Six Weeks to Make Something

The fair committee met in the room behind the library, where the chairs were designed for people who hadn't finished growing.

Mrs Vale sat at the front with a folder, a pencil and the expression of someone who believed uncertainty was largely a failure to use headings. Around her were seven people, three types of biscuit and a cardboard model of the harbour bandstand that appeared to have suffered a small but decisive war.

Bex and I shared the least unstable table.

“We need twenty minutes between the youth performance and the raffle,” Mrs Vale said. “Something suitable for families.”

“An argument about parking,” said the man responsible for parking. “They'd recognise it.”

She ignored him with practised ease.

I had attended because Bex said I needed to ask about the backdrop fittings. Agnes had also suggested that a paid display project could be useful for my portfolio, provided paid and project were both clearly understood before anybody started calling it a lovely opportunity.

“I could demonstrate small weather captures,” I said. “With the folding frame I'm making. Different fabrics, different releases. Nothing loose.”

Mrs Vale turned towards me.

“How much sunshine?”

“That's not really—”

“Only over the audience. Not the whole harbour.”

“No. I mean a table display. A little breeze through a sample, a contained drizzle onto a tray. Showing how the construction works.”

She wrote something down. I leaned forward until I could see it.

WEATHER DEMONSTRATION. TWENTY MINUTES.

That looked safe enough.

“It would need a proper canopy,” I added. “The samples need controlled spacing. I can't use a weather release as the roof.”

“Of course.”

“And a safety check with Agnes.”

“Of course.”

“And a fee.”

The pencil paused.

Bex stopped touching her hair and looked directly at Mrs Vale. The parking man ate a biscuit, apparently settling in for the part he considered interesting.

I gave the figure Agnes and I had agreed for preparation, materials and the session. It wasn't large. Saying it aloud nevertheless felt like announcing my own price on a label.

Mrs Vale asked whether the materials could come from existing shop stock.

“Some of them,” I said. “That doesn't make them free.”

My voice held. I was so relieved that I nearly reduced the fee in gratitude for having said it.

Mrs Vale agreed to put it in the budget, conditional on the design and safety plan. Bex pressed her knee against mine beneath the table.

The meeting moved to the musical programme. Someone suggested contacting Mae Hart, who was staying in Morrow for the summer. I knew the name from Mum's playlists: a singer with a voice that seemed to begin somewhere behind her ribs rather than in her mouth.

“Wasn't she a Lark?” the parking man asked.

“Yes,” Mrs Vale said. “From the old house above the steps. Before she went away.”

I looked at Bex.

“What?” she whispered.

“The coat.”

“Is a singer?”

“The woman in the photograph.”

Mrs Vale asked whether we had something to contribute. I said no too quickly and became, for the rest of the meeting, suspiciously attentive to everything she said.

Outside, Bex tucked her hands into her jacket pockets. The afternoon was warm enough that she didn't need the jacket, but it was new and she was conducting a relationship with it.

“You're going to ask her about the coat?”

“Probably through the library. I don't want to turn up wherever she's staying.”

“That's a good instinct. Keep it.”

We walked towards the harbour. The fair was six weeks away. For most people, that meant there was plenty of time to plan. For me, it had immediately become the number of evenings available to work on something while also doing everything I'd already promised.

“Your letter,” Bex said. “Have you answered?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“I need to know what I'll take.”

“They've asked you to attend. You can say yes before your objects become emotionally ready.”

I laughed, but she didn't.

“I mean it. I know what you do.”

“What?”

“You make yourself useful until there's no time left to find out whether you're any good at the thing you actually care about.”

“That is a horrible thing to say while I'm helping with your backdrop.”

“I'm allowed to notice the problem even when I'm benefiting from it.”

We stopped outside the ice-cream shop. Neither of us had enough money left for the size we wanted. We bought smaller ones and pretended this was a mature decision rather than arithmetic.

Bex had been accepted onto a performing arts programme beginning in September. We had celebrated, then immediately discussed where she would live, as though enough practical arrangements might make the leaving less real.

“I'm scared,” she said suddenly.

I looked at her.

“About the course?”

“About being average. At home, everyone knows I'm the girl who can sing. What happens when I get there and everybody can?”

I nearly said she would be the best anyway. The answer arrived in my mouth fully formed, cheerful and completely useless.

Instead I asked, “Do you still want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe you don't have to know what happens yet.”

She looked down at her melting ice cream.

“You're surprisingly annoying when you take your own advice.”

I hadn't taken it. I had only lent it to her. But when we parted, I opened the photograph of my folding-frame sketch and examined it without immediately listing the ways