The Last Table for Two

The reservation was for two, but the name belonged to a man who had been dead for eleven years.

Ada checked the booking twice. Wednesday, seven-thirty. Window table. Mercer.

Her father had been the last Mercer to eat at the restaurant before it became hers. He used to bring her mother every anniversary, order the same fish, and complain that the bread was too good to be free. After he died, Ada kept the place running through a kitchen fire, two winters of roadworks and a succession of chefs who believed garlic was a personality. She still kept his old reservation book in the office, though she no longer opened it.

Now someone had booked his table.

“Could be a coincidence,” said Theo, the floor manager.

“I don't believe in coincidences involving the window table.”

At seven-twenty-eight a woman walked in carrying an envelope and looking as though she had considered turning around three times on the way.

June. Ada recognised her immediately, although they had not seen each other since they were twenty-six.

June had been her first serious love, the person who taught her to drive on country roads and left handwritten notes in her coat pockets. They separated after June accepted a job overseas and Ada refused to leave the restaurant her father had entrusted to her.

Neither had behaved particularly well.

“Hello,” June said.

Ada felt twenty-six and forty-two at once. “That's a dramatic way to book dinner.”

“I wasn't sure you'd take my call.”

“I probably wouldn't have.”

June nodded. She had more grey in her hair now, and the same habit of holding an envelope with both hands when nervous. Ada noticed the ring on her right hand, plain and unadorned, and wondered whether it meant anything.

“Your mother told me about the table,” June said. “Years ago. I remembered.”

Ada glanced toward the kitchen, where Theo was pretending to polish a glass. “You can sit.”

“Are you joining me?”

“That depends on what's in the envelope.”

Inside was a photograph of Ada's father standing outside the restaurant with a paintbrush and a crooked sign. Ada had never seen it.

“He gave it to me,” June said. “The summer we helped repaint the front.”

“I remember the paint. I don't remember him giving you this.”

“He said I'd need proof he could do something badly.”

Ada laughed before she could stop herself. The sign leaned so dramatically it looked about to fall. She turned the photograph over. There was a date in her father's handwriting and nothing else.

They ordered dinner. Ada asked Theo to choose the wine because she couldn't remember what June liked and didn't want to admit it. June ordered the fish. Ada almost objected on principle.

“Still stubborn?” June asked.

“Professionally.”

They spoke about the years between them. June had worked in three countries, married briefly, divorced without scandal, and returned home to care for her sister after an accident. Ada had built a business around the idea that staying put was a virtue, then spent years wondering whether she'd confused loyalty with fear. She told June about the winter the roadworks closed the street for three months and how she had kept the kitchen open for the staff who needed the shifts. June listened and did not say she should have called.

Neither offered a neat apology. The old argument was too large for that.

“I thought you wanted me to choose you over everything,” Ada said.

“I thought you wanted me to prove I'd stay by never asking you to move.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

“No.”

June put down her fork. “I didn't know how to tell you I was frightened of giving up my life and resenting you for it.”

Ada looked at the rain moving across the window. “I didn't know how to tell you the restaurant was the only place I still felt close to Dad.”

June nodded. “I know that now.”

Ada wanted to say that knowing it now was useless. Eleven years had passed, and time was not a bill anyone could settle over dinner. Instead she asked how June's sister was recovering. June said the physiotherapy was slow and that her sister had started complaining about the hospital food, which June took as a good sign.

They talked until the dining room emptied. Theo dimmed the back lights and went home without comment. It was the kindest thing he'd done since taking the job.

June opened the envelope again. “There's another photograph.”

This one showed Ada and June at twenty-six, sitting on the restaurant steps in paint-stained clothes. Ada had her head thrown back laughing. June was looking at her rather than the camera.

“I hated that picture,” Ada said.

“Why?”

“Because I look ridiculous.”

“You look happy.”

Ada studied it. The difference between those descriptions was suddenly enormous.

“I was,” she said.

June didn't reach across the table. Ada was grateful. Some gestures would have made the evening too easy, as though the right touch could erase everything that had gone wrong.

“I'm not asking you to start again tonight,” June said.

“Good.”

“I'd like to have coffee next week.”

“That's a much smaller request.”

“I've become wiser.”

“You've become cautious.”

“Also true.”

“Tuesday,” Ada said. “There's a place near the market.”

June smiled. “You'd go somewhere else for coffee?”

“I can be adventurous.”

The next morning Ada took the crooked old sign from the storeroom and hung it in the hallway, where customers could see it without asking.

On Tuesday she arrived at the market café ten minutes early. June was already there, studying the menu as though it were a difficult contract.

Ada sat opposite her.

“Did you order?”

“Not yet.”

“Good,” Ada said. “I want to choose something I've never tried.”