Spare key

Robert stood by the front door with a bunch of keys in his hand, frowning as if they were bills he was dealing with rather than a piece of metal. The hallway smelled of Ewa’s wet coat and dust from the radiator. Marta had just kicked off her sneakers; her university bag slipped from her shoulder and smacked against the wall.

“Don’t throw that around, you’ll chip the paint again,” Robert muttered.

“Then maybe buy better paint,” she shot back, bending down to pick up the bag.

Ewa bustled about in the kitchen, something was tapping against the counter, the kettle hissed. An ordinary evening. Robert pulled one key from the bunch, the one with the worn blue head, and raised it between his fingers.

“Here. A spare.”

Marta looked first at the key, then at him. She didn’t reach for it right away.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Just in case,” he said. “In case you come back when we’re asleep again, or your mother gets stuck at work, or whatever. We’re not going to jump up and answer the door every time.”

“We?” she scoffed softly. “You’re the one who jumps up.”

Robert clenched his jaw. Marta took the key slowly, dragging her fingertips over his fingers a little longer than necessary. He didn’t pull his hand away right away. It was barely half a second, but they both noticed.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

“That I don’t believe.”

Ewa leaned out of the kitchen, a towel draped over her shoulder.

“What’s going on?”

“Robert’s giving me a key, because apparently I’ve officially been recognized as a human being,” Marta said.

Ewa smiled without paying much attention.

“Good. At least you’ll stop banging on the door like the police in the middle of the night.”

Marta slipped the key into a small pocket in her purse. She didn’t stop looking at Robert. He was the first to look away.

A few days later, she came back after eleven p.m., even though at lunch she had said she’d be home by nine at the latest. The apartment was dark, except for the lamp above the kitchen table, which cast a yellow circle of light. She opened the door quietly with her own key, almost noiselessly, as if testing whether she really could come in without asking. Robert’s shoes stood in the hallway. He wasn’t asleep.

He came in from the kitchen when she was already hanging up her coat.

“It’s half past eleven,” he said.

“I know how to read a clock.”

“You said something else.”

“Things changed.”

“Did your phone change too? Because somehow it didn’t ring.”

Marta leaned her back against the wall and studied him calmly. He was wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt; he looked tired and pissed off in the very orderly way she couldn’t stand and that somehow amused her at the same time.

“Were you waiting?” she asked.

“Don’t turn this around on me.”

“So you were waiting.”

A chair scraping sounded from the kitchen. Ewa had been asleep for a long time, but they had left the dishwasher ajar and something inside it had just shifted. Robert glanced back instinctively, as if the sound itself reminded him that they weren’t alone here, even if that was what it looked like now.

“You’re twenty-three, Marta, and sometimes you act like a kid,” he said more quietly.

“Exactly. I’m twenty-three. Not fifteen.”

That hung between them like a thrown gauntlet. Robert didn’t reply. Marta passed him so closely that the sleeve of her sweater brushed his side. She paused by the kitchen and looked at the mug standing on the table.

“You made yourself tea and sat there until I came back?” she asked. “Sweet.”

“Go to bed.”

“Good night, Robert.”

This time she said his name clearly, without the familial shortening, without warmth, without a joke. Like an adult woman speaking to a man, not a daughter to her stepfather. He heard it. He went still, but did nothing about it.

The next evening looked more ordinary. Ewa stood by the stove, stirring sauce and talking about someone from work who had missed a deadline again. Marta sat on the counter in an oversized shirt, one leg crossed over the other, snacking on cherry tomatoes from a bowl. Robert was slicing bread. Everything was so domestic it was almost suffocating.

“Don’t sit on the counter,” he said without looking at her.

“Why? Is it going to collapse?”

“Because it’s not a stool.”

“And you’re not the municipal police,” she replied.

Ewa snorted with laughter.

“Give it a rest, both of you. You’re impossible.”

Marta reached for another tomato, but instead of popping it into her mouth, she raised it to the level of Robert’s eyes. She watched him tighten his grip on the knife.

“You look like everything here annoys you,” she said lightly. “Is it work, or me?”

Ewa didn’t even lift her head from the pot.

“Both of you,” she muttered for him. “I’ve been deaf for ages now.”

Robert set the knife down a little too hard. The blade struck the cutting board.

“You’re mostly noise,” he said to Marta.

“And yet you always hear when I come back.”

