The contract ran to nine pages, and Odette had formatted it.

"It has a table of contents," said Imran, on Wednesday night, after closing, in the plasterboard office with the door pulled to. The unit was dark but for the desk lamp and the blue of Odette's laptop. Outside, rain made its small, continuous complaint against the roof. "Why does a contract about pretending have a table of contents?"

"Because a document with a table of contents is taken seriously, and one without is a note on a fridge." She did not look up. She had changed out of the camel coat into a grey jumper that made her look younger and more tired, and she had brought, unprompted, a Tupperware of cold dumplings, which sat open between them like a diplomatic gift. "Page four. Read it aloud, please. I want to hear if it sounds like a sentence a human could say."

He found page four. "'Clause six. The Parties shall present as an engaged couple in public and in semi-public settings, including but not limited to: social media, workplace functions, family meals, and any interview conducted by the Board.'" He stopped. "Semi-public?"

"Bernie's kitchen is semi-public. Bernie's kitchen has a window."

"Right." He read on. "'Clause seven. Physical affection shall be limited to the minimum required to be credible, and shall be performed in a manner that each Party finds comfortable. Either Party may withdraw consent to any gesture, at any time, without explanation.'"

"I was quite firm on that one."

"It's the best clause in the document." He meant it. He had seen too many young soldiers handed rules written by people who'd never needed them, and had learned to tell, from a page, whether the writer had been afraid. This writer had been careful and not afraid, which was rarer. "What's the term?"

"Page six."

"'Clause nine. This agreement terminates automatically at midnight on the thirtieth of June following the award of the Provision, whether or not the Provision has been awarded, whereupon the Parties shall announce an amicable separation.'" He looked up. "Eighteen months?"

"Nearer twenty. The Board decides in January, the first payment lands in February, the Branch Director's seat is settled in June of next year, and we need to be seen to last at least through the first audit. After that, a breakup is respectable. People can survive a breakup. They can't survive a rumour."

"And Nana?"

"By then," said Odette, with a dignity that cost her something, "my grandmother will have exhausted her interest in my love life, because she will have been proved right, and then proved right again at the funeral of the relationship, which she will enjoy more."

He couldn't tell if that was a joke. He suspected she couldn't either. Clause ten was the penalty. He read it twice. "'In the event that either Party develops romantic feelings for the other, that Party shall disclose within twenty-four hours, and shall forfeit one dinner, of the other Party's choosing, at a restaurant of the other Party's choosing.'"

"I thought a financial penalty would be vulgar."

"A dinner is a date."

"A dinner is a *forfeit*," said Odette, with a faint flush. "It will be eaten in a spirit of regret."

"You'd never have to pay it."

"No," she said, and handed him the pen. "Neither would you."

They signed at 9:52. He signed in block capitals, because he'd been trained to; she signed in a fluid, upright script with a flourish under the O. There was a pause where they might have shaken hands, and neither did, and instead they sat looking at the pages as though a third person had walked in. Then a floorboard creaked behind the door, and Imran said, in his parade voice, "Wim."

The door opened. Wim stood in the gap holding a mop, as though he had been about to mop. His hood was up. His face, under it, was the colour of an unripe plum.

"I wasn't listening," he said. "I was mopping. The floor's very dirty, sorry, at nine at night, it's the only time, because of the learners' boots."

"Wim."

"I heard the word dinner and I think I heard the word forfeit and I'd like to say I'm completely supportive, of whatever this is, I won't tell anyone, I'll take it to my grave. Or, sorry, in the sense that I'll tell absolutely nobody. Not even Mum. Mum would only tell Auntie, and Auntie would only tell the whole of the church."

"Wim," said Odette. She had risen, and was now precisely the Head of Collections, composed from boots to hairline. "Could you do me a favour?"

"Anything."

"Would you witness a document?"

He stared. He looked at Imran, and at the papers, and at the Tupperware, and his mouth opened and closed once. "Is that legal?"

"It's binding between the parties, and a witness is a courtesy."

"I'm not a lawyer. I've got a certificate in basic first aid, which has a bit about legal stuff but only in the sense of not being sued."

"Sign it," said Imran gently, "and then we'll discuss why you're mopping at ten."

Wim signed. His signature was a long loop of apology. He then stood back, held the mop upright like a flagpole, and said, with enormous seriousness, "I solemnly swear to forget everything I've seen, and I'll start now." And then, a moment later, in a rush: "Is this why Brenda got a wash on Tuesday?"

On Thursday morning the notice went up.

