How We Got Here

The train from Bristol was forty minutes late and it was raining in the particular English way that does not look like much through a window. Amelia had an umbrella. Julian, who had checked the forecast and decided against it, did not.

They shared it as far as the bus stop, then kept sharing it for three more stops than either of them needed to go. Neither mentioned this at the time. Both mentioned it constantly afterwards.

What followed was unremarkable and is the point: a first flat with a boiler that screamed, a second with a garden neither of them weeded, a rescue greyhound named Beatrice who has never once come when called. Sunday dinners that became a standing reservation. A slow accumulation of the sort of evening you do not photograph because you assume there will be another one.

Last spring, on a hill above Dry Creek with Beatrice asleep in the back of the car, Julian asked. Amelia had been carrying a ring of her own in her coat pocket for eleven days, waiting for the right hill.