Chapter 1: Friday

The barn is at the end of a single-track lane four miles outside Sherborne and I drive the last quarter mile at fifteen because the lane is hawthorn-narrow and I do not know it.

I do not have to be on this course.

I am on this course because Jonathan, two years late on a fortieth-birthday present and visibly aware of being late, booked the four-day residential at the studio in the brochure his sister sent him because his sister thought I would like it. His sister thinks I would like it because the brochure has a photograph of a woman in a long apron at a wheel with her hair tied back. His sister is wrong about why I am here.

I am here because the brochure had a sentence at the bottom that said places limited to four. The studio is small. You will work side by side with the tutor for four days. I am here because for nineteen years I have been doing things other people picked for me and I had decided, on the morning I read the brochure at the kitchen table while Jonathan was on a call with Hong Kong, that I would not say no to the brochure on the grounds of being too tired or too busy.

I would go. I would come back on the Tuesday and put a small dish or a small bowl on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. The dish would be a thing I had made with my hands that nobody had picked for me.

That is the decision. That is all the decision is.

The barn is a stone barn with a slate roof. The lane opens onto a gravel forecourt with three cars parked already and a fourth space marked with a small wooden sign that says Imogen in chalk. The handwriting is large and round. I park. I cut the engine. I sit a moment with my hands on the wheel.

The barn door is open. Inside there is light. Inside there is the smell of wet clay, which is the smell I had not been expecting because I had been expecting wood-smoke or beeswax. The smell of wet clay is the smell of a thing I have not done since I was seventeen at a church-hall pottery class.

I get out. I take my bag from the boot. I cross the gravel.

A woman comes round the side of the barn. She is in jeans and a grey wool jumper and trainers that have not been white for a long time. Her hair is tied at the nape with what looks like a piece of dyeing yarn. She has a face that does not insist.

"You'll be Imogen."

"I am."

"I'm Kit. Come in. The others are here. Tea and the room allocations and then dinner at seven. The course starts properly in the morning."

"All right."

"Was the drive easy."

"It was easy past Stonehenge. It was less easy past Shaftesbury."

"It is always less easy past Shaftesbury."

She turns and goes back through the door. I follow her. The barn is one large room with skylights in the slate roof, eight wheels in two rows, work tables along the back wall, a long wedging surface in the middle, a downdraft gas kiln in a brick alcove. There are three women at the long table at the back, drinking tea.

Kit introduces me.

Maeve is sixty-ish and from Sheffield and on her eighth residential. Helena is fifty-something, German, here for the second time, who runs an architecture practice in Vienna. Rowan is in her twenties and is here on a kind of bursary because she has a place at the RCA in September.

I sit. Kit pours me tea from a brown teapot. She puts a digestive biscuit on the saucer.

"Imogen. Where have you come from."

"Clapham."

"What made you book the course."

I think.

I think for too long.

"I wanted to do something with my hands," I say.

It is not the true sentence. It is part of it. The other parts are about doing something Jonathan did not pick, and about being forty-one, and about the brochure at half past nine on a Tuesday morning while Jonathan was on the call to Hong Kong.

Kit looks at me a beat longer than she needs to.

"Right."

She moves on. Maeve tells a story about wood-firing in Mashiko in 1998 that nobody quite follows but everybody listens to politely. Helena talks about her last residential. Rowan does not say much. Kit watches the room and pours more tea when the pot needs to be poured.

At seven we cross to the kitchen, a small flagstoned room across the gravel from the barn. Kit has cooked a lamb stew. The four of us eat at a long table. The lamb is the lamb of someone who has cooked a lamb stew before. There is bread and good red wine and a small bowl of capers Kit has made.

I drink one glass. I would have drunk a second but I do not know how the second glass will read on the first night.

Kit shows me to my room at nine. The rooms are in a small annexe at the side of the barn - four narrow rooms with a shared bathroom. My room has a single bed with a wool blanket, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a window facing the orchard. There is a small ceramic cup on the windowsill. The cup is one of Kit's. I can tell by the foot of it.