For a second, it went quiet. Only the sauce simmered over the low heat. Ewa licked the spoon, grimaced, added salt, and noticed nothing beyond her own dinner. Marta hopped down from the counter, passed Robert, and poured salt into a glass of water as if that was what she had wanted from the beginning. As she walked away, her hand brushed his elbow. An accident to anyone but them.

Then it settled into a rhythm. Marta would say, “I’ll be back at ten,” and return at eleven-thirty. She would say, “After class I’m just going for coffee,” and come back after midnight. Each time she opened the door with her own key a little more quietly, a little more confidently. Each time, some light was on somewhere. Sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the living room. Sometimes Robert sat with a laptop whose screen had long since gone dark. Sometimes he pretended he was just going to get some water. Sometimes he asked where she had been. Sometimes he didn’t ask at all, but looked at the clock. Marta saw it and pulled that thread further.

One evening, Ewa fell asleep early on the sofa with a series playing too quietly. Robert covered her with a blanket and turned off the television. As he carried the mugs to the kitchen, the lock in the door clicked. Marta came in wearing high boots, her hair still scented with the chill of the street.

“Quiet, Mom’s asleep,” he said at once.

“I know. I can see that.”

She carried her shoes in her hand and followed him into the kitchen. Not to her room. Not to the bathroom. To the kitchen.

He put the mugs in the sink and turned on the water. The rush was safe, ordinary. Marta leaned her hip against the table.

“You were waiting again,” she said quietly.

“I’m doing the dishes.”

“At this hour? Sure.”

He didn’t turn around. He could see her only in the reflection of the black window. She stood calmly, wasn’t swaying, didn’t look tired. She looked focused.

“The point is that you live here, and it’s only right to know whether you’ll come back in one piece,” he said at last.

“Are you explaining that to me, or to yourself?”

He turned off the water. The kitchen suddenly became so quiet that they could hear the refrigerator and the sleeping apartment beyond the wall.

“Marta, don’t turn this into a game.”

“But it already is a game.”

He turned around. She stood two steps away, in a black jacket unzipped at the neck, her bag slipping from her shoulder. She wasn’t smiling. That was worse than a smile.

“You come back late, you check whether the light’s on. I come in, and you pretend you just happen not to be asleep. Then you talk to me in that tone, as if you don’t even know whether you’re telling me off or simply want me to stand here a little longer.” She took a step closer. “So don’t fucking bullshit me that this isn’t a game.”

Robert braced his hands against the counter behind him, as if he wanted to hold himself in place.

“You’re twenty years younger and you live with us.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she said immediately. “And you know damn well that’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about?”

Marta tilted her head. Her voice hardened, but it didn’t rise even slightly.

“It’s about you noticing when I leave in a skirt and when I leave in sweatpants. It’s about you hearing the lock and not being asleep anymore. It’s about you giving me a key supposedly just in case, and now acting as if every time I come into this apartment is something you’re trying to control.” She ran her fingers over the strap of her purse. “And it’s about the fact that you’re failing.”

He clenched his teeth. He didn’t deny it. That was an answer too.

“You should go to bed,” he said, but it sounded lifeless.

“I should.” She didn’t move. “But first I wanted to see whether you’d finally stop pretending that my late returns are only an accident as far as I’m concerned.”

He remained silent.

Marta took the spare key out of her purse. She placed it on the table between them. The metal struck the surface softly, yet sharply.

“This isn’t just a key,” she said. “And we both know it by now.”

Robert looked at the key, then at her. In the apartment beyond the wall, Ewa turned onto her other side and the sofa creaked softly. Neither of them moved. All their caution, all their half-spoken words and glances, suddenly came to a single point, without a cover.

“Marta…” he began.

“No, now you listen.” She pushed away from the table and came so close that he only had to raise his head slightly. “If you want to put an end to this, then put an end to it. Today. Without all those little scenes called ‘it’s late,’ ‘where were you,’ ‘you should have called.’ But if you leave the light on and wait for me one more time, don’t feed me that bullshit about it being about keeping order in the house.”

They looked at each other for a long time, too long for an ordinary conversation in the kitchen. Robert did not reach for the key. He did not tell her to give it back. He did not say “stop” either. And that meant more than any words could have.

Marta took the key from the table, put it back in her purse, and stepped back.

“Exactly,” she said quietly.

