She had a storefront by then — eleven hundred square feet on Cameron Road, alterations and repairs, which she had signed for herself with her own deposit after I had offered four times to guarantee the lease and been told no four times.

She was doing a hem.

She does not stop working when you talk to her; you have to get used to it.

And I said: “I need to ask you something once, and then I’m never going to ask it again, and I want you to know that before you answer so you don’t have to manage me afterward.”

She put the pins down.

“Go on.”

“Is there any version of this where we try again.”

She did not laugh at me, which I had been half expecting and which I think I had been half hoping for, because being laughed at would have been quick.

She said: “No.”

And then she gave me the reasons, and she gave me the small one first, which is how you can tell she had been expecting the question for about eight months.