"Bathroom at the end. Plenty of hot water. No Wi-Fi in the bedrooms. The barn is locked at midnight."

"That is fine."

"Imogen."

"Yes."

"You are welcome to put a thing on the chest of drawers if you have brought a thing. People do."

"I have not."

"All right."

She closes the door behind her.

I sit on the bed. I had not brought a thing to put on the chest of drawers because the chest of drawers had not been a thing I had thought of. I had brought four pairs of trousers and four jumpers and a notebook and a small old fountain pen of my father's and my reading glasses and the wool socks I sleep in because the house at home is not warm.

I get into bed in the socks and the long t-shirt I sleep in. I do not put the lamp on. The orchard outside the window is silver under what light there is.

I think about Jonathan at home in Clapham. He will be in his study finishing a thing for Monday. He will have ordered an Indian takeaway because the children are with my sister this weekend. He will not have rung me because he had asked me whether I would prefer he ring on the Saturday or the Sunday and I had said the Sunday.

I do not love Jonathan less than I love him. I do not love him more. I love him the amount I love him, which is the love of nineteen years and two children and a kitchen with a window I have stood at for half my adult life.

I sleep.

Chapter 2: Saturday

The course starts at nine.

We are in the barn by quarter to. Kit has the wheels on. She has put me at one of the electric wheels for the first session because she had asked us the day before what experience we had had, and I had told her one term at a church hall when I was seventeen, which is true.

She demonstrates. She wedges a kilo of clay at the wedging table with the heels of her hands. I had forgotten what wedging looked like. I had not forgotten the sound. The sound is the sound of two hard things meeting that have a soft thing between them.

She brings the kilo to the wheel. She slaps it down centre. Wheel on, low. Wet hands. Hands on the clay.

She centres it in fifteen seconds. The clay rises and falls under her hands the way a chest rises and falls under a blanket. She is talking - about the weight of the wedge, the angle of the elbow, the importance of keeping the leading hand against the body so it has somewhere to brace.

When the clay is centred she opens it. She pushes both thumbs into the centre. She pulls the walls up. She makes a small simple cylinder in about ninety seconds. Then she crumples the cylinder back into a kilo and lifts it off and puts it on the wedging table.

"Right. Maeve, you are at three. Helena, two. Rowan, four. Imogen, you are with me at one."

I sit at the wheel marked one.

Kit pulls a stool up behind me. She is closer than I had expected. I can smell the wool of her jumper and the clay-dust on her hands.

"I am going to put my hands on your hands at the start. I will tell you before I do it each time. I will not surprise you. If you would rather I taught you only with words, say so now."

"I do not mind your hands."

"Right."

She wedges a kilo for me. She slaps it on the wheel. Wheel on, lowest speed.

"Wet your hands."

I wet them.

"Both on the clay. Loose."

I put them on the clay. Cold.

"Now."

She puts her hands over mine.

Her hands are smaller than I had expected. Short fingers, wide palms, a callus along the side of her right thumb. Her hands are warm. She presses, gently, downward and inward, and the clay starts to centre under our hands.

I am very, very still.

I am still because I do not know what to do with the body I am suddenly in.

I had not thought about it. I had booked the course thinking I would sit alone at a wheel for four days and make a small bowl. I had not thought about Kit's hands.

Kit's hands are on the back of mine. The clay centres. Her breath is on the back of my neck because the stool is close, and the wheel is low, and her face is over my left shoulder. She is talking about the angle of the elbow.

The clay is doing what she is telling it to. It is a soft cone under our hands.

She lifts her hands off mine.

"All right. Now you do it. I am not going to touch you for this one."

She moves the stool back six inches.

I make a small cylinder. It collapses at the third pull because I was thinking about her hand on my hand and not about the angle of my elbow. She watches it collapse. She does not catch it.

"Right. Do it again. The collapse is the first lesson. You will not have it once you have had it."

I wedge the clay back into a kilo. I slap it on the wheel. I do it again.

The second cylinder rises and stays.

