It had been a year. It was, Julia told herself, only to be expected. Yet still she found she was fumbling on the floor for her jacket and her gifts from Joan, hearing loose change and unknown possessions spill from her handbag as she leaned forward. Claire was young and wore leather trousers, and had been unquestioningly attentive and compassionate and efficient when they had needed her on a very dark morning last spring. Julia would go home. She would not listen to the Rossini, which she now realized would have been a mistake. Under cover of darkness she left, knocking her wine over into her vacated seat and whispering a hurried apology to the usher without pausing to explain. She would not sit alone, watching them from the shadows.
James caught her wrist in the lobby.
“Julia.”
“Hello.”
“You’re leaving.” This sounded like an accusation, and she flushed.
“I didn’t think you’d seen me.”
“I hadn’t, Claire did.”
“How is Claire?”
“What? Oh, good, she’s good, she’s moved to the Homerton. How are you?”
Julia assured him she was fine, without elaborating. She did not say, I have plans to become someone else. After months of prevarication she had made an appointment at the salon for the following morning—she intended to shear her hair off, blunt and neat and high above her shoulders, and to color it the true blonde for which Iris and her hairdresser had always lobbied. It was happening tomorrow. Tomorrow she would become her new self: sharper, better defined, more definitive. Today, by accident, she still resembled the person she had always been. But she had no way to explain any of this and instead said, “Anne was meant to be— She had to work, in the end. How are you? How is Nathan?”
“He’s good. Great. Loving it. Rowing, the whole deal. I’ll see him next week, I’m stopping on my way to California.” He seemed to hesitate and then rushed on: “I’ve been offered a job at UCSF, I’m going to talk to some people, check out some apartments, get a feel . . . it’s a research post again. Better weather. Much better Chinese food, you know, which is definitely something to consider.” He had been speaking very quickly but now seemed to catch himself and slowed. His hair on one side stood on end where he’d held it briefly in his fist. He added, softly, “Time for a change, maybe.”
Julia pulled her jacket tighter. From the auditorium came the sounds of the orchestra tuning, loud and discordant, a sweltering afternoon in Lincoln Center beamed live into this mild north London summer evening. Any minute the overture would begin, and she would no longer be able to ensure her composure.
“Do send my best to Claire and—and, I’m happy for you both.”
He frowned. “Thanks.”
She began to walk away, but after only a few steps he called after her, “I’m— We’re just friends, really.”
She turned back to see his face change almost instantly, from embarrassment to hesitation, or perhaps it was a trace of defiance. “I’ve been lonely.”
She said again, more softly, “I’m happy for you.”
“Stop saying that,” he said, irritably. He was wearing a pair of dark trousers she recognized, and a shirt that she did not. Behind him a woman’s laughing face magnified, chiseled by falling photographic sunlight and shadows on a huge framed playbill; a documentary he and she had seen together here, last year, in a former lifetime. The espresso machine behind the counter buzzed and thrummed. Julia began to search for her keys and James stepped forward, as if to bar her way. “Where are you going now?”
“Home.”
“How’s Gwen?”
“Shouldn’t you get back in?”
He waved away this suggestion, dismissing it. “Where’s she going in September?”
“Leeds, in the end. She’s Interrailing with Katy at the moment. Last heard of somewhere between Bargemon and Dubrovnik.”
“Quiet without them, no?”
“Yes. And less laundry.”
“And less laundry,” he agreed, holding her gaze. It was Julia, after a heartbeat, who looked away. In the mirrored wall beside them the lobby extended, doubled, and she became aware of their reflections, a slight, pale woman, face upturned; a tall man with new threads of silver in his fair hair, thumbs hooked into his pockets, his shoulders raised in a tense shrug. She shifted slightly to avoid the sight of these two, awkward strangers.
James said nothing further and yet made no move to return to the darkened cinema, from which was now clearly audible the galloping opening bars of the overture, eliding almost immediately into the plangent lovesick strains of hope and longing that would follow. Soon the foreshadowing of bloodshed, between bars of pomp and flourish. True love vanquished. Foolish, needless death. James glanced back toward the closed doors of the auditorium and Julia dared to look at him, studying his profile for signs of—what? He had not changed. Here was the face for which she searched in every crowd, scanning, hoping. All her life she would know its contours as her own. She had no right to wish him anything but happiness.
She said, “I can hear Jago, I think.”
“So what? You already made me miss the whole thing once in Milan.” And then seeing she looked stricken he sobered. “That wasn’t funny, I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”
“Nothing makes you nervous.”
“That’s not true. Unlicensed fireworks make me nervous. Pigeons. You.”
It was her turn now to smile. In the cinema behind them Otello was disembarking, welcomed by the grateful Doge as a son of Venice. Love, hoped Otello, would crown all his achievements in battle. His audience in Belsize Park knew better.
“It sounds so optimistic. Rossini has a way of making impending heartbreak sound so cheerful. Poor Otello.”
“Poor Desdemona,” James countered.
“Victims of their own flawed characters.”
“You think? Or of circumstance.”
“One leads to the other.”
“I think,” James said, softly, “that you’re being very hard on them.”
Without warning the couple in the mirror moved toward one another; she closed her eyes to feel his arms enfold her, one hand warm at the nape of her neck, his forehead resting lightly, for a moment, against her own. Her lungs filled with the scent of him; spice and citrus and skin. Against her cheek she felt his fist close, momentarily, in the falling mass of her hair. Then he released her and was gone. For as long as she could, she held her breath. She remained until the doors of the cinema closed behind him.
On Haverstock Hill she waited for the lights to change. Dusk was falling, London muted and softened by the thickening darkness. She would go home. Back to prim tidiness and silence, to objects untouched since she alone had touched them. Back to still, close air. But tonight, before the words she now knew that she would write to him, she could hope. That their two fragile human hearts continued to beat each hour she knew to be a miracle. A car slowed to let her cross and she nodded her thanks and found, when she reached the far side, that she was smiling. She had seen him. He might still love her; either way she would love him all her life. She felt her chest expand and fill. Tonight, she would open the French windows. She would sit in the garden. She would listen, after all, to the Rossini.