On Saturdays Dunja ate lunch alone. Her husband Filip went to a hotel to work an extra shift at reception. He said he was saving to replace their windows, so she stopped complaining about empty weekends. Sometimes she left him cake in a box. He would return late and compliment her without mentioning that he had never opened it.
She met the hotel manager outside a shop while they were both trying to fit their shopping into an overfilled trunk. Dunja joked that the manager owed her at least one free Saturday with her husband. The woman did not understand. Filip had not worked there since the previous spring. The job had lasted two weekends, covering someone else's absence. Dunja helped close the trunk, said goodbye, and left her own shopping bag on the asphalt.
That evening she did not greet him by asking where he had been. She told him what she had learned. Filip sat down without removing his jacket. He had been losing money on betting. It had started with small wagers, then attempts to recover his losses, until every weekend became a continuation of the previous one. There was no money for the windows. Some of their shared savings had disappeared as well.
Dunja let him speak but stopped the sentence in which he promised to recover everything with one good move. She did not want another plan built from the same hope that had brought them to that table. She asked to see their accounts and for time to decide what she could bear. For the first time, Filip said he did not know whether he could stop alone. He said it almost inaudibly, looking at the unopened cake box.
The following week he sought professional support and stopped having access to the money Dunja kept for household expenses. She temporarily moved in with a friend. She was not leaving to force him to change, but so she could sleep without listening for his telephone. They met on Wednesdays for a short walk. Sometimes they discussed nothing except who would water the plants.
One Saturday Filip sent her a photograph of the kitchen table. There were two cups and an empty space for a box. He did not write that everything had changed. He asked whether she would like to come for coffee, for an hour. Dunja looked at the message for a long time. She agreed, but stated when she would leave. At the shop she bought a small cake, enough for two, and for the first time she carried no promise about the following weekend.