At six in the morning, Anja made herself smaller while the kettle boiled.
She stood in the kitchen with one hand on the counter and let the familiar contraction begin beneath her ribs. The tissue softened, then drew inward; warmth travelled across her chest as blood and retained fluid returned to deeper circulation. It was not weight disappearing. It was weight getting out of the way. By the time the kettle clicked, her breasts had lost most of their fullness, and she could bring her elbows together without the small adjustment she usually made.
She liked that. She also liked what she had looked like five minutes ago.
For nine months she had encouraged the slow hormonal settling that had rounded her hips and made her ordinary, resting figure fuller. At thirty-three, she had finally worked out that she enjoyed a bit of heft: the swing of it in a good skirt, the warm weight against her forearm when she read on her side. Her old trousers had gone to a friend. Her favourite coat had acquired two handsome side panels. None of that would reverse before breakfast. The quick vascular adjustment was for squash; the long change was for living in.
She drank, ate a banana, and pulled on her sports top. Its overlapping front panels lay nearly flat. She shortened the support bands until the green stitching met, wound her black hair into a knot, and checked the message still sitting on her phone.
Seven. Proper dinner. No discussing your backhand.
Otis had sent it last night. She had replied that this ruled out most of his conversation.
Their first proper date. She had been using the word proper to distinguish it from the meals they had eaten after matches, the coffee he owed her, and the night outside the station when he had kissed her just before leaving on tour. He had been away six weeks. She had spent an unreasonable amount of that time remembering how his face had changed when she kissed him back.
Tonight she would find out what he was like for more than three minutes when neither of them had a train to catch.
At the club, the overhead lights picked out yesterday's handprints on the glass wall. Otis was trying to persuade a vending machine to release his ball.
“Thirty-six,” Anja said, “and still getting beaten by stationary opponents.”
“It has reach.”
He gave the machine a disappointed look. The ball dropped.
He had shaved badly. A little crescent of copper-coloured stubble remained under his jaw, where his touring beard had been. Anja wanted to touch it. Instead she checked the tension of her racquet strings.
“You look different,” he said.
“Six weeks of training while you've been eating station pies.”
“I meant your hair.”
A short strand she had cut to keep it out of her eyes was sticking straight up. He reached to indicate it, stopped short of touching, and grinned.
The grin caused a small, thoroughly unhelpful warmth beneath her sports top.
Anja turned towards the court. “Warm up.”
They hit for ten minutes. Then she served, and the day became satisfyingly simple: ball, wall, feet. With less movement across her chest, she could turn late and still reach the shot. Her top held close without crushing her. She ran hard into the front corner and came out with a ball so low that Otis had to scoop it up almost from the floor.
“Filthy,” he said with admiration.
She won the first game.
Between games he pulled his shirt away from his neck. There was sweat at the notch of his collarbone, and his breathing was uneven. Anja, who had seen him sweaty and unpleasantly pleased with himself twice a week for two years, suddenly found this interesting.
Her chest began to fill.
She knew the sensation before she felt the fabric move: a spreading warmth, a little forward pull. She started the contraction again as he served, dividing her attention at exactly the wrong moment. The ball went past her racquet.
Otis looked from her to the glass wall. “Something behind me?”
“Poor circulation of useful thoughts.”
She adjusted a support band. He looked down at his shoes, giving her the ordinary courtesy people gave a slipping strap or an unexpected response. Then he glanced at the club's rack of borrowed warm-up jackets.
“We used to have the monopoly on needing one of those in a hurry,” he said.
“Congratulations on the competition.”
“At least yours takes instructions.”
“I'm reviewing its performance.”
The next rally lasted long enough to empty her head. She stopped thinking about the sweat on his throat, tightened the familiar inward control, and felt the panels settle against her again. This time she reached the front corner cleanly.
She won the match by two points. Otis disputed one of them until she made him stand where the ball had struck and look at the line.
“In,” he admitted.
“I want to hear it without the suffering.”
“You ask too much.”
Afterwards they ate eggs at the club counter. She relaxed the contraction over her second piece of toast. Her sports top's panels gradually unfolded, and she loosened its bands without getting up.