It is wonky. Forty millimetres tall. The walls are uneven. The lip is rough.

I look at it.

"That is the first one."

"It is."

"You will keep it."

"All right."

I push it off the wheel with the wire. I put it on the board.

It is a small wonky cylinder. Forty millimetres tall. Ugly.

It is the first thing I have made with my hands that nobody picked for me in nineteen years.

I do not say this out loud. I do not need to. I put it on the shelf in my own head where I will look at it later.

We work until twelve thirty. Six more cylinders. The third is straighter than the second. The fourth straighter than the third. The fifth I throw with a small lip Kit has shown me. The sixth I open into a small bowl shape.

We break for lunch. Kit has made a soup from the squash she grows in a small kitchen garden. The four of us eat at the long table. Helena asks Kit a question about the firing schedule.

I do not say much. I watch Kit's hands when she breaks the bread. I watch her hands when she pours the water. I watch her hands when she serves the cheese.

She catches my look once, halfway through the bread.

She does not perform catching it. She does not look away. She holds my look for half a second longer than she needs to and then she goes back to the soup.

I tuck the look somewhere I will not see it for an hour.

We work from half past one until five. Twelve cylinders and three bowls. The last bowl has a small foot turned on it that Kit shows me how to turn. She looks at it on the board and says, "That one is the one to keep," and I say, "All right."

We have wine in the kitchen at six. Maeve goes back to her room early - her shoulder needs rest. Helena goes to ring her practice in Vienna. Rowan goes for a walk down to the river.

Kit and I are in the kitchen.

She is at the cooker doing something with leeks she has picked from her garden. I am at the long table with my second glass of wine. I am tired in a way I have not been tired in a long time.

"Imogen."

"Yes."

"How is your shoulder."

"It is fine."

"It will not be tomorrow. Take a hot bath tonight. There is salt in the cupboard by the bath."

"Thank you."

"And Imogen."

"Yes."

She turns from the cooker. She has a wooden spoon in one hand. The leeks are slow in the pan. The kitchen smells of butter and onion and the wood-stove.

"You make a face at the wheel when you are concentrating. I do not know if you know you make it. It is a small face. You bite the inside of your left cheek. I noticed it because I was trying not to notice it."

I look at her.

"I had not known I did it."

"That is what I had thought."

"Why are you trying not to notice it."

She looks at me a long second. The leek pan ticks.

"Because I am the tutor on this residential and you are a paying student and I have got into trouble before for noticing things about students I should not have been noticing. I am telling you because I had not meant to tell you and I am telling you anyway."

"Trouble."

"Not formal trouble. The kind of trouble you get into with yourself when you have crossed a line."

I look at her.

"All right."

"I am going to do something with the leeks now. We are going to eat dinner. You are going to go to bed. We will be at the wheel in the morning."

"All right."

She turns back to the leeks.

I drink my wine.

The kitchen is warm. The other women come back from their walks one at a time. We eat the leek thing on top of polenta and a small green salad. We drink the rest of the wine. Maeve goes to bed at half past nine. Helena at ten. Rowan at quarter past ten because she has decided to read in the front room for a bit.

Kit and I are alone in the kitchen at half past ten.

We are at opposite ends of the long table. The wine is finished. The leek pan has been washed.

"Imogen."

"Yes."

"I am not going to ask you anything tonight."

"All right."

"I am telling you because you have been waiting to see if I would."

"All right."

"I will be at the wheel at nine."

"All right."

"Go to bed."

I go to bed.

I take the hot bath. I put the magnesium flakes in. I lie in the water with my eyes closed and my left hand on my own shoulder where it hurts. I think about Kit's hand on the back of my right hand on the wheel.

I touch myself.

I touch myself in the bath, very quickly, with the heel of my left palm under the water. I come in the way a person comes who has not let themselves come in nine days and who is trying not to make a sound through the wall. I bite the inside of my left cheek the way Kit had told me I bite it at the wheel.

I lie in the water afterward for ten minutes.

I go to bed.

