Weekend Away in Bruges – Part 1: Cobbles and Candlelight

The hotel in Bruges had a four-poster bed, a window over a canal and a bowl of chocolates on the pillow. Marta stood in the doorway with her overnight bag and stared at the room as though it were a puzzle.

"What do we do?" she said.

"I think," said Pieter, "we put the bag down."

"And then?"

"I have no idea. It has been eleven years since I had a weekend with no one to feed."

She laughed, and the tightness in her chest eased. They had left the children with her sister that morning, two small, excited faces at the car window, and Marta had cried in the lay-by for ten minutes.

"We are terrible parents," she said.

"We are very good parents who need a night off," said Pieter.

They walked through the old town in the late afternoon, past the gabled houses and the swans on the canal. The air smelled of waffles and wet stone. They bought a paper cone of chips with mayonnaise and ate it on a bridge, shoulders touching, watching the boats slide by.

"I do not know what to talk about," Marta confessed.

"Then do not talk about the children."

"What else is there?"

"You," said Pieter. "I have forgotten what you think about things."

Marta looked at him, surprised. His face was thinner than it used to be, a little grey at the temples, with the same steady grey eyes she had fallen for in a lecture hall.

"I think," she said slowly, "that I am tired of being useful."

"I think I have been useful at you for ten years," said Pieter. "I would like to stop."

They had dinner in a small candlelit restaurant with a menu in three languages. They ordered mussels and a bottle of white wine and talked until the waiter turned the lights down. Marta told him about the book she had stopped reading, the painting class she had never joined. Pieter told her about the job he was tired of, and the dream he had once had of building boats.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, over dessert.

"Yes."

"When did we stop dating?"

Marta thought about it. The candle flickered between them.

"I do not know," she said. "I think we got so good at being a team that we forgot we were two people."

"Then let us be two people tonight."

Her heart gave a small, nervous skip. "Yes," she said. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Will you walk me back to the hotel the long way, past the water, and hold my hand like you used to?"

"Yes," said Pieter. "Green?"

"Green," said Marta, smiling. "Very green. Finish the wine."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Long Way Back.