Sunday came slowly, with grey light and church bells nobody went to and the particular quiet of a town that had agreed without discussion to move at half speed for one day a week.
Richard was awake at seven.
He lay in bed for a few minutes the way he had started doing not trying to sleep, not trying to get up, just lying there in the in-between of it, listening to the house, the pipes and the birds singing outside, the sound of a car somewhere on the next street.
He got up.
Put his feet on the cold floor and went to the kitchen .
The coffee was the first thing on his mind always the first thing,he filled the kettle. Spooned the coffee into the press. Got Margaret's mug from the cupboard the blue one, the chipped handle, the one he had bought her from a market stall in Edinburgh twelve years ago for three pounds and she had used every single day since because she said it made the coffee taste better and he had told her that was scientifically impossible and she had said some things weren't about science Richard.
He pressed the coffee.
Poured it.
Stood at the window.
The street was quiet below just the grey Sunday morning light on the wet pavement and a cat crossing the road and a man three doors down putting something in his recycling bin with the careful movements of someone who had promised himself he wouldn't make noise and was not quite succeeding.
Ordinary.
All of it ordinary.
"Karen's coming today," he told Margaret's photograph,"she's bringing the soup, the lentil one." He paused. "I know you never liked lentil soup, I always liked it and you always made it for me anyway." He looked at the photograph. "That was very good of you. I don't think I said that enough."
The photograph said nothing.
The crooked smile said everything.
"I'm going for my walk," he said, "I'll be back before she gets here."
He rinsed his mug.
Put his coat on.
Picked up the blue mug.
He always took it on his Sunday walk filled it with coffee, carried it with him to the pond, drank it standing at the water's edge watching the ducks. Margaret had thought this was slightly eccentric. He had told her it was practically a tradition by the third time he did it and she had laughed and said three times wasn't a tradition it was a habit and he had said what was the difference and she had said about fifty years.
He missed her so much it still sat in his chest like something physical.
He opened the front door.
Went out into the Sunday morning.
The café on the corner of Pemberton Road opened at seven-thirty on Sundays.
Richard didn't need to stop he had his coffee, he had his mug sqbut he stopped anyway because he liked to, because Annie who worked the Sunday morning shift always said good morning like she meant it and sometimes that was enough of a reason.
He pushed the door open.
The smell hit him first , coffee and warm pastry and the particular comfortable fug of a small café that had been open long enough to have absorbed the warmth of ten thousand Sunday mornings into its walls.
Annie looked up from behind the counter.
"Morning Richard," she said "usual?"
"Just stopped to say hello," he said, "I've got my" he held up the blue mug.
Annie smiled, "one of these days I'm going to get you to try something different."
"One of these days," Richard agreed.
He stood at the counter for a moment, looking at the pastries in the glass case the almond ones that Margaret had always ordered, every single time, without looking at anything else on the menu, the almond ones, always, and he had teased her about it for years and would give anything now to watch her do it one more time.
"Cold this morning," said a voice beside him.
He turned.
A woman , Small, a neat coat. A small dog on a lead sitting obediently at her feet, looking up at Richard with the focused attention of a dog who took the assessment of strangers seriously.
"It is," Richard said.
"Going far?" she asked.
"Just to the pond," Richard said. "Sunday habit."
"Lovely morning for it," she said "despite the cold."
She smiled.
He smiled back.
She was already turning back to the counter, already ordering something in that same pleasant unhurried voice, already finished with him in the way of people who talked to strangers easily and moved on easily, nothing remarkable about it, nothing to note.
He said goodbye to Annie.
Went back out into the morning.
Walked toward the park.
He didn't notice the coffee tasting different.
It tasted like it always tasted like Margaret's ritual, like Sunday mornings, like the smell she said was the important part, he drank it walking, the way he always did, the warmth of the mug in his hand against the cold of the morning.
He turned into the park at the south gate.
The path curved through the trees toward the pond he knew every inch of it, every root and dip and bend. He walked it without thinking, his feet knowing the way, his mind somewhere else entirely.
He was thinking about Karen.
About whether he would show her the piece of paper.
About whether saying it out loud to someone else would make it more real or less.
About what she would say.
About what he would say back.
He was thinking about this when the path curved around the last stand of oak trees and opened out onto the bank of the pond and he saw the ducks there, always there, fat and indifferent and entirely themselves and felt the particular feeling he always felt here.
Margaret.
Everywhere here. In the ducks and the water and the light coming through the trees at this particular angle on a Sunday morning.
He walked to the oak tree.
The big one, the one they always stood besides one with the roots that made a natural seat if you leaned against the trunk just right.
He leaned.
Closed his eyes.
Just for a moment.
Just to feel her here.
The coffee was warm in his hands.
The morning was quiet around him