She turned and left the kitchen without hurrying. Robert remained by the counter, his hands gripping the edge, listening to her footsteps in the hallway and the click of the door to the room. He did not run after her. He did not go to the bedroom either. He stood in the half-darkness, staring at the spot where the key had lain moments before.

It was no longer a spare. It was no longer “just in case.” They had both just told each other that, only not in those words.

The Evening That Stops Being an Accident

Robert stood in the kitchen for a while longer, until his fingers went numb against the edge of the counter. Then he turned off the lamp above the sink, crossed the dark hallway, and stopped by the living room. Ewa was still asleep beneath the blanket, one open hand resting against the pillow. He watched her for perhaps two seconds, perhaps five. Then he went to the bedroom alone and closed the door more quietly than usual.

The next day, nothing happened that could be called a scene. And that was precisely the worst part.

In the morning, Marta left her room later than usual, with wet hair and a mug of coffee in her hand. Ewa was bustling around the table, putting documents, her phone, and the car keys into her bag. Robert stood by the coffee machine, watching the black stream pour into the cup.

“I’ll be back late,” Ewa tossed out, adjusting the strap of her bag. “The meeting will run over. Don’t wait for me for dinner.”

“Sure,” Robert replied.

Marta leaned her hip against the counter and looked at him over the rim of her mug. No smile, no wink. Just a calm, shamelessly attentive gaze. As if she were checking whether he would still pretend after the night.

She did not say a word. She passed him so closely that he caught the scent of her shampoo, then sat at the table beside her mother. They talked about something ordinary, about deadlines, the dean’s office, how there were traffic jams in town again. Robert heard individual words, but they did not come together into meaning. All he could think about was that brief “Exactly” from the previous evening, like a splinter driven beneath his skin.

That evening he returned earlier than usual. He could not have said whether he had done it deliberately or had simply stopped lying to himself. He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair in the kitchen, poured himself some water, and stood motionless for a moment. The apartment was empty. Ewa had written that she was going straight from work to her sister’s to help her with some paperwork and would be late. Marta had “some classes,” that was all she had said that morning. No time, no explanations.

He opened the refrigerator, then closed it. He turned on the television in the living room and muted it after five minutes. Finally, because it was stuffy, he took off his shirt and tossed it onto an armchair. He sat on the sofa in nothing but his lounge pants, his elbows resting on his knees. Some game was playing on the screen without sound. He was not watching it.

The key turned in the lock at twenty-two forty.

He heard it at once. That metallic click had long been more than an ordinary sound made by a door. This time, however, he did not get up. He did not go to the hallway. He did not turn on another light. He sat shirtless in the warm half-darkness of the living room when Marta entered the apartment.

First he heard the soft tap of her shoes against the floor. Then the rustle of her jacket. Then he saw her in the doorway.

She was wearing a dark skirt ending a few fingers above the knee, a thin sweater, and her hair loose, slightly mussed from the city and the evening. She held her purse in one hand and closed the door behind her with the other. For a second they stood that way several meters apart, in complete silence.

She did not ask why he had not come out. She did not throw out any “Oh, you’re here.” She did not pretend to be surprised. She looked at his bare torso, then higher, straight into his face, and walked farther into the apartment as if that was exactly what she had been counting on.

Robert slowly straightened.

“Ewa isn’t here,” he said before he could stop himself.

“I know.” Marta hung her jacket on the coat rack in the hallway without taking her eyes off him. “She wrote to me.”

She left her shoes by the wall and walked barefoot across the laminate floor to the living room. She put her purse on the dresser by the entrance, not on her usual chair, not like someone who had returned only for a moment. Then she stopped beside the sofa. Close. Close enough that all it would take was an outstretched hand.

“Have you been sitting here long?” she asked.

“Long enough.”

The corner of her mouth twitched.

“So you were waiting after all.”

He did not answer. A muscle moved in his jaw. Marta tilted her head slightly to the side, as she had in the kitchen when she had stripped him of the last of his excuses with words.

“Were you supposed to go out today?” she asked calmly.

“I was.”

“And you didn’t.”

“No.”

That “no” hung between them, heavy and plain. No circling around it, no covers.

Marta took another half-step. The sofa cushion sank beneath him when he instinctively leaned back, either to make room or increase the distance—he no longer knew which. Her knees touched his thigh. He could feel the warmth of her legs through the fabric.

“Good,” she said quietly.

