Odette Nakamura-Boyle's flat was the tidiest place Imran had ever stood, including two barracks, a hospital and the inside of a coffin, in which he'd once spent four minutes during a training exercise he'd rather not discuss.

It was on the fourth floor of a converted wool warehouse by the river, one room and a galley kitchen, with exposed brick, a long window, and a single plant that looked as if it were being kept alive by force of will. There was one sofa. There was one bookshelf, arranged by colour and then, within colour, by height. On the coffee table lay a laminated card, a box of index cards, a pack of fine-tipped pens in six colours, and a kettle he assumed had been brought out of the kitchen for the purpose of a cup of tea that did not yet exist.

"You've laminated something," he said.

"I've laminated several things." She took his coat from him, hung it on a hook he hadn't noticed, and straightened the hook. "Sit. Not there. That's my chair. There."

"It's the sofa."

"The sofa is neutral territory."

He sat. The sofa sank under him with a faintly apologetic sigh. Odette perched on the edge of her own chair like a crane about to take off, and fanned the cards in one hand. "We have seven weeks, a Board of seven, an interview that is public, and a rival who has three hundred and forty thousand followers and a chairman's help. I propose that we are not going to be outdone on warmth. We shall be outdone on nothing. Therefore, tonight, we acquire facts."

"Facts."

"About each other. The sort that a couple of eight months' standing would know without thinking, and which a Board member will test us on, because Board members love tests, it is the only thing they love." She laid the first card on the table between them. It read, in six colours: FULL NAME. "I'll begin. Odette Haruka Nakamura-Boyle. Born in the county hospital, March the ninth, in a thunderstorm which my mother has always said was a sign. Your turn."

"Imran Idris Haddad."

"*Idris.*" She wrote it down. "Your date of birth?"

"Twentieth of January."

"Where?"

"Stoke. In a car, apparently. My father was driving my mother to the hospital and he missed the turning." Imran caught himself. "It's a family story. It's possibly why I teach."

Odette stopped writing. She looked at him, and for a moment her whole face went open and delighted, a window thrown up. "Your *father* was a driver?"

"Bus driver. Thirty-one years on the number nine."

"And your mother?"

"She cleaned offices at night so he could do the early shift. They passed in the kitchen at six." He shrugged. "That's the romance of the working class. A handover."

She wrote that down, too, and underlined it twice. Then, because she was Odette, she asked the next question in the same breath. "Why did you leave the army?"

It was an index-card question, asked in the index-card voice, and he answered it in the same register. "My knee. And a moment of clarity on a road outside a place I won't name."

"What sort of moment?"

"The sort where you realise you've been very good at something for a very long time and it's finished with you." He held her gaze. "Not tonight."

"Not tonight," she agreed, without a flicker, and he felt the small, strange relief of being declined an interrogation by someone who then, with exquisite tact, moved on. "Favourite food?"

"Whatever's in front of me."

"That's not an answer, that's a posture."

"Then rice. Anything on rice."

"Mine's the cheese toastie from the garage on Mill Lane, which I eat in the car in a state of private shame." She wrote it down. "That is a fact to be used only in the event of torture."

By nine they had a rhythm. They moved through the cards with the speed of two people filling in an insurance form. Her first dog, a dachshund named Colonel Sanders, whose name she'd found out only later to be a thing. His first car, a rusted Fiesta he'd called Brenda the First, which explained a lot. Her left-handedness. His fear of lifts, which she wrote down in green. The song she cried to, which she would not say, and he put his hand over the card and said, "I'll guess," and guessed seven songs in a row, increasingly wrongly, until she said, "It's the one from the washing-powder advert," and then looked horrified at herself, and he laughed so hard he had to put the card down.

She laughed too. It came out of her as if it had been waiting in a locked room and been startled by the key. It was a short, helpless snort, followed by a hand over her mouth. "Don't," she said, through the fingers. "Don't tell Bernie."

