We had a spreadsheet of eleven venues, colour coded and ranked, and we used exactly one row of it.
The plan was to visit a venue every weekend until spring. Fernwater was first on the list, booked for a Saturday in January because it was closest to the train. We walked in through the walled garden at five in the afternoon and did not speak for about a minute.
The light at five o clock
The glasshouse faces west. In January the sun drops low enough to come straight through the panes, and for about twenty minutes the whole room looks like the inside of a lantern. Amara said so out loud, and Ellis said he had been about to. That was more or less the entire decision.
For twenty minutes the whole room looked like the inside of a lantern.
Making it official
The booking form took another hour. The manager, kind and slightly amused, asked whether we wanted to see the other ten, and we said we would rather have the date. We paid the deposit that evening on a station platform, under a departures board, which is not the romantic version of the story but is the true one.
If you are making a list, make it, but be honest about what you are looking for. We wanted a room that felt like the two of us, and we knew it on sight. Nothing on a spreadsheet could have told us that.