Otis told her about a theatre so small that the sound desk had to share a cupboard with the costumes. She told him about an audiobook narrator who had pronounced the same invented town four different ways, all with conviction. His knee touched hers beneath the counter. This did not prevent her from correcting his version of the final rally.
When they parted, he said, “Seven, then.”
“Seven.”
“I booked under my name. They sent me a reminder with three exclamation marks.”
“You may need them.”
He put a hand over his heart. She liked him doing that. She liked it more when he dropped the joke and kissed her briefly beside the coat rack.
On her way to work, Anja bought two rolls and ate one before she reached the studio. The quick changes made her thirsty; sport made her hungry. No woman she knew could spend the day inflating and draining without eventually having to sit down with something to drink. The old courtship diagrams had omitted this part. Thousands of generations of wanting a slightly different silhouette, and nobody had thought to draw the snack.
Her studio occupied two rooms above a shuttered cinema. At nine she climbed the narrow stairs sideways past a delivery box, let herself in, and changed into the cream work blouse she kept behind the door. She checked the side tabs, set the expansion pleats free, and sat at the desk.
By half past ten her usual fullness had returned. The blouse accommodated it with four quiet movements of cloth. Her trousers, cut for the hips she had spent most of a year acquiring, fitted exactly as they had yesterday.
The recording was an oral history, four hours of a retired puppeteer's voice that needed to become thirty-eight minutes by five. The woman had forgotten dates, restarted stories, and occasionally made a puppet speak from somewhere below the microphone. She had also described her husband's death in a voice so matter-of-fact that Anja had listened to the passage three times before deciding where to leave the silence.
At eleven, a tab in the blouse jammed.
Anja noticed it first as a sideways pull, then as a ridge digging beneath her arm. She paused the recording and tried to free the little slider. Nothing. She could drain again and carry on, but she was comfortable in her chair, she had a day of breathing and listening ahead, and she did not fancy holding the sporting contraction until lunch because a piece of brass had developed an opinion.
She took the blouse off, put on her loose studio cardigan, and freed a length of dark thread from the slider with her tweezers. The pleat sprang free so suddenly that she dropped them.
“Thank you,” she told the blouse, without meaning it.
She put it back on. The broad front lay smooth again. Through the little window above her screens, sunlight had reached the opposite roof.
At lunch she ate the other roll standing up, which did nothing to improve it, then took ten minutes outside. Her fuller hips gave her walk a movement she could feel through the trousers. She bought a pear from the stall beside the cinema, inspected it for ripeness, and took the long way back.
By three she had thirty-nine minutes and a laugh she did not want to cut. The puppeteer had started laughing halfway through the story of a stage invasion by a real cat, and the laugh rose into a wheeze, stopped, then returned when she tried to imitate the cat. Anja could remove half of it. The edit would be efficient and lifeless.
Her phone began vibrating against the desk. Otis. She turned it face down and silenced it with the rest of the afternoon's traffic.
She kept the laugh. Elsewhere she found forty seconds of repetitions, and at four fifty-three she sent the finished piece.
For several minutes she sat without her headphones, enjoying the indecent luxury of listening to nothing. Then she checked the time, grabbed her coat, and hurried to her fitting.
The dressmaker had stayed late. In the small shop, the front window was darkening behind a display of sleeves, and a line of unfinished garments hung high along the wall like people avoiding the floor.
Anja's dress was deep green silk, with broad shoulder straps and a square neckline. Nothing about it moved automatically. Its beauty was in the uninterrupted sweep from the curve of her chest to the fullness of her hips, then down to a narrow hem below the knee. She had wanted it from the moment she tried it on.
The dressmaker fastened the last hook and stepped aside.
Anja looked in the long mirror. Her hair was coming loose. There was a red mark on her cheek where a headphone pad had pressed. The dress was magnificent.
“You could put the small pleat here,” the dressmaker said, indicating the side seam with the blunt end of a pin.
“I know.”
“It would give you more room.”
Anja turned. The light ran over the silk in one unbroken band.
“Show me again.”
The dressmaker opened the side fastening and moved it to the outer row of hooks, letting out the folded allowance. It was clever work. The added silk was almost invisible until Anja moved; then a thin ridge interrupted the gleam.
“No,” Anja said, after a moment. “The plain line.”
“All right. But don't try to play squash in it.”