"I'd never."

"She'd put it on a mug."

It was the first time he'd seen the two halves of her at once: the woman who laminated, and the woman who couldn't help but be delighted by something. He thought, absurdly: *you could drive a convoy by that*. Then he thought, less absurdly, that it was a very dangerous thing to think.

They broke at ten. She made tea in two real cups and handed him one, and sat down, finally, on the sofa, not next to him but at its other end, with her stockinged feet drawn up and a cushion held to her chest. He had the sense that she did not often sit on her sofa.

"Practical matters," she said. "The Board will want a photograph."

"Of us."

"Of an *us*. Preferably candid. Preferably taken by someone not paid." She winced. "Our first photograph must be dull, domestic, and unarguably taken in a moment of affection. I think we should take it tonight."

"With what?"

"With this." She held up her phone. "It takes a little practice. Come here."

"Come where?"

"Closer. I can't hold it at arm's length and keep my dignity." She extended her arm, and he shuffled along the sofa, which sank traitorously and tipped him into her shoulder. Their cheeks nearly touched. She smelled of tea and a very faint, clean soap. The screen showed their two faces, hers pale and tense, his square and solemn and, he noted with some alarm, a little flushed.

"Smile."

"I am smiling."

"You are bracing for impact."

"It's the same face," said Imran.

"Then try thinking of something you love."

He thought of the roundabout, and of Kiera's face when she took the exit. He felt his mouth change. At the edge of the frame he could see Odette watching him in the phone's glass rather than looking at the camera, and she was smiling too, a small, startled, private smile, as if she'd walked into a room and found a light on.

*Click.*

Neither of them moved. The phone lay on her knee. In the photograph, which she did not show him, he suspected, for some time, they looked like two people who had just heard good news.

"That's... that will do," said Odette, eventually, rather hoarsely. She stood, collecting cups. "Excellent. I'll send it to you."

"Right."

"We should avoid doing that again unless required."

"Agreed."

"Not because it was unpleasant."

"No."

"Because it was effective," said Odette, to the kettle. "And I'm wary of overusing a good tool."

He was helping her find a space for the tea tray when her phone buzzed on the arm of the sofa. And again. And a third time, with the impatient rattle of a thing that has been buzzing for some while. She picked it up and frowned. The frown became a stillness.

"Oh," she said.

"What?"

She turned the screen toward him. It was a video, paused on a freeze-frame: a bright, white kitchen with a marble island, a married couple in matching striped aprons smiling at the lens with two hundred perfect teeth. The banner at the top read TWO SPOONS LIVING. Below it, a caption in a cheerful font: BIG NEWS, SPOONIES!! WE'RE GOING FOR THE STEADFAST PROVISION!! 🥄💍 It had been up for three hours. It had a hundred and twelve thousand views.

"Press play," said Odette, faintly.

He did. A woman's voice, bright as a sparkler, said: "...and we want to be totally open, Spoonies, because honesty is our brand. We're not the only couple going for it. There's a really *sweet* pair too, you might have seen them, it's the Reaper from the Vault and the Dancing Sergeant! Honestly, so brave! We just think it's so important that people feel hopeful about love, even if it's, you know, a bit of a story. We're rooting for everyone!" A man's voice added, "Everyone *except* the bank," and they both laughed, in unison, with a click of ringing glasses.

Imran paused it. "A bit of a story."

"She said *a bit of a story*." Odette's voice had gone thin. "She said it twice. In the comments. They've already got eleven thousand likes."

"Have they said anything about..."

"No. Not specifically. Not yet." She was scrolling. Her thumb moved faster, and then stopped. "Imran. Look at this."

The top comment, pinned by the creators with a little gold heart, belonged to an account with no picture and a handle made of bread emoji. It said, in full:

*Lovely couples all round! But some of us remember who's really lived in that building. Ask the Reaper's boyfriend what's under his floor. 🍞 #BreadWithAMemory*