Imran had asked her not to do it herself, and she had said that if it had to be done, she would do it, because the alternative was a junior with a staple gun and no manners. She arrived at eight in the coat, with a clear plastic sleeve, and pinned it to the unit door at eye height, straight as a hospital chart. Imran stood beside her in the yard in his work fleece and did not say anything. It was an official Notice of Intention to Recover. It carried the green leaf. It used the word *regrettable*.

"Right," said Odette, very quietly, as she smoothed the corners. "Now you must look devastated."

"I am devastated."

"I can't tell. You look the same as always. Like a wall that's had a shock."

He tried to rearrange his face. She watched with her head tilted and then, abruptly, reached up and tugged his collar straight. Her knuckles brushed his jaw. It was nothing, a duty, a bit of staging, and it went through him like a current through wet wire.

"Better," she said, not looking at him. "The yard's full of phones."

It was. He hadn't noticed until she said it. Two lorry drivers on their break, a courier in a high-vis vest, a woman at the paint supplier's pretending to read a delivery note: each of them holding a screen at roughly chest height, each of them pointing it, with that blank, absorbed look of the modern bystander, at the door and at them. A notice had gone up. A story had begun. Imran felt his scalp prickle with the old awareness of a column in a bad valley, every slope a firing position.

"Don't look at them," said Odette. "Look at me."

He did. She had gone pale beneath the colour, and the discipline was in her face like a held breath. "We are having a difficult conversation. You are upset. I am sorry, and I am pretending to be unmoved. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Good. Then, when I say so, you will take my hand and say..." She faltered, for the first time. "You'll say something that makes it look as if we've been arguing about something that isn't the notice."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. I've never been in a relationship that survived a public argument."

He took a breath. He thought of the roundabout and of Kiera, and of every learner who ever needed one thing to be true so as to get through the next minute. "Odette," he said, loudly enough to carry, "you could have told me."

She blinked. Then something in her, trained over fourteen years of courtesy, clicked into place like a lock. "I did tell you, Imran. I told you on Sunday and you didn't listen."

"You said *procedure*. You didn't say *door*."

"I said *fourteen days*."

"You said it like you were reading me a menu."

"I read everything like a menu! That is my entire problem!" She flung a hand at the sleeve. "I can't un-post it! If I un-post it, I'm fired. If you're not angry with me, I'm fired. If you're angry with me in a way that sounds personal, I'm rather more than fired, I'm *interesting*."

A lorry driver whispered *oh my days*. The courier lowered his phone and raised it again. Odette's chin trembled, for real, perhaps, or for art; Imran couldn't tell and found, to his alarm, that he cared very much which. He took her hand, and gripped it, and said, softly, only for her, "You're doing well."

"I know," she whispered. "It's awful."

A voice cut across the yard like a trumpet. "WELL! Here is the villain in her camel coat! And the hero, in a fleece! Look at them, ladies and gentlemen, standing before the very doorstep of destruction!"

A van, an enormous orange one, was rolling slowly across the Tannery Yard tarmac, its side doors hung with trays of rolls and flapjacks, and from its open window leaned a young man with a mass of black curls, a flour-white scarf, and the expression of a person who has waited a long time to say something. He was perhaps twenty-nine. He had a moustache that had been drawn on with intention. On the van door, in painted gold, was FINCH & SON — BREAD WITH A MEMORY.

"Excuse me?" said Imran.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," said the young man, braking opposite them and drumming a tune on the door. "I merely deliver. I merely observe. But I can tell a scene when I see one, and this is the third act, and I confess I was not sure the bank would be so *punctual*." He bowed from the neck. "Aurelio Castellanos-Finch. They call me Rory. Do try the cinnamon, it's wasted on the dead."

He passed down a paper bag. Imran, because it was warm and because manners were manners, took it. By the time he looked up the orange van had gone, honking twice, leaving behind a smell of butter and a distinct impression that he had just been sentenced.

"Who," said Odette, slowly, "was that?"

"No idea."

"He looked at you as though you had killed his dog."

"I've never met him."

"Then why," said Odette, peering at the bag, "does it say EVENTUALLY on it?"

Imran turned the bag over. In the bottom corner, in a looping marker hand he recognised from his own door, someone had written the word.

Before he could answer, her phone buzzed. She looked at it, and a flush rose from her collar to her hairline. "It's Nana. She says," Odette read, and swallowed, "'Found your man on the internet. He dances. Very bad. Tell him Sunday, one o'clock, and bring the shirt he wore in the video.'"