be hurt. He was kind in the way that one is kind at the beginning, before one has learned that kindness is also a way of leaving.

He said: I see.

She said: we met at a reading. He was reading from a book he had not written. He was reading someone else’s book, and he was reading it well, and I was at the back of the room, and he was at the front of the room, and I thought, I would like to talk to that man about the book he is reading, and not the book he is not writing. I went up to him after. I told him I had liked the way he had read the book. He said: thank you. He said: would you like a coffee. I said: yes.

He said: and then.

She said: and then he became a part of my life. He became the part of my life that one is supposed to have. He came to the flat. He met my mother. He ate the food my mother made. He was kind to my mother. He was kind to my mother in a way that I could not be, because I had not learned to be kind to my mother in the way one is kind to one’s mother, and he had learned, or he had not needed to learn, because the way he was kind to my mother was the way he was kind to everyone, and my mother received it in the way one receives a kind thing from a person one is not sure one deserves.

He said: how long.

She said: two years.

He said: and then.

She said: and then he stopped. He did not stop suddenly. He stopped the way a kettle stops whistling. The kettle does not go from whistling to not-whistling. The kettle goes from whistling to not-whistling through a series of small sounds that one does not notice. He went from being there to not being there through a series of small absences that I did not notice, and then I noticed, and by the time I noticed, he had been gone for a long time.

He said: I see.

She said: I do not think he meant to leave. I do not think he woke up one morning and decided to leave me. I think he woke up one morning and was not there, and then he woke up the next morning and was not there, and then the morning after that, and the morning after that, and then one morning he was somewhere else, and the somewhere else did not have me in it, and by the time he realised, I was not in the somewhere else, and he could not find his way back to the somewhere that had me in it.

He said: that is what leaving is.

She said: yes.

He said: I am sorry.

She said: I know.

She looked at him. She said: I tried to remember his face, just now, while I was telling you about him. I tried to remember what he looked like.

He said: and.

She said: I could not.

He said: you could not remember.

She said: I could not remember exactly. I had a sense of him. I had a sense of his height, and his quiet, and the way he carried the small black notebook. I had a sense of him, and yet when I tried to see his face, the face would not stay. The face would come, and I would look at it, and it would change. It would change the way faces change in a dream, when one is trying to hold a face in one’s mind and the face will not be held.

He was quiet. He looked at the table. Then he said: I can help you.

She said: what do you mean.

He said: I can tell you what he looked like. I can give you a face.

She said: how do you know what he looked like.

He said: I have been in the part of you that has been holding him. I have been in the part of you that has not been letting him go.

She said: I have not been holding him.

He said: you have been holding him. You have been holding him in the part of you that has not been letting go of anything. You have been holding him the way one holds a letter one has been meaning to answer.

She said: I see.

He said: I will give you a face.

She said: no.

He said: no?

She said: no. I do not want a face. I would rather not have a face than have a face that is not his.

He was quiet. He looked at her. He said: I am sorry.

She said: I know.

He said: I would have helped.

She said: I know you would. I do not want to be helped. I want to forget him in my own time, in my own way, in the part of me that knows how to forget him, not in the part of you that has been holding him.

He said: all right.

She said: all right.

He put his hand on the table. She put her hand on his hand. He did not move. After a long time she said: I would like to know something about you.

He said: I will tell you what I can.

She said: what is the truest thing you know about yourself.

He was quiet for a long time. He looked at the window. The window was dark, although the hour was still three. He said: I don’t know what colour the sky is where I came from.

She said: what do you mean.

He said: I have never seen a sky. I have never seen a sky that is the sky of a place. I have seen the sky in the dream, and the sky in the dream is the sky that is here, which is a sky you have made. I have not seen the sky of a place I have come from. I do not know if there is such a sky. I do not know if I have come from a place.

She said: that is the truest thing you know.

He said: it is the truest thing I know about myself. It is not the truest thing I know. The truest thing I know is that I am afraid of you, and that I am in love with you, and that I do not know which is the larger of the two, and that the larger of the two is the one I am more afraid of.

She looked at him. He did not look at her. He looked at the window. The window was dark. She said: I am afraid of you too.

He said: I know.

She said: I am in love with you too.

He looked at her then. His face was the face of a man who had heard a thing he had been afraid of hearing, and was now standing in the hearing of it, and was not sure what to do with the hearing. He said: I know.

She said: how do you know.

He said: I have been in the part of you that is in love with me. I have been there for a long time. I have been in the part of you that has been in love with the idea of me before I was me.

She said: the idea of you.

He said: the idea of a man who would not leave. The idea of a man who would be there in the morning, and who would make tea, and who would not have a surname, and who would be careful with his hands, and who would cheat at cards.

She said: you are describing a kind of man.

He said: I am describing me.

She said: you are describing a kind of man I would have invented.

He said: I am the kind of man you invented.

She did not answer. She sat at the table. He sat at the table. The third cup sat between them, cold.

---

In the afternoon she went to the garden. She had not been to the garden since the city had appeared beyond it. She went through the formal garden and out past the box hedges, and the city was still there, and the lamps in the city were still on, although the hour was still three. She walked past the city. She went to the seat under the tree. The seat was green with moss. She sat on the seat.

The tree above her was in full leaf. The leaves were dark and small. The birds were in the tree. The birds were talking to each other about something they could not agree on. She listened to the birds. She thought about Daniel. She thought about the way she had tried to remember his face. She thought about the way his face had changed.

She thought: I have been holding him in the part of me that has not been letting go. She thought: I have been holding him the way one holds a letter one has been meaning to answer. She thought: I have been holding him for eight months, and the letter has not been answered, and the letter will not be answered, and I will have to put the letter down, in my own time, in my own way, in the part of me that knows how to put things down.

She thought: I am not the part of me that knows how to put things down. She thought: I am the part of me that has been putting things down all morning, and the part of me that has been putting things down is tired, and the part of me that has been putting things down would like to stop.

She sat on the seat for a long time. The birds talked. The leaves moved in a wind she could not feel. She thought about her mother. She thought about her mother in the kitchen not drinking her tea. She thought about her mother at the gate, in the photograph, with her mouth set. She thought about the woman in the window, in the city, who had been her mother, and who had not been her mother, and who had been the idea of her mother, in the shape of a face, in a window of a building that was not a building.

She thought: I am in a place that is full of ideas of things, in the shape of things. She thought: I am in a place that has been made by a part of me that knows how to make ideas of things. I am in a place that is the idea of a place.

She thought: I am in a place that is a thought.

She sat on the seat for a long time. The birds stopped talking. The leaves stopped moving. The wind she could not feel stopped blowing. The garden was quiet.

She stood. She went back through the formal garden. She went back through the long-grass garden. She went up to the cottage. The back door was open. She went inside.

He was not in the kitchen. The kettle was on the stove. The kettle was warm. The table was set. There were two places set at the table, and a third place set at the table, and the third place was set for a person she did not know, and the third place had a plate on it, and on the plate there was a piece of bread, and beside the plate there was a cup, and in the cup there was tea, and the tea was still hot.

She stood in the kitchen. She looked at the third place. She did not move the third place. She did not clear it. She went to the window. The garden was the same. The city was the same. The lamps in the city were on, although the hour was still three.

She stood at the window for a long time. She heard, in the kitchen, a small sound. It was the sound of a chair being moved. She turned. He was sitting at the third place. He was sitting at the third place, and he was looking at her, and his face was the face of a man who had not meant to be sitting at the third place, and who was now sitting at the third place, and who did not know what to do about it.

She said: what are you doing at that place.

He said: I don’t know. I was in the kitchen. I sat down. I sat down at that place.

She said: you sat down at that place.

He said: I sat down at that place.

She said: why that place.

He said: I don’t know. The chair was there. I sat in the chair.

She said: the chair is not usually there.

He said: the chair is usually there. The chair has always been there.

She said: there is no third chair in this kitchen.

He said: there has always been a third chair in this kitchen.

She looked at the kitchen. She had not noticed a third chair in the kitchen. She had not noticed a third chair at the table. She had set the table for two, every morning, since she had come to the cottage. She had set the table for two, and the table had been set for two, and yet now the table was set for three, and there was a third chair, and he was sitting in it, and the bread on the third plate was still warm.

She said: who is the third place for.

He said: I don’t know.

She said: you don’t know.

He said: I don’t know. I think it is for someone who has not come yet.

She said: who.

He said: I don’t know. Someone who has been in the kitchen for a long time, and who has not been noticed.

She looked at the third plate. She looked at the third cup. She thought about the woman in the window. She thought about her mother. She thought: the third place is for my mother. She thought: the third place has been set for my mother since I came to the cottage, and I have not noticed, and he has not noticed, and the bread on the third plate is still warm.

She did not say so. She said: come and sit at your usual place.

He got up. He moved the third chair back to where it had been — she did not know where it had been. He sat at his usual place. She sat at her usual place. They ate lunch. They did not speak of the third place. The third place sat at the table, and the bread on the third plate sat on the third plate, and the tea in the third cup sat in the third cup, and neither of them touched it, and the lunch was quiet, and the clock said three, and the light did not change.