An Hour Earlier
The clocks had gone back the night before. I’d woken earlier than I needed to and then spent the morning feeling as though I’d misplaced something without knowing what it was. By late afternoon the light had already started to go, the sky flattening out over the rooftops in a way that suggested it was later than it was.
Emma suggested the Anchor without much discussion. It had been a while, she said, and the evening had that particular feel to it — the first proper one where staying in seemed premature and going out required a decision.
The pub was already full when we arrived.
Not crowded exactly, but settled into itself more than I expected for a Sunday. The fire had been lit, though it didn’t seem cold enough to justify it. Coats were slung over chairs. Glasses stood half-finished on tables that didn’t look like they’d been cleared since lunchtime.
Kate glanced up as we came in, nodded once, and carried on with what she was doing.
“It's busy early tonight,” Emma said, as we found a space near the end of the bar.
“It’s not early,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure.
We ordered drinks and stood for a while without moving further in. The room felt full in a way that didn’t quite match the number of people in it, as if everyone had arrived at slightly different times and settled without adjusting to each other.
Ronnie was at a table near the window, midway through a story I’d already heard him recite back in the summer. John sat opposite him, his glass eye catching the firelight at an angle that made it look brighter than the other. A couple I didn’t recognise leaned in from the side, listening with the polite attention of people who had joined late.
“—told her, I said, that door’s not the problem,” Ronnie was saying. “Frame’s gone. Whole thing’s shifted.”
He saw us, raised his glass slightly, then carried on without breaking stride.
We moved closer, enough to hear but not to interrupt.
“Victorian place,” he said. “Solid enough, but they all move eventually. Sea air gets in, you see. Nothing stays square.”
John nodded once, slowly, as if confirming something already decided.
Ronnie paused to take a drink, then set the glass down and looked at the couple beside him.
“Door was perfect when I left,” he said. “Spirit level. Good swing. Latch like a dream.”
There was a brief gap, just long enough to feel like the end of something.
Then:
“Victorian place,” he said again, in the same tone as before. “Solid enough, but they all move eventually.”
The couple smiled, as if the repetition was part of the telling.
I glanced at Emma. She didn’t react, just sipped her drink and watched the room in the way she does when she’s not trying to follow any one conversation.
At the bar, a man was asking Kate when she would be calling time.
“Same as always,” she said, without looking up.
He checked his watch, frowned slightly, then nodded as if that settled it.
“Feels later,” he said.
Kate shrugged. “It isn’t.”
Behind us, someone laughed too loudly at something that hadn’t quite landed. A chair scraped back, then was pulled in again. The fire shifted, sending a brief wash of heat across the room that faded as quickly as it came.
Ronnie had moved on, or appeared to have. He was describing something else now — a window, I think — though the details were close enough to the door that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
John drank steadily, saying nothing.
Emma leaned in closer.
“Are we early or late?” she said quietly.
“I can’t tell,” I said.
She smiled slightly, as if that was answer enough.
We stayed for another drink, then another. At some point the room seemed to thin, though I couldn’t say who had left or when. The same faces remained, or appeared to, shifting places without any clear movement between them.
When we stepped back out onto the street, the air felt colder than it had any right to be.
“Strange night,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I meant.
Emma shook her head.
“Just the clocks,” she said.
We walked home without hurrying. The street was quieter than I expected, the windows lit in a way that suggested people had settled in earlier than usual. Somewhere a television carried through an open window, the sound slightly out of sync with itself as we passed.
When we reached the house, I checked the time without thinking.
It was earlier than I thought.
I didn’t try to work out why.