With one movement she hitched her skirt up slightly, not high, just enough to sit more freely, and sat on his lap facing him, confidently, without wavering, as if she had been doing it forever. Robert froze. His hands, raised instinctively, hovered at his sides, not knowing whether to push her away or catch her so she would not fall.

The fabric of her skirt spread across his thighs. Her weight was tangible, real, impossible to mistake for any fantasy. Marta braced one hand against the back of the sofa behind his shoulder and placed the other lightly on the back of his neck.

“I didn’t change it on purpose,” she murmured, looking at his lips, then back into his eyes. “So you wouldn’t have any doubts.”

Robert drew breath through his nose. His hands finally dropped, but not onto her hips. Onto the sofa, on either side of her thighs, as if he were still trying to preserve some last semblance of order.

“Marta…”

“Don’t say my name as if you’re trying to save yourself,” she said. Her voice was quiet, almost soft, but without mercy. “That moment has passed.”

She leaned toward him. Her hair brushed his shoulder. Her lips came right next to his ear, her breath hot and steady. And then she whispered:

“Mother won’t notice anything anyway.”

The words slipped beneath his skin faster than touch. Robert clenched his hands around the edge of the seat so tightly that his knuckles went white. For a second, two, three, he did nothing. Marta did not move away. She sat on him calmly, self-assured to the point of insolence, waiting for an answer not in words, but in movement.

“Tell me to stand up,” she whispered again. “Just don’t let there be a lie in your voice.”

He lifted his gaze to her. She was too close for him to pretend that he saw Ewa’s child in her, a roommate, a problem to be solved. She was twenty-three, with cool eyes and complete awareness of what she was doing. There was no mist left.

From the hallway came the quiet hum of the refrigerator. Outside, beneath the building, someone slammed a car door. The television flickered its silent images across the wall. Ordinary sounds of an apartment that had suddenly stopped being ordinary.

Robert let go of the edge of the sofa. One of his hands moved to her waist. The other to her thigh, above the knee, heavy and decisive. Not to push her away.

Marta slowly exhaled, as if that was what she had wanted to hear from the beginning—not a word, but the weight of his hand.

“Exactly,” she said quietly.

This time he leaned toward her. He did not kiss her right away. He stopped with his face a centimeter from hers, as if for one last fraction of a second he were checking whether he was really doing this. Marta did not retreat a millimeter. She touched his cheek with her fingers, brushing them briefly over his stubble.

“See it through to the end,” she murmured.

That broke him.

He kissed her briefly, hard, more like a confession than tenderness. Marta responded at once, gripping the back of his neck. The second kiss was already longer, deeper, without any cautious testing of the ground. Her hips moved minimally on his lap, and a low, broken sound escaped his throat, one he probably had not expected from himself.

He pulled away first. Not to end it. He turned his head toward the living room door, the broad one that usually remained open to the hallway and kitchen. For a moment he stared at the dark rectangle of the corridor.

Marta followed the movement without a word. She knew now.

Robert held her more tightly, lifted her slightly from his lap, and set her back down so he could stand up with her. When she was standing on the floor, he was still a step, perhaps half a step, away from her. They had not completely separated. His hand held her by the hip. With the other, he reached for the living room door.

He did not slam it shut. It was a worse kind of certainty. Slow. Deliberate. He pushed the door until the latch caught. The quiet click sounded almost the same as the turning of the key in the entrance lock.

Marta looked at him without blinking.

“So it’s done,” she said.

Robert turned to her. The strained defensiveness from the kitchen was gone from his face, replaced by something heavier and simpler.

“Yes,” he replied.

That one word changed everything more than a kiss.

Marta approached on her own. She did not wait for him to pull her closer. She slipped her hands beneath his arms, her nails lightly catching on his back, and lifted her face. This time the kiss was slower, but more shameless. The living room seemed to grow tighter, though the furniture stood where it always had. Robert stepped back with her half a pace, until her legs pressed against the edge of the sofa.

Her skirt rode higher as she sat back down, and he leaned over her. His hand moved along her thigh, stopping on the fabric, at a boundary that had not existed that morning. Marta tilted her head back and smiled briefly, sharply, like someone who had won a bet but had no intention of celebrating, only of taking more.

“Now don’t say it was an accident,” she said.

“I won’t.”

He sat beside her only for a moment, so he could look closely into her face, as if he wanted to remember that second exactly. Then he slid his hand to the nape of her neck, pulled her back to him, and stopped leaving room for caution between them.

