"I will not," said Odette, "be proposed to in a shop that sells ankle bracelets."

"It's not a proposal. It's a purchase."

"It's a *public* purchase. In Lindenfall, there is no such thing as a private ring." She stood on the pavement outside Fenwick-Obi & Daughters, Jewellers Since 1893, with her hands tucked into her sleeves and her breath going up in the cold, and eyed the window as if it owed her money. Behind the glass, under spotlights, a hundred pieces of tiny, expensive hope sat on velvet. "Mr Fenwick-Obi banks with us. His wife banks with us. His daughters, who are the Daughters, bank with us. The moment I tap my card, the information will be at the Vault by noon and at my grandmother's by ten past."

"So we don't use the card."

"We'll use cash."

"I haven't got cash."

"I have thirty pounds in a coat." She sighed. "Imran. I own a flat, a car and a pension, and I cannot go into a jeweller's without a plan. This is what it is to be me."

It was a Wednesday, nine days to Lantern Weekend, and a wet one. The rain had settled on Lindenfall in the manner of an unwelcome relative who has brought luggage. Imran had a lesson at two, a clutch to price at four, and a stack of unpaid fuel invoices in the glovebox, and he was standing on a pavement discussing engagement rings with a woman who had been, until three weeks ago, a signature at the bottom of a letter.

"Right," he said. "Options. One. Fenwick-Obi, the proper route, we pay on tap, the town knows. Two. We buy a ring online, it arrives in a bubble-wrap envelope, we've got a story about a family heirloom. Three."

"I dislike two. The Board has an unusually keen eye for stones."

"Three," said Imran, "is Dolores."

"Who's Dolores?"

He took her around the corner and down Marrow Lane, a street so narrow that the buildings leaned over it as if to overhear, and stopped in front of a green shopfront with a fading gold sign: SECOND CHANCE LOANS & EXCHANGE — WE BUY GOLD, WE SELL HOPE. In the window sat a trumpet, a toaster, three wedding dresses on mannequins with no heads, and a tray of rings under a hand-lettered card: *Everyone's been somebody's.*

Odette read it twice. "That is," she said, with a faint tremor, "the most disturbing and honest sign I have ever seen."

"She's a good woman. She gives fair weight." He did not add that he knew this from a Friday three weeks ago, when he'd stood at the counter with a leather strap in his hand and said *how much for a Seiko*. He pushed the door. A bell rang somewhere in the back, a little tin chime like a spoon on a cup.

The shop smelled of brass polish and rain. It was one long room lined with glass cases, each stuffed with the sediment of other people's lives: cameras, medals, wedding rings, a ventriloquist's dummy with a crack across its forehead. A tiny woman in a quilted waistcoat sat behind the counter on a high stool, doing a crossword with a pen on a string. She was perhaps seventy, with silver cropped hair and very large earrings, and she did not look up.

"Seven letters. *Regrets, regrettably.*"

"Sorries," said Imran.

"That's six."

"Apologies."

"Nine." She filled in something and glanced up. Her eyes were black and round as buttons. They landed on Imran, then on Odette, then on Odette's coat, and her pen paused. "Ah," said Dolores Quartey. "The Reaper. Come to see where the rest of us end up."

"I'm here as a customer," said Odette evenly.

"Course you are, love. Nobody comes in as a bank." The old woman slid off the stool, which took a while, and came around the counter, with the particular roll of a person with two bad hips and a good opinion of them. "You'll be after a ring."

"How did you..."

"Dancing Sergeant defends the Reaper. Eight o'clock this morning my son-in-law was playing it on his phone at breakfast, and I said, *that man will be in here by Wednesday.* And look." She lowered herself onto a stool in front of the ring case with a satisfied grunt. "Sit down, both of you. I shan't bite. I've been bitten by better."

They sat. The case was lit from below, and the rings lay in rows on grey felt like tiny sleeping animals. Dolores unlocked it and drew out a tray. "Budget?"

"Low," said Imran.

"Dignified," said Odette.

"Both, then." Dolores's pencilled eyebrow rose. "You want old, plain and good. Nothing with a stone the size of a boiled sweet. Something that's seen weather and stayed."

"Yes," said Odette, a little too quickly.

For a few minutes there was only the sound of Dolores turning rings over in her fingers. She held each to the light. She narrated them. "Sixties. Divorce. Nineteen eighty-eight. Funeral, that one, I won't say more. This lad pawned it to pay for a bus ticket to Spain, never came back. This one's a mistake. This one's an anniversary, forty years, she sold it herself, mind, to buy a mobility scooter and a better view." She held up a slim band of yellow gold, set with a single small garnet the colour of tea. "Now, that."

"What's the story?" said Odette.

"Woman came in with it eleven years ago. Said her husband had given it her before a posting abroad and told her to keep it till he got home. He did get home. Then they split. She said it was too good to wear and too sad to sell, and she wanted it to go to somebody who'd *stay*." Dolores set it on the felt. "She left a note inside."