“Dinner. A chair. Very slow chewing.”
The dressmaker laughed and restored the inner row of hooks. She showed Anja how to reach the outer row, hidden beneath the fold of silk. Using it would buy a little space through the bodice, at the price of letting the skirt hang less neatly. Beyond that, she would need to come back for an alteration.
Anja sat on the fitting stool. The dress settled snugly but comfortably. She could breathe, cross her ankles, and stand again. She liked the support of it, the way the fabric held the shape she had chosen rather than apologising for it.
She paid, changed back into her trousers, and carried the green dress home in its cloth bag.
It was six when she finally opened Otis's messages.
Got two seats for Sera and the Small Hours. They're back tonight only! Seven at the Lantern.
Moved dinner to nine so we can do both. Same restaurant. You're going to love this.
The first message was nearly three hours old. So was the second.
She rang him.
“Did you actually move the booking?”
“Yes. I thought—”
“I was working. I didn't answer.”
There was a pause, then a sound like a door closing at his end.
“I thought you'd see it when you took a break.”
“And if I'd seen it and said I wanted dinner at seven?”
“I can ring them.”
“Please do.”
She put the phone down on her kitchen counter and unwrapped the dress. Sera and the Small Hours were wonderful. She had introduced him to their first album. That did not make her want to spend the beginning of this evening in a crowded little venue, hungry, waiting to discover whether they would get through the whole set before their table was due.
She had been looking forward to sitting opposite him. She wanted his face, his unhurried attention, and something hot to eat.
He called back while she was pinning up her hair.
“They've given the seven away. They can keep the nine.”
She closed her eyes. “Otis.”
“I know. I should have asked.”
“You should have waited for the answer.”
Another pause. She could hear street noise this time.
“I'll meet you there at seven. We'll find somewhere.”
“What about the concert?”
“I'll miss it.”
She was glad he said this without a sigh. She was still annoyed.
At seven, she found him outside the restaurant in a dark jacket, holding a small bunch of orange flowers. He looked briefly at the dress, then back at her face, and forgot whatever he had prepared to say.
This was gratifying. Annoyingly gratifying.
“Those for the head waiter?” she asked.
“He's been quite firm.”
“Good man.”
Otis handed her the flowers. “You look lovely.”
“I know. I've been in a mirror for forty minutes.”
He smiled, uncertainly. “Are you going to make me stand out here until nine?”
“No. I'm hungry.”
They walked towards the other restaurants. Her narrow hem kept their pace slow. In shop windows she caught the green silk shining beside his dark jacket, and despite herself she enjoyed the sight.
Otis tried the little place with the blue door. Full. The next had a private party. At the third, a waiter offered them a table in forty-five minutes.
“At that point I'll have eaten the flowers,” Anja said.
There was a dumpling shop on the corner with mist on the windows and six people waiting by the counter. They joined the queue.
Otis leaned down to read the menu over her shoulder. His voice was close to her ear when he asked what the red stars meant. She caught the clean scent of his soap, underneath the colder smell of his coat.
She was still hungry because of him. She also wanted to lean back against his chest, which seemed particularly unfair.
Her body, which had not been consulted about the missing reservation, made its own contribution to the evening.
Warmth spread. The silk pressed more firmly. She shifted, trying to find a little room between herself and the dress, and felt the uppermost side hook take the strain.
Otis noticed her stop moving.
“Are you all right?”
“The dress is reconsidering.”
“Can you do what you did this morning?”
She could. The contraction was there, ready to begin. She would ease the pressure, the lovely line would return, and perhaps she could spend the rest of the night divided between the person in front of her and a steady little effort beneath her ribs.
“I don't want to,” she said.
“Oh.”
She looked at him. “I like it like this tonight.”
His gaze flicked down and back. “So do I.”
“Excellent. Hold these.”
She put the flowers into his hand and stepped behind the short screen beside the counter. It concealed the shop's high chairs, a stack of coats, and a woman on her phone waiting for takeaway. The woman glanced up, then politely returned to her call as Anja reached beneath her arm.
Anja moved the side fastening to the outer row of hooks. The folded allowance opened. Immediately the dress let her take a proper breath, and the line of the skirt fell a little sideways. She smoothed it once. It remained sideways.
