A Hundred Little Favours

I woke before the first alarm.

The room was pale. My clothes hung over the chair. The portfolio case stood by the door, packed and repacked, with the train details in its front pocket. Nothing had mysteriously become impossible overnight.

At six fifteen, Agnes texted.

Coat stable. Stan coming at nine. Go and show them your work.

I read it while sitting on the bed. Then I opened the photographs of the damaged plants.

One leaf had turned dark at the edge. Another still looked almost normal, which made the damage seem like something I could negotiate with if I watched long enough. Mrs Pelling had sent no new complaint. I checked anyway.

At six thirty, an email arrived from Mrs Vale asking for the canopy dimensions so the equipment plan could be finalised. She did not demand an immediate reply. I decided it would be easier to answer before leaving.

I opened the drawing.

The last version didn't have confirmed dimensions because the wet-load test had failed. I could have written that. I could have said I was away today and would reply tomorrow. Instead I adjusted the support spacing, trying to make the numbers become a promise I could keep.

At six forty-five, Mum called upstairs.

“Breakfast. You've got time if you come now.”

“I'll be down in a minute.”

At six fifty-two, I found a mistake in the photograph captions. One measurement belonged to the previous model. It would have taken ten seconds to cross it out by hand. I opened the file and reprinted the page.

The printer ran out of paper.

For years afterwards, I could have told the story as though the printer did it. The empty paper tray, the unlucky morning, the chain of tiny obstacles. It would have been easy. It would also have been a lie with very convenient scenery.

I had paper in the drawer.

I had a pen beside the case.

I had enough time to leave if I stopped.

At seven, Mum came upstairs and found me holding two nearly identical photographs.

“June.”

“I need the right one.”

“You need your shoes.”

“The second bus would still—”

“No. You checked. The second bus misses the connection.”

I knew that. I had written it down carefully in order not to know it this morning.

She took one photograph from my hand, not to choose it but to make me look at her.

“Do you want me to drive you to the station?”

The station was forty minutes away. We could still have reached the train. She would have been late to meet the school maintenance engineer, but she was offering, and I could have accepted.

I pictured arriving in Beckford with the case, explaining why the canopy didn't work and why the coat work wasn't mine and why my good objects were mostly ordinary things made easier to use. I pictured people my age carrying beautiful pieces they had made in bright studios, with vocabulary I would recognise too late.

Then I pictured the shop. The familiar room. A problem in which I knew where the towels were.

“I should stay,” I said.

Mum let go of the photograph.

“Why?”

“After yesterday. Agnes needs—”

“Agnes told you to go.”

“The plants. The fair. I can't just—”

“June. Those are things happening. They're not all instructions to you.”

I started crying, which annoyed me so much that the tears became harder to stop. Mum sat beside me. She did not make the tears an emergency that justified the decision for me.

At seven ten, the bus left without my having seen it.

At seven twenty, Mum said we still had the car option.

I shook my head.

By eight, I had written an email saying a family business problem meant I couldn't travel that morning. I didn't describe the problem as dangerous. I didn't say anyone had been injured. I merely let the sentence imply that leaving had not been a choice.

I sent it and felt relief so immediate that it made me ashamed.

Then there was nothing left to organise around the fear. I had done the thing I was frightened of regretting.

Agnes found me at the shop at nine.

She looked at the portfolio case in my hand and stopped in the doorway.

“No,” she said.

“I thought I could help.”

“I told you I didn't need you here.”

“I know.”

She put down her bag slowly.

“Did you miss the bus?”

I nodded.

“Or did you not take it?”

The difference stood between us, unpleasantly exact.

“I didn't take it.”

Agnes pulled out the stool. I sat because my legs had become tired in the way they did after running, though I had spent the morning avoiding travel.

She didn't hug me at first. She made tea, placed a cup beside me and sat down herself.

“I can't decide to stay in this shop to make you less afraid of leaving,” she said. “And I can't let you use me as the reason not to find out what else you want.”

“I've probably lost the place.”

“You may have lost the interview. We don't know the rest.”

“I don't want to ring them.”

“No. I imagine you don't.”

We sat in silence while a customer read the sign outside and continued down the street. The world did not stop to acknowledge my failure. It felt offensive and, after a while, slightly merciful.

At ten fifteen, the time printed in the invitation, I opened my notebook.

I crossed out the phrase family business problem in the draft I had saved.

Beneath it, I wrote the sentence I had not sent.

I was frightened, and I chose not to come.

I did not know yet what to do with the truth. At least it no longer looked like a broken printer.