Odette picked it up. She angled it to the light, turned it, and read aloud, in a voice gone odd and soft: "'*Still here.*'"

Imran saw her hand tremble, very slightly, a breath of movement that was gone almost before it began. She laid the ring in her palm and looked at it. For a moment she seemed to have forgotten both of them.

"My mother," she said.

"What about her?" said Dolores, gently.

"She had one like this." Odette cleared her throat. "A garnet. It was in a drawer at Nana's. Nana wouldn't let me wear it. She said it was for when I was ready, and I never was." Her smile came out crooked and strange. "It's silly. It's completely irrelevant. My mother died when I was nineteen. She was called Michiko."

Imran's mind turned over. *Michiko.* The old woman at her sink, her small, quick voice, *you are Michiko, I mean Odette.* He kept his face quite still. Across the counter Dolores glanced at him, the briefest flick, and then looked again at the ring.

"It's eighty-five pounds," said Dolores. "To you, a hundred and forty."

"Why to me?" said Odette.

"Because you're the Reaper." Dolores folded her hands. "And I should like to see you pay a fair price for something."

"I can't pay with a card."

"Cash, then. I'm not a barbarian."

Odette took out her thirty pounds. It lay on the counter like an apology. Imran took out the remainder, a crumpled collection of twenties from the float he kept for emergency tyres, and counted it beside hers. Together it came to a hundred and thirty-eight. Dolores watched them, and then, with a sigh, rubbed her thumb over a small scratch on the glass.

"I'd say that's near enough."

"Mrs Quartey," began Odette.

"Dolores." She was sliding the garnet into a small grey box. "I don't do charity. This is a clearance. I've a ring here nobody's wanted for eleven years and I'm sick of dusting it."

The box passed across the counter. Odette took it with both hands. When she looked up, her eyes were suspiciously bright, and she did not seem to be able to say anything, so Imran said "thank you," on behalf of both of them, in his lowest voice, and Dolores nodded as if a very small deal had been struck and she'd come out on the right side of it.

Then Odette, closing the box, looked past Dolores's shoulder at the glass cabinet behind the counter, and stopped.

It was a small cabinet, set at eye height, labelled in Dolores's careful hand: *WATCHES — SOME WITH STORIES.* Among the tangle of dials and straps sat a plain steel Seiko with a cracked leather strap, dark with years of one man's wrist. A paper tag hung from it on a piece of string. She could not have read the tag from there. She read it all the same, because the tag was written in a hand she'd seen on a loan application: *HADDAD, I. — 3 wks. — £60.*

Odette turned her head slowly and looked at Imran.

He had not moved. He was looking at the floor, the way a boy looks at the floor when he has been sent to the head.

"That's my father's," he said. "The first payment was due on the first. It was that or the Colonel's insurance."

"You sold your father's watch to pay *me*."

"I sold it to pay the loan. You weren't involved. You were just the folder."

"Oh, Imran." It was the first time she had said his name without a purpose, without a clause attached, as though it had simply fallen out of her mouth in the wrong order. She looked at the watch. She looked at Dolores, who was suddenly studying a crossword with enormous attention. "How much?"

"No," said Imran.

"Mrs Quartey. How much for the Seiko?"

"It's sixty plus the interest," said Dolores, without looking up. "Seventy-two."

"Odette. No."

"It's not a gift." She was already counting, with that precise, furious economy. She had a credit card in her hand. She paused, looked at it, put it back, and extracted from her bag a purse he hadn't seen, in which a small folded wad of notes sat like a secret. "It is the recovery of an asset belonging to one party to a commercial arrangement, in the interests of his credibility as a partner. Procedure." She put seventy-two pounds on the counter. "Your father's watch is part of your character. A Board member will ask what's on your wrist. I will not have you answer, *a gap*."

"That's a very good argument."

"I'm told it's my only talent."

Dolores put the watch into a small brown envelope and slid it across the counter. Odette picked it up and held it. For a moment neither of them moved. Then, with the brisk motions of a nurse, she reached out and took his left wrist, turned it palm up, and fastened the cracked strap herself. The leather was warm from the glass. Her fingers were cold. She tugged the buckle through the last worn hole, and he felt her thumb rest for a heartbeat over his pulse.

"There," she said.

"Thank you."

"It's a loan."

"Of course."

"I'll want it back on the thirtieth of June." Her voice cracked, a very little. She cleared her throat and let go of his wrist as if it had become hot. "Now, we are late. I have a Board paper at four, and you have a clutch."

They were at the door, the little tin bell about to chime, when Dolores said, to the crossword, in a voice as dry as a biscuit, "Seven letters. *Pretending, in a manner of speaking.*"

Neither turned.

"Rehearsing," Odette said at last, quietly, and opened the door.

The rain had stopped. In the wet light of Marrow Lane her phone, which had been silent for an hour, lit up in her palm. She glanced at the screen, and her face changed.

"It's Tamar Whitlock-Adeyemi," she said slowly. "Two Spoons. They've sent a direct message, with a little spoon on it. 'Hi hun!! So excited to meet you both IRL! Come cook with us Saturday — we're streaming live to 340k and we'd LOVE to have you on! Bring the ring!! 💍🥄'"