The clear days have continued and the nights are crisp. She pulls her coat tighter around her, weaving around the performers, finding a pound for a young girl who sits at the top of the stairs. She tries to remember what play they are going to see. A family drama. Lissa’s choice. Theater rather than cinema this time. In truth she does not want to go inside. She would like to keep walking, this clear autumn evening, carefully, carefully along the river—a pilgrim, carrying her lights inside her. How long would it take to reach the sea?

The Long Bar is thronged. A jazz band plays in the corner. Hannah scans the space for Lissa and finds her eventually, tucked away on a leather bench by the picture window, the remains of an espresso on the table in front of her. Her head is bent over a script, her pencil poised, her mouth moving soundlessly. Hannah touches her shoulder and she jumps. “Oh, hey.” Lissa gets up and kisses her cheek. She is wearing a little more makeup than usual; her long hair is pinned on top of her head with Japanese combs. She looks extraordinarily like her mother. Hannah perches beside her on the bench.

“Did you have the thingy?” says Lissa.

“The transfer. Yes.”

“And how did it go?”

“Good, I think. I hope. Is this your script? How’s it going?”

“Oh, OK,” says Lissa, frowning, folding the script in half and putting it in her bag. “She’s tough. The director. I mean, I knew she was going to be, but she really is. I’m not sure she thinks I’m any good.”

Hannah looks past Lissa, to the wide river outside, the twinkling lights.

“It’s just so . . . gladiatorial,” Lissa is saying. “Having to prove yourself every minute, every day. There’s nowhere to hide. And the guy playing Vanya. He’s amazing—but I just don’t know where I am with him.”

Oh Lissa, she wants to say. You chose this. Are actors never happy?

What she says is, “Sure, I understand.”

The bell sounds for the performance. Lissa takes the tickets from her bag, and Hannah follows her into the dark mouth of the theater.

THE PLAY IS long, the cast large, the tickets cheap and the seats far from the stage. Hannah can’t keep track of who is who, and the action seems to be happening in a little box very far away.

In the intermission they go outside and wander without speaking over to the river wall.

Lissa takes out her pouch of tobacco. “Do you mind?”

Hannah shakes her head. Lissa rolls and lights up and blows the smoke away from them both. They fall silent, watching the water. Beneath them the small beach has appeared, its sand and rocks glistening in the half-light. Hannah breathes in the tang of mud and salt and dirt.