Chapter 3: Saturday Night, Later

I lie in the dark in the small room in the annexe.

I think about Kit's spoon at the cooker. I think about her saying I had not meant to tell you and I am telling you anyway. I think about her saying the kind of trouble you get into with yourself when you have crossed a line. I think about her saying it the way she had said it, which was not a tease, which was a statement of fact.

I think about the flat above the studio.

She lives in it. She had mentioned it in passing when Helena had asked her where she slept. It is one large room with a kitchenette and a small bathroom and a bed at the far end under a high window. I had seen the door to it on the way back from the bath. The door is at the end of the corridor that leads off the studio. It is a heavy painted door, and it had been closed.

I have not thought about a woman in this way since I was twenty-two and Sarah Owens was in the year above me at Bristol and I had thought about her for one term and had decided, with the kind of decisiveness twenty-two-year-olds have about themselves, that I was the kind of woman who was going out with Jonathan and not the kind of woman who was going to think about Sarah Owens.

I have not been the kind of woman who thinks about a woman in this way for nineteen years.

I had put it on a high shelf at twenty-two. I had put it on so high a shelf that I had not even noticed I had put it there. I had not been keeping the door closed; the door had been closed since 2007 and I had not had to think about it.

The door is not closed.

I am lying in the dark in the wool socks and the long t-shirt at twenty past eleven on a Saturday night in October in a small room in an annexe in Dorset, and the door is not closed, and I had not known that until the wheel turned at nine fifteen this morning and Kit's hand went on the back of my hand and my entire chest went still.

I am also forty-one and married for nineteen years and the mother of two children who are with my sister tonight.

I think about Jonathan in his study eating a takeaway.

The two thoughts are in the same body at the same time.

I had not known this was possible. I had thought, if I had thought about it at all, that the two thoughts could not be in the same body. I had thought that if the second thought were true the first thought would be a lie.

I am going to need to think about this. I am going to need to think about it slowly, with my hands washing the small dishes at the kitchen sink in Clapham. But I am not in Clapham. I am in Dorset and Kit is in the flat above the studio.

I have to decide a separate thing tonight, which is whether what I am thinking about doing is a thing I would do, if I did it, on my own behalf, or whether it is also a thing I would do to Jonathan.

I think about that for a while.

I have not slept with anyone but Jonathan in nineteen years.

I think about whether I am the kind of person who has the conversation with Jonathan first, or whether I am the kind of person who finds out whether she would want the conversation with Jonathan by doing the thing first and seeing.

I had thought, at twenty-two, that I was the first kind. I had filed the second kind under not me.

I am revising the file.

I do not get up.

I do not get up tonight because if I am going to do this I am going to do it because I have walked back to the door of it on my own time and not because the wine and the bath have walked me to it.

I think about Kit at the wheel at nine in the morning.

I sleep.

Chapter 4: Sunday Morning

I wake at quarter to seven. The light is the wet grey of a Dorset October morning. The window has condensation along the bottom edge. The orchard outside the window is in fog.

I dress in the cold of the room. I put my hair up the way I put it up for the wheel. I go out the back door of the annexe and across the gravel to the kitchen.

The kitchen is empty. The wood-stove is going. The kettle is at hand-temperature on the hob. There is a clean cup on the saucer at the end of the table where I sat last night.

I make tea. I sit at the table.

I look out the window across the gravel at the barn. The barn door is open. There is light inside.

I drink the tea. I put the cup in the sink. I cross the gravel.

Kit is at the wheel marked one. Not at her own wheel. At mine.

She is making a cylinder. The wheel is turning at the lowest speed. The cylinder is rising under her hands. She is making it with the quiet focus of a person doing a thing they have done thirty thousand times.

She is in jeans and a grey wool jumper. Her hair is down this morning. It sits at her collarbone when it is not tied back. It is dark with grey at the temples.

She sees me. She finishes the cylinder. She sets it on a board. She wires it off. She lifts her hands off the clay and wipes them on a cloth tucked at her hip.

