A List of Things Not Yet Done

By Wednesday, my notebook contained so many boxes to tick that it resembled a small, badly planned town.

Three finished portfolio pieces. One development project. Photographs. Measurements. The Bell Lane travel route. Six carrying handles for Hazel. Mrs Pelling's bench. Shop shifts. Fair demonstration plan. Bex's second fitting. Coat observations. Phone the library engineer. Buy thread. Find the missing receipt for the thread I'd already bought.

I added a box beside Make better list.

Agnes saw it and laughed.

“That's a warning sign.”

“I'm organising.”

“You're giving panic stationery.”

I closed the notebook before she could improve the description.

The interview was eight days away. The confirmation email had arrived within an hour of my reply, which I considered inconsiderately efficient. They wanted me at ten fifteen. The earliest sensible bus and train combination would get me there forty minutes before that, provided I left Morrow at seven ten. I wrote the connections in the notebook and took a photograph so I couldn't lose them by being a person who loved paper too much.

My first completed piece was the accessible mending kit. The second was a repairable storage sleeve with broad fastenings and replaceable pockets. For the third, I planned to use the portable display frame, with photographs of the full structure and a small hinge sample I could actually carry. The development project would show the larger thinking behind visible repairs and weather-safe fabric fittings.

It sounded coherent when I wrote it that way.

On the table, the frame still needed its final cover. The storage sleeve needed a new photograph because the first one included Ollie's sock. My notes described several ideas as obvious, which Bex said was not a useful explanation unless the interview panel shared my brain.

At eleven, a customer brought in a school blazer and asked whether I could shorten the sleeves by Friday. I said yes before checking the list. At noon, another asked about a curtain. I nearly said yes again, then heard Agnes clear her throat from the back room.

“Next week,” I said. “Wednesday at the earliest.”

The customer agreed immediately.

I had spent longer fearing the refusal than she spent accepting the date.

Hazel came to collect the first handle sample. We loaded the test board, tried the grip at two heights and found the seam rolled uncomfortably against the heel of her hand.

“It needs a flatter edge,” I said.

“Can you change it without remaking the whole sleeve?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That's the point of your design, isn't it?”

I smiled despite the extra work. We agreed on delivery of the remaining five after the interview, not before. The world did not collapse when I moved the deadline. I wrote that nowhere, because I suspected I would need the lesson several times before it became a fact I believed.

That afternoon I went to Mrs Pelling's allotment with the brace for her bench. The repair took less than an hour, mostly because she had cleared the space and stopped her neighbour arriving to discuss the boundary. She tested the seat, nodded and paid the agreed amount without asking how long it had taken.

“Your sister will be jealous,” I said.

“She already owns a better bench. I intend to be more comfortable on this one.”

I put the money in the work envelope and stayed for tea because she asked me to, not because I had anything else to mend.

On the way back, I found Eli sitting outside the shed eating an apple. He had paint on both hands and was managing the fruit by the stalk.

“Elegant,” I said.

“Developing technique.”

He asked how the portfolio was going. I showed him the photograph of my list.

“That appears to contain three separate people.”

“They're all me.”

“That may be the problem.”

I sat beside him and accepted the clean napkin he offered. The wind turned a loose paper in the doorway. Somewhere inside, Stan accused a radio presenter of misunderstanding boats despite the programme having nothing to do with boats.

“Friday?” Eli asked. “Another walk. Fewer gulls.”

I looked at the list again. The correct answer, according to every box, was that I should remain indoors working until my eyes became decorative.

“Yes,” I said.

He smiled.

When I got home, I put Friday evening in the notebook without a box beside it. I didn't want to complete it. I wanted to have it.