The Fifth Cup

There were four people in every photograph on the kitchen wall and five cups on the shelf. June packed the photographs first. She wrapped the cups in newspaper, leaving the chipped brown one until last. Her father had never let anyone use it.

Her brother had taken the tools. Her sister had taken the blue quilt. June had agreed to finish the kitchen because she lived nearest, though everyone knew she had visited least. For years she had dropped groceries at the back door between shifts, speaking to her father through the screen while he insisted he needed nothing.

At eleven, someone knocked. A man in a delivery jacket stood outside with a paper bag. He looked past June at the bare table.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I only heard yesterday.”

He introduced himself as Paul. He delivered medicines on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Her father had not needed regular medicine, but Paul had stopped anyway. The house was near the middle of his route, and the kettle was usually on.

June found two spoons in the drawer. “Would you like tea?”

Paul sat in the chair facing the garden. When she put the chipped cup before him, he smiled. “He said that one was mine because I couldn't damage it any further.”

They drank tea from cups without saucers. Paul told her about the week his son left home, the winter his van broke down, and her father's strong opinions about football. June remembered a man who had watched matches in silence. She had not known he saved his arguments for Tuesday mornings.

From the paper bag Paul took a small fruit cake. “I always brought this on his birthday. He said you liked the burnt edges.”

June had once liked them, when the edges tasted of permission to eat something before dinner. She cut the cake with the only knife she had not packed. Paul took the middle slice without asking.

After he left, she reopened one of the boxes. She put the four good cups together and set the brown one on the shelf above them. Then she called her brother and sister. They talked about selling the house, the estate agent, a leak in the garage. Finally she told them about Paul.

Her sister remembered a woman who used to bring library books. Her brother remembered a neighbor who borrowed the lawn mower. They kept talking after they ran out of arrangements to make.

When June locked the kitchen that evening, the fifth cup was still on its shelf. She would pack it tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. There was tea left in the tin.