Monday

On Monday he sat down next to her in English without being asked, which was notable because there were other seats and he had not sat there before.

She noticed he had his sketchbook in his bag. She could see the corner of it. She did not mention it and he did not mention it and they both pretended not to be thinking about the allotment.

Lena looked at the seat. Then at him. He was arranging his things on the desk with a studied casualness that she recognised as the arrangement of things by someone who has made a deliberate choice and is hoping it does not look deliberate.

She looked back at the front of the room.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said.

The lesson started. They did not talk during it. But it was a different kind of not talking than the silence they had had before the allotment, which had been the silence of two people who occupied the same space without particularly noticing each other. This was the silence of two people who were noticing each other quite a lot and had decided, mutually and without discussing it, to be quiet about it for now.

At the end of the lesson he said: "The cover of your notebook. Did you paint it yourself?"

Lena was putting her things in her bag. She kept doing that. "Yes," she said.

"It is good," he said. "The way the colours blend at the edges."

She looked up. He was not looking at her, he was zipping his own bag, and she thought that was possibly deliberate too, giving her the compliment without making it into a moment that required a response she might not know how to give.

"Thank you," she said.

"Do you paint a lot?" he asked.

"A bit," she said. "Mostly I just use it for covers. For notebooks."

He nodded slowly, like this answered something he had been thinking about. Then he picked up his bag and said: "See you tomorrow," and left.

Lena stood in the emptying classroom for a moment.

She thought about the sketchbook closed on his knees and the way he had said I draw like it cost him something. She thought about the cover of her notebook and the inside pocket of her bag and the three rules and how it felt to have something that was only yours.

She thought that she understood Marcus Osei better than she had last week and that this felt, unexpectedly, like standing near something warm.

She had not expected to feel that. She had not been looking for it. But there it was, small and certain, and she walked home thinking about it all the way.