Thinking, Fast and Slow

At seven, the table for six had seven place settings. Mira had added the last one herself, then moved the extra glass away from the edge where the servers kept catching it with their sleeves.

Her brother checked the restaurant door again. “He said he was leaving at six.” Their aunt said the trains were usually late. “Not an hour late,” he said. Their cousin folded the menu. “Maybe he saw who else was coming.” Nobody asked who she meant. Mira’s father had not seen the cousin since an argument at Christmas.

Mira tried to order starters. The waiter waited beside the empty chair with his pad open. “We’ll give him ten minutes,” her brother said. By the time the bread arrived, the absent person had acquired a full evening of motives. He was avoiding the cousin. He was offended by the restaurant. He had decided the birthday was not worth the journey. Each version had a small piece of evidence attached to it, rescued from another year.

At seven twenty-three, Mira’s phone rang. An unfamiliar man said her father had asked him to call: his battery had gone flat, his train had stopped outside the station, and he had borrowed a phone from someone on the platform.

Mira stood so quickly her chair struck the wall. Her brother reached for his coat. Their aunt asked which station. The cousin, still holding the folded menu, asked, “Did he say when he’d get there?”

“He said he was fine,” Mira said.

The waiter returned with the starters and looked from the empty chair to the six people standing around it. Mira asked him to keep the table if he could.

“Of course,” he said.

When they left, the seventh glass was still near the centre of the table. No one moved it back.