In the dark window, her reflected figure was fuller than it had been in the fitting shop. Her face was flushed. The beautiful band of light now kinked at one hip. She turned a little, hoping to recover the smooth gleam she had paid for, but the kink turned with her. She gave the silk one last tug and let it fall. She still looked very good.
She emerged to find Otis sitting on the single free stool, which he promptly vacated.
“You got us a table?”
“No. I got you half a table. The other half belongs to a man eating very methodically.”
The man looked up from his dumplings. “You can have it.”
“There's no hurry,” Anja said, sitting down.
She meant it. Now there was a stool and the promise of dinner, the urgency drained away. Otis stood beside her, still holding the flowers like an unsuccessful street vendor, until the man finished and a second stool became available.
Their first proper dinner arrived in two bamboo baskets and a bowl they had to share because there was no room for another.
For a little while they ate. Anja took the first hot dumpling too fast, burned her tongue, and accepted Otis's glass without being dignified about it. The released silk no longer interfered with leaning over her basket.
“I wanted it to be a good surprise,” he said eventually.
“It was a good idea. I might have wanted it another night.”
“They're only here tonight.”
“Then you might have had to choose.”
He looked at the flowers lying along the edge of the table. “I thought I could get everything.”
“I wanted time with you,” she said. “Not between one thing and the next.”
He nodded. For once he did not have a quick reply.
A family came in, carrying parcels. Someone near the counter dropped a spoon. Anja could hear the clatter of pans through the kitchen doorway.
She watched him reach for a dumpling, discover she had taken the last one, and look into the empty basket with genuine sorrow. It helped.
“We can order more,” she said.
“That was going to be my next question.”
After the second basket he told her about the end of the tour: a singer losing her voice and doing the last show almost entirely by inviting the audience to sing. He had expected a disaster. It had been the best night they had had. He still sounded astonished by it.
Anja told him about the puppeteer's laugh. He asked to hear it. She played him the cat passage from the preview on her phone, one earbud each, their heads bent close enough to bump.
He laughed where she had hoped he would. Then he asked about the woman's husband, whose name came up at the end of the clip.
She told him. He listened without trying to make it lighter.
They ordered tea. She put one foot against his beneath the table, and he left his there. By the time they stepped outside, she had quite forgotten to hold any part of herself smaller.
The flowers had begun to look tired. Otis carried them upright while Anja pulled her coat over the green dress. Its added side panels gave her all the room she needed.
At the corner where they would ordinarily separate, he stopped.
“What happens now?”
Anja could have made him work for it. She had enjoyed doing that on the court. She did not want to do it here.
“I'd like you to come home with me.”
He took a breath. “I'd like that.”
“I want to go to bed with you, Otis.”
He laughed, with relief and something less easily disguised.
She caught his jacket and kissed him. His hand settled at her back. The attraction that had interfered with her serve and pressed at the green silk was welcome now, but it was the look on his face when she let him go that made her take his hand.
At her flat they found a jug for the flowers. Otis put them in water while she released the rest of the dress's hooks. The silk slid into her hands, and she hung it over the chair, the folded allowance showing pale at the side.
She went back to him before he had finished arranging the stems.
Later, in bed, she let the quick response settle towards her familiar resting fullness. She liked that slow easing before sleep.
She shifted his sleeping arm from across her chest to her waist and rolled onto her side. He had taken most of the pillow with him. She pulled it back until he woke.
“Terrible service,” he murmured.
“You're on probation.”
He rolled towards her. They had left the bedside lamp on, and in its light she could see the little patch he had missed when shaving. She touched it at last.
“Would breakfast be an unreasonable suggestion?” he asked.
She rested her hand on his shoulder. She wanted breakfast. She wanted him sleepy at her kitchen table, finding out where she kept the cups.
“Eight,” she said. “I've got a recording session at nine.”
“Eight. What should I bring?”
“You can help make it. There are eggs.”
“Proper breakfast?”
“Let's see how we do.”
He reached past her to turn out the lamp, then hesitated with his hand on the switch.
“For the record,” he said, “I still think that second shot was down.”
Anja took back another inch of pillow.
“You saw the mark.”
“A mark. We can't prove—”
“Turn out the light, Otis.”
He was still arguing when she closed her eyes.