I want to put down exactly what I saw and did not read.
She was holding her own coat. She had it over her arm, in a warm room, an hour before anybody was leaving.
She had been ready to go for an hour. She had picked the spot furthest from the room, by the rail, where nobody would come.
And her hands were going.
All of that was in front of me and I processed none of it, because I had already decided who she was, from things her brother had told me in a car.
And I laughed.
Not unkindly. I laughed the way you laugh when somebody says something a bit odd at a party and you want to move past it without anybody being embarrassed.
And then, within about an hour, I told Grayson.
I told him in the car park while we were waiting for a taxi, as a funny thing that had happened.
He went quiet for a second and then he was very good about it.
He said she has a problem about money. He said she has been strange since their father passed. He said it sadly, and he looked out of the window, and I put my hand on his arm.
