Damir knew where the glasses were kept, which key opened the shed, and how to switch on the heating. That knowledge let him present his aunt's house as his own. He told his fiancee Azra he had bought it cheaply a few years earlier from a friend moving abroad. In reality he checked on his aunt's property at weekends while she worked overseas.
The lie began at dinner with Azra's parents. Her father kept talking about apartments and investments. Damir, who worked in a bookshop, felt small and uttered a sentence he later had to feed with details. Azra had not asked for a house. But when he first brought her there, she loved the garden, planned to plant herbs, and left an old jacket in the wardrobe.
They invited their parents to lunch to celebrate the engagement. Damir prepared the barbecue and asked his aunt not to send any repairmen that weekend without explaining why. He did not expect her to return early from Vienna herself. She appeared with a suitcase while Azra was showing her mother the room they supposedly intended to turn into a study.
"What are you turning into what?" his aunt asked. Nobody laughed quickly enough to make the sentence a joke.
Damir tried to lead her into the kitchen, but Azra remained at the door. She asked who owned the house. His aunt answered simply, without anger because she did not yet understand the whole story. Damir confessed in front of everyone. Azra's father immediately began saying he had always suspected. Azra asked him to stop. She did not need Damir's lie turned into her father's proof about the worth of people earning less.
Lunch ended before dessert. Azra collected her jacket and left in her own car. Damir stayed to clean the grill, talk to his aunt, and admit for the first time how ashamed he had felt of his own life. She told him a bookshop was nothing to be ashamed of, but someone else's house was no cure for shame. She did not forbid him to visit. She forbade him to speak on her behalf again.
Azra postponed the wedding. After several weeks she agreed to talk in his real apartment, small and full of books. She asked them to review everything he had said about money, work, and plans. Damir answered without embellishment, including things that did not make him interesting. They set no new date immediately. She left late, forgetting a scarf on a chair. She had not deliberately left it, but Damir did not turn it into a sign of certain return. The next day he simply told her where it was.