The For Sale Sign

Agnes told me before the sign went up.

I appreciated that later. At the time, all I could hear was the part where she had decided to let strangers consider living above our counter.

“I've asked Carrow to market the building,” she said on Monday morning. “The workshop fittings can be sold separately if the buyer doesn't want them. Existing orders will be completed. I'm not closing the door tomorrow.”

We stood in the kitchen upstairs. She had made toast. One piece had burned at the corner, and she scraped it over the sink with the unembarrassed concentration of a woman who did not consider imperfect breakfast proof that her entire morning had failed.

“What happens to the name?” I asked.

“It's ours. I can keep it for smaller work.”

“Where?”

“I haven't decided. Possibly a shared bench. Hazel knows of a room becoming available near her workshop.”

“And the flat?”

“I'll rent somewhere while I look.”

“Wouldn't that be wasting money?”

She turned towards me.

“Some costs buy time to choose. I've included it in the figures.”

I looked at the toast rather than the figures, which I knew she had considered more carefully than I wanted to believe.

“Are you sure?”

“No. I'm sure enough to take the next step.”

Downstairs, somebody knocked on the glass before opening time. Agnes looked at the clock, sighed and continued eating. This was new. Usually she would have put down the plate and gone straight to the door.

“What if they need something?” I asked.

“They can need it at nine.”

The sign arrived after lunch. Mr Carrow's assistant fixed it beside the upper window while Mrs Pelling watched from across the street with the concentration she normally reserved for weather threatening the allotments.

Within twenty minutes, three people had come in to ask what was happening. One said it was a shame. One asked whether there would be a closing sale. The third wanted to know if we were moving to larger premises and seemed disappointed when I said no.

Agnes answered all three politely. I could tell politeness was work because she kept her left thumb pressed against the side of the counter.

At two, Mum arrived with sandwiches and sat in the back room without offering an opinion about the sign. She and Agnes ate while discussing a sailing course whose dates I hadn't heard before. I pretended to count hooks.

“It's three days,” Agnes said to me eventually. “In September. Not a voyage around the world.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You counted the same hook six times.”

I put it in the drawer.

“I thought the first trip might have put you off.”

“The coat interrupted the trip. It didn't reveal that I was morally unsuited to being away.”

Mum looked down at her sandwich to hide a smile.

I went outside because I didn't want to be the person who made everybody explain their happiness carefully around me. From the pavement, the sign looked smaller than it had through the window. It didn't cover the old lettering. Halden's Weather & Small Repairs remained visible beneath it, blue paint faded unevenly by years of actual sun.

I photographed the whole front. Not because I had a plan for the image. Because I was frightened I would forget which parts had looked ordinary before they became something to keep.

Eli found me there on his way back from buying fixings.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes.”

He stood beside me. We watched a man read the sign, peer through the window and continue walking.

“I keep thinking I should make the fair display really good,” I said. “So people remember the shop properly.”

“They probably remember getting things they needed.”

“That isn't the same as a good ending.”

“Is the shop a performance?”

I gave him a look.

“Sorry,” he said. “That sounded more clever than useful.”

“No. It's a fair question. I just don't like it.”

He touched the back of my hand with two fingers. I turned my palm towards his and held on.

The next day, I worked on the canopy until the light failed. Its first version folded neatly and sagged under the weight of wet cloth. The second held the cloth and became too awkward for one person to set up safely. I photographed both, because they were real work, then stared at them until all I could see was the demonstration rectangle on Mrs Vale's plan.

My portfolio photographs waited on the laptop. Three pieces were nearly ready. Nearly had begun to feel like a permanent address.

At half past ten, Agnes came down and switched on the work light I'd forgotten to use.

“Bed,” she said.

“I need to finish this.”

“Which this?”

I looked at the canopy, the portfolio, the coat notes and the open order book.

For once, I couldn't make the answer sound simple.

She pulled out the chair beside me.

“Your interview is Thursday. Tomorrow's coat test is mine to manage. I need your observations for one hour, then you're going home to pack. That's the arrangement.”

I agreed.

I meant it when I agreed. That was becoming one of the least reliable parts of the system.