Chapter 25 — Twenty Minutes
TAMSIN
At ten fifty-eight, Tamsin put the salinity meter back in its case and sent Maeve the river-path readings.
Winter road grit had washed through the upper drain and burned the outer leaves of three sedges. The roots were firm, and fresh growth showed at the crowns. They needed a flush with collected rainwater, not replacement.
At eleven, Graham came down the public steps alone.
He stopped six metres away. He had no driver waiting at the kerb and no folder under his arm. Tamsin had chosen the path because it stayed busy on Sunday mornings and because it made the endpoint measurable: ten minutes to the red footbridge, ten back if they kept an ordinary pace.
She had sent the invitation to his work address herself.
March 1, eleven o’clock. Twenty minutes on the river path. Come alone. Do not treat this as restored contact.
His reply had been three words.
Yes. Thank you.
She had waited four weeks after the greenhouse before sending it. In that time, the rooted cestrum division held, the clean tip failed, and the quarantined whole plant produced one pale new leaf. No question came from Graham through Farah or the school. Payment for quarantine remained payment.
Absence alone proved little. It could be discipline, strategy, or shame.
Tamsin had invited him because she wanted information she could only obtain by placing a limit in front of him and watching what he did when the limit denied him comfort.
She told Maeve only that she had a private appointment after the salinity survey.
She told Lorna nothing. The meeting was not a referendum to be managed by people who loved her.
Now he waited for her to close the equipment case.
“We walk,” she said.
He fell into step beside her, leaving enough room for a cyclist to pass between them. The tide was low. Brown water moved around the exposed footings of the quay, carrying a torn blue glove and two thin branches towards the harbour.
Tamsin started the timer on her watch.
“You asked for a chance to apologise,” she said. “Don’t give me the investor version.”
“I don’t know what that means anymore.”
“You know exactly.”
He rubbed his thumb once across the side of his forefinger. “No cost figures. No explanation designed to make the decision inevitable.”
“Good.”
For the first twenty paces, he said nothing. Traffic moved on the road above them; a bus changed gear at the lights.
“I knew the launch language was yours,” he said. “I knew I’d promised you the adviser credit. You asked me to correct it and I let the campaign go out.”
“Because?”
“Because it was easier.”
Tamsin glanced at him.
“That’s the short answer,” he said. “The launch looked clean. Sabine agreed with me. You didn’t.”
“You chose her.”
“Yes. In public. At work.” He breathed out through his nose. “And for the part of the day when I wanted someone to tell me I was right.”
Rain had scoured a narrow line through the silt beside the path. Tamsin followed it until it disappeared beneath a bench.
“You liked her dependence on you,” she said.
“I liked the agreement. I called it competence.”
They passed a woman teaching a child to balance on a small green bicycle. Graham moved closer to the river wall to give them room, then restored the distance between himself and Tamsin.
“The archive sweep was mine,” he continued. “I gave Brand the house and the garden because checking what was private would have slowed them down. I never read every scan. I used that as a defence.”
“You used a lot of things as a defence.”
“Yes.” He looked as if he might add something, then changed it. “I used your work for years because it was there. When you tried to price it, I said we’d talk after the next project.”
“And my award?”
His mouth tightened. “I remembered it. I went to the investor dinner.”
The answer landed between them without a softer version.
The red footbridge stood ahead, its paint dulled by winter. Seven minutes remained on the outward half.
“And the garden?” Tamsin asked.
Graham’s stride shortened once, then recovered. “I combined the access schedule with the plaza works. I knew the plants could not be moved on that timetable. I knew the clearance date and did not tell you.”
Wind came upriver, sharp with salt and diesel.
“You knew enough before I asked about the permit,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Say what happened in the room, not the planning summary.”
He drew one breath. “You told me to withdraw it. You told me you would leave that night if I refused. I thought the contract, the company and the house gave me more leverage than your answer. So I refused.”
“You thought I would stay.”
“I assumed you would absorb it. You had absorbed other things.”
Tamsin’s hand tightened around the meter case. “Because you made each one too small to justify a rupture on its own.”
“Yes.”
The agreement hurt more cleanly than a defence would have done.
They reached the bridge at nine minutes thirty-eight seconds. She turned without stopping. Graham turned with her.
“You keep saying you chose,” she said. “Do you understand why I don’t want Sabine used as an explanation?”
“Because she didn’t sign the permit or give the order.”
“That’s one reason.”
He considered. “Because if I make her the cause, removing her becomes the cure.”
Tamsin looked at him then. He left the sentence bare.
“She wanted my position,” Tamsin said. “She used what you gave her. She understood the market value of becoming the public creator of Calder’s history. None of that made you misunderstand me.”
“I didn’t misunderstand.”
“No.”
“I knew you objected. I decided your objection could wait.”
The path narrowed around a temporary barrier where a paving slab had lifted. Graham went behind her rather than reaching for her elbow. On the other side, he returned to the outer edge.
Tamsin checked the timer. Eight minutes left.
“The flowers,” he said. “I sent them because buying a mature plant would let me call the loss repaired. When you sent them back, I was angry that you had rejected the answer I could provide.”
“You were angry at me?”
“For part of that day.”
It was an ugly admission, badly timed and probably true. Tamsin preferred it to an account in which remorse had arrived fully formed.
“Then?”
“Then I understood the anger was another demand. You were still meant to make my action work.”
A runner came towards them. They moved apart to let him through, widening the space rather than closing it. Tamsin noticed Graham’s left hand flex once at his side. He did nothing with it.
“Were you faithful to me?” she asked.
He answered before she could rephrase it. “I never kissed her. I never slept with her or touched her sexually.”
“That wasn’t all I asked.”
“No.” His gaze stayed on the path. “I gave her the daily confidence that belonged in my marriage. I let her speak for work you created. I defended the ease of working with her against the difficulty of answering you. I kept calling it professional because that preserved the arrangement.”
Something in Tamsin’s chest pulled tight. She had wanted accuracy. Accuracy still had an edge.
“Did you love her?”
“No.”
The speed of the answer might once have comforted her. Now it only located one boundary inside a much larger trespass.
“Did you enjoy being seen with her as the company pair?”
Graham took longer. “Yes. It made the company look coherent. It made me feel coherent.”
They had three minutes.
“What do you want from this walk?” she asked.
“To answer what you ask.”
“That’s what you’re doing. What do you want?”
He looked at the line of gulls standing along the mud. “I want another life with you. I have no right to make that the purpose of anything you need from me.”
There it was: desire, stated without being placed in her hands as a task.
“I don’t know whether there is another life,” she said.
“I know.”
“Don’t answer as if patience makes it likely.”
“All right.”
The timer reached nineteen minutes as the public steps came into view. Graham kept the same pace. Tamsin’s car was in the opposite direction from his; she had planned that too.
At twenty minutes, she stopped the timer.
Graham stopped walking.
No final speech. No question about next time.
“I believe this apology,” Tamsin said. His eyes lifted to hers. “That means I believe you know what you did. It does not mean I trust you with what happens next.”
“Understood.”
“No messages. No plant network. No Lorna.”
“Yes.”
“I may invite you to walk again next month. If I don’t, you do nothing.”
He was silent for a beat, and she saw the want arrive before he put it under control.
“All right,” he said.
Tamsin adjusted the strap of the salinity case and turned towards the lower car park. Behind her, Graham took the steps to the road.
Reconciliation was nowhere in her. Still, he had left each silence alone and stopped when the watch stopped. At the next drain, she photographed the salt-burned sedges for Maeve, then continued towards work that would remain hers whether April contained another walk or not.