Behind the closed living-room door, the apartment was still the same apartment: the refrigerator hummed, somewhere a neighbor turned on the water, and blurred streetlamp light came in from outside. And yet everything was already operating according to a different order. The key in her purse no longer meant returning home. It meant entering without asking. His hands on her body were not a momentary mistake. They were a choice he had just made when he closed the door.

And when, several minutes later, Marta pushed him away slightly only to catch her breath and look him straight in the eyes, there was not a trace of hesitation in her.

“Good,” she said hoarsely. “Now live with it.”

Robert looked at her for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he nodded once, briefly.

Because this was no longer a game at the kitchen counter or a tug-of-war fought with glances. It had become an act. In that living room, behind the closed door, their relationship could no longer be described with the old words. And they both knew that when the door opened again, nothing would take them back to where they had been before that evening.

The Morning After Crossing the Line

In the morning, daylight entered the living room without asking, gray and flat. It showed no mercy. It revealed everything: the blanket slipped onto the floor, her sweater draped over the sofa’s armrest, his T-shirt thrown beside the table. Robert opened his eyes first. For a second he stared at the ceiling, as if he could count on the night remaining night if he did not move. Then he felt the weight on his arm. Marta was sleeping on her side, her cheek resting against his bicep, her hair scattered across a pillow that had not been there yesterday.

He swallowed. Carefully, he pulled his arm free. Marta mumbled something unintelligible and tightened her fingers around the fabric of his trousers, but she did not wake. He stood up cautiously. His bare foot landed on her skirt lying beside the sofa. He instinctively pulled his foot back, as if he had touched something hot.

In the kitchen, he poured water into the kettle. His hands were steady; only his breathing was too fast. When he set the cups on the counter, one knocked against the other more loudly than he intended. He froze and looked toward the hallway. Silence. Ewa was not there. The bedroom door was still closed, empty since the night before.

Behind him he heard the soft rustle of bare feet. Marta entered the kitchen wearing his shirt thrown on carelessly, her hair tied back in an absent-minded movement of her hand. She looked as though she had gotten up in her own home. That was what struck him the hardest.

She leaned her hip against the counter and looked at him without smiling.

“Do you have coffee, or are you going to stand there pretending you’re in a cereal commercial?” she asked quietly.

Robert cleared his throat.

“There’s coffee.”

“Then pour it.”

She did not move. She watched him reach for the cups, measure out the ground coffee, avoid her gaze for several seconds. Then he caught himself doing it and finally looked straight at her.

“Ewa might come back before noon for the documents,” he said.

Marta nodded as if he had just mentioned the weather.

“Then let’s not stand in the doorway.”

She passed him so closely that the fabric of the shirt brushed his stomach. She opened the refrigerator and took out butter, cheese, and eggs. Ordinary movements. The same home. Except now every reach for something in a cupboard carried that night within it, still alive beneath the skin.

“Sit down,” she tossed over her shoulder. “You’re starting to look as if the toaster is about to give you a heart attack.”

“Marta...”

She turned her head. Her eyebrows lifted slightly.

“What?”

He sat at the table, but only on the edge of the chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. He spoke more quietly than usual.

“What happened yesterday...”

“Was deliberate,” she cut in. She cracked an egg against the edge of the pan. “Don’t tell me now that you don’t remember.”

“I remember.”

“Then good.”

The butter hissed in the heated pan. Marta moved it confidently, as if she had been making breakfasts in this kitchen after nights like that for a long time. Robert watched that calm with a mixture of anger and admiration.

“You can’t behave as if this changes nothing,” he said.

She turned with the spatula in her hand.

“And you can’t behave as if you didn’t close that door yourself. So let’s stop bullshitting each other about it being an accident.”

They looked at each other for a moment. The kettle clicked, falling silent. Robert stood up, poured the coffee, and placed one mug by her hand. She touched it with her fingers but did not lift it right away.

“It’s not about an accident,” he said. “It’s about what happens next.”

“Finally, a sensible sentence.”

She transferred the scrambled eggs onto two plates. She set one in front of him and carried the other to the table. She sat across from him and tucked one leg beneath herself. The chair legs gave a faint squeak against the tiles.

“Then talk,” she tossed out. “What happens next?”

Robert picked up his fork, then put it down. He was not hungry, but forced himself to take one bite, as if ordinary food could restore an ordinary conversation.

“Ewa can’t find out.”

Marta gave a quiet snort.

“Oh, the revelation of the day.”