"Imogen."

"Kit."

"You are early."

"I could not sleep past quarter to seven."

"All right."

"Where are the others."

"Maeve is in her room. Helena and Rowan have gone into Sherborne for breakfast. They will be back at ten."

"I see."

"It is twenty to nine."

"It is."

She looks at me.

I look at her.

"Kit."

"Yes."

"Will you teach me a thing this morning."

"What thing."

"You said yesterday you would show me how to throw a low bowl with the leading hand braced. You said it as a thing you would show me on Sunday."

"I did. Sit at the wheel."

I sit. She pulls the stool up behind me. She is closer this morning than she was yesterday.

She wedges a kilo. She slaps it on the wheel. Wheel on, low.

"Wet your hands."

I wet them.

"You know the rest of the beginning. Centre it."

I centre it. Three minutes. It collapses the first time. I wedge it back and do it again. The second time it stays.

"Right. I am going to put my hands over yours. We are going to open it together. We are going to make a low bowl, not a cylinder. The hand position is different."

She puts her hands over mine.

She opens the clay. She uses my hands to do it. Her thumbs are pressing into the backs of my thumbs and my thumbs are pressing into the centre of the clay. The clay opens. The hollow forms.

Her face is over my left shoulder. Her breath is at the side of my neck.

"The trick is the angle of the elbow. The elbow has to be braced against the body. Feel where mine is."

I feel where her elbow is. Against the soft underside of my upper arm. The pressure is firm but unhurried. Teaching pressure.

"All right."

"Now the lift. Slowly. Two fingers inside and two outside. The leading hand outside braces against the body."

We lift it. The bowl rises. Wider than tall, the way she said. Her hand corrects the angle of mine. We lift twice more. After the third she takes her hands off.

The bowl stays.

She moves the stool back six inches.

"Now finish it. Lip first. Then the foot."

I finish the lip the way she has shown me. I cut the foot with the wire tool.

The bowl is a low wide bowl with a soft foot and a soft lip and it is, by any standard, a beautiful little bowl.

I look at it.

Kit is at her own wedging table. She is not looking at me.

"Kit."

"Yes."

She does not look up. She is good at not looking up.

"I am going to ask you a thing."

She stops wedging. She puts her hands flat on the table. She looks at me.

"All right."

"I am asking you to let me into your flat tonight after the others are in bed."

She looks at me for a long second.

"No."

I look at her.

"All right."

"Not tonight. Not while you are here as a student."

"All right."

"I want you to. I am telling you that because I had decided not to lie to you about it on Friday night and I am not going to lie about it now."

"All right."

"But you are a student on a course I am running. You are staying in a room on my property. You are paying me money to be here. I am not going to do this in that frame."

"All right."

"The course finishes at twelve thirty tomorrow."

"It does."

She thinks. She is thinking about whether to say the next thing.

"Imogen."

"Yes."

"I have had women on these courses before who I had wanted. Four or five in five years. I have not done this with any of them. I had decided last night at the cooker that I would not do it with you either. I had been quite firm with myself about it at the cooker and at the table and in the flat at one in the morning and at the wheel here this morning. You are asking me, and I want to say yes, and I am instead saying that if you still want to ask me tomorrow at one o'clock, after the others have driven off and the course is over, you can ask me then."

"All right."

"You can also not ask me tomorrow. You can drive home at one o'clock and never speak to me again. The bowl will come in the post in three weeks the way any student's bowl would. That is also a real answer."

"All right."

"I have also been thinking about whether to say this. I am going to say it. If you want to do this and you decide you do want to do this, do not come back on another course. I cannot do this and then have you on a residential in March. That would just put us back here. I would be the tutor again and you would be the student and we would have to pretend we had not. I would rather we did not pretend."

"All right."

"Ask me tomorrow."

"All right."

I look at the low wide bowl on the wheel. I wire it off. I set it on the board. I put the board on the shelf by the wood-stove with the other six pieces I will fire tomorrow.

I look at the bowl one more time.

I will ask tomorrow.