Chapter 11: What We Said

I shoved him in the chest with both hands and shouted, "Don't you ever speak to me again!"

My voice rang off the mill wall.

Joss let himself be pushed.

He stood with his head down and his arms hanging, and he said, loudly enough for the windows, "Mari, please."

"You make me sick."

I turned and walked to my car with my shoulders straight.

Above me, the blind in the meeting room dropped back into place.

I drove two streets and pulled up at a bus stop and shook for five minutes.

Then I drove to the garage, because I couldn't go home.

I let myself in at the side door with the spare key Joss keeps under the third brick.

The office is a box at the back.

It has a desk, a kettle, a calendar of bikes and a brown leather sofa.

I sat on the sofa in the dark.

He came at ten to one.

I heard the bike, then the key, then his boots stopping at the office door.

"They think I've been told off," he said. "Dennis patted my back."

"Good."

"He said women are like weather."

"I hope you hit him."

"I thought about it." He leaned on the frame. "Mari. Why are you here?"

"Because I haven't said what I came to say."

"Then say it."

I stood up.

"You didn't trust me," I said. "You trusted my sister and a room full of men."

"Mari."

"You didn't trust me with it for five days."

"I know."

"You stood there and let me take that photograph."

"I know, Mari."

"I took off my ring in front of forty people, and you let me."

"And you took it off," he said, and his voice came up, rough.

"In one breath. Eleven years, and you didn't ask me a single question."

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