“I’m not mocking you.”

“Neither am I. I simply didn’t need the whole night to arrive at the same conclusion.”

He fell silent. Her face was calm, but her gaze was hard. There was no morning embarrassment in her, the kind he may have been counting on. She was not trying to reclaim her innocence. She sat across from him and looked like someone who had moved a piece of furniture and had no intention of putting it back.

“It can’t look like it did yesterday,” he said at last. “Not in front of her. Not that way.”

Marta took a sip of coffee. She set the mug down very carefully.

“So you do want an arrangement after all.”

“I want us not to wreck the house in three days.”

“That’s closer to the truth.”

She placed her fork on the plate and leaned a little over the table.

“Listen to me carefully now. I won’t make scenes. I won’t take your hand in front of your mother. I won’t send stupid messages she might see. But don’t try to tell me this is supposed to disappear. Because it won’t.”

Robert accepted that in silence. He clenched his jaw so tightly that the muscle at his temple twitched.

“Do you understand?” she added.

“I understand.”

“And don’t look at me as if you’re just waiting it out. Yesterday, you didn’t wait it out.”

From the hallway came the brief growl of the elevator stopping one floor below. Both of them instinctively looked toward the front door. Robert straightened. Marta did not even flinch; she simply slid her hand across the counter and pulled her mug closer to herself.

Someone continued downward in the elevator. The silence returned, heavy and dense.

Robert breathed out through his nose.

“You can’t test me like that every time,” he said.

“I can,” she replied. “The question is whether you can take it.”

She rose from the table, picked up her plate, and set it in the sink. She turned on the water for a moment, rinsed the fork, and shut it off. Then she returned to the entryway. Robert followed two seconds later, as if he were afraid to leave her alone even for a moment, though he himself did not know whether it was out of caution or something opposite.

Her purse lay beside the dresser. Marta picked it up, opened the zipper, and searched for something for a moment. Robert knew what it was before the metal even flashed.

The spare key rested in her palm. Small, ordinary, unremarkable. Yesterday it had been merely an object that had let her get inside. Now it looked like the sign of an agreement no one had signed, and yet they were both already bound by it.

Marta looked at the key, then at him. She did not hand it to him. She did not ask whether she should return it.

She simply slipped it back into the inside pocket of her handbag and closed the zip.

The small sound was quieter than the evening click of the living-room door, but it held more finality.

“I’ll be back after nine tonight,” she said calmly.

Robert frowned.

“Marta...”

“I’m not asking whether you can. I’m telling you what time I’ll be here.”

She took a step closer. She did not touch him, but stood close enough that he had to lift his chin slightly to maintain her gaze. She was barefoot, her hair carelessly pinned up, his shirt draped over her shoulders. And yet she sounded like someone who was just laying down the rules in someone else’s home and knew that no one would make her take them back.

“If you want to pretend once again that this was the last time, spare yourself the effort,” she said. “It’s a waste of time.”

Robert was silent for a long while. Someone slammed a door in the stairwell. Water rushed through the pipes. The apartment breathed with an everyday normality that had suddenly become no more than a thin wall.

At last he nodded. Reluctantly. Clearly. Without a word, because a word would only have made it even more rigid.

Marta accepted the gesture without triumph. Like something owed.

She turned, reached for her shoes, and slipped them onto her feet. Then she took off his shirt, rolled it up quickly, and placed it in his hand. Underneath, she wore the sweater she had put on earlier, already straightened, already ordinary. That was the worst part.

“Tidy up the living room,” she tossed over her shoulder. “The blanket looks like there was a party.”

She passed him and went to her room. Without hurrying. Without looking back. Robert remained in the hallway with his own shirt crumpled in his hand, staring at the closed door behind which she had disappeared.

After a few seconds, he went to the living room. He picked up the blanket, took the pillow from the floor, and smoothed the throw over the sofa. His movements were mechanical, but there was no longer any of the hesitation of the night or the panic of the morning in them. There was acceptance of something far worse: repetition.

When the sound of Marta opening her wardrobe and the rustle of clothes came from the hallway, Robert stopped with the pillow in his hands. He looked at the dresser in the entrance hall, where her handbag had still been lying yesterday. Now it was gone. The key had vanished from sight as well.

And that was precisely why it had become more important than ever before.

Robert put the pillow back in its place. The living room looked normal again. It was the only thing that could still be put in order. Everything else had already been settled.