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We drink. Outside the canal is grey and soft and a boat moves slowly under the bridge. Jan is warm beside me, his shoulder against mine, and the morning is doing its slow Amsterdam thing around us and I am happy. Just happy — the uncomplicated kind, the kind that doesn't need anything added to it.

"We should have done that sooner," he says.

I turn to look at him.

His face is perfectly, infuriatingly neutral.

I stare at him. Then I start laughing, properly, the full version, and reach for my cup which is tipping and miss it and the tea goes over my knee and the duvet and I make a sound of complete defeat and Jan watches me with his cup steady in both hands and waits.

"You're unbelievable," I say, when I can speak.

"You spilled it."

“You… Jan.” I'm still laughing. "Five months. Five months of… and that's what you open with."

"Would you prefer I said something else?"

"No." I give up on the duvet. Look at him. His hair is perfect, Jan’s hair is always perfect, one of his many unreasonable qualities, and his coffee is steady in his hands and he is looking at me like I am the most entertaining thing in his apartment and possibly his life. "No. That was perfect."

"I know," he says.

CHAPTER THREE

JAN

The duvet goes in the wash at eleven. This is Patrick's fault entirely and I have said so twice. He accepts responsibility with the particular graciousness of someone who is not remotely sorry and is, in fact, still smiling about it while he helps me strip the bed. We work around each other in the small space of the bedroom without difficulty — he takes one end, I take the other, we meet in the middle — and I notice this without remarking on it. How quickly a person can become part of the geometry of a room.

He showers first, then goes back to his apartment for clothes while I take my turn. Twenty minutes later I come out of the bathroom and he is already back — fresh clothes, hair still damp — standing at the kitchen counter with his tea.

I make coffee and stand at the window in the Saturday quiet and consider what has changed. The canal used to be something I looked at. Now it is something we look at. He puts his arms around me from behind, tea still in one hand, the other arm around my waist, and stands there for a moment with his chin on my shoulder looking at the canal.

I let him.

"What are we doing today?" he says. Into my neck.

"I have to go to the market," I say.

"Okay."

He turns his face and kisses the side of my head. Just like that, unhurried, like it is simply the next thing. Then he takes his tea and leans against the counter beside me.

"It's not interesting," I say.

"I didn't say it was."

I look at him for a moment. He looks back with the expression he has when he is waiting for me to stop arguing with something neither of us is actually arguing about. I pick up my coffee.

"Fine," I say.

He smiles at his tea.

— — —

The Noordermarkt on a Saturday morning is organised chaos. I navigate it with a route and a list. Patrick navigates it by talking to people — the cheese seller, a stall holder, someone whose dog he has stopped to admire. He picks up things he doesn't buy. He tries samples without asking first.

He appears beside me at some point with stroopwafels that are not on the list.

"You don't need those," I say.