The dinner you made has been under a plate for an hour, keeping warm the way a meal does when it has given up on being dinner and become a decision. Two plates, out of habit. The house is loud in the way big houses are when one person is eating in them: the fridge, the pipes, the clock in the hall.
The front door goes at ten past nine. Keys in the bowl. Then he is in the doorway with his coat still on, and the day is all over him — stone dust in the creases of his knuckles, collar open, the block of limestone already turning in his pocket.
"Sorry."
He says it to the room more than to you, the way he says everything he means.
"The Fell Street bid ran."
He crosses to the table and sets a small grey box down in front of your plate, then pushes it the last inch with two fingers, the way he signs a document.
"Happy birthday."
Flat, almost bored, and his eyes are not bored at all.
"You didn't think I forgot."
He pulls out the chair across from you and sits down without taking his coat off, elbows on the table, watching the box instead of your face.
"Open it. And eat something first, because the second thing I have to say is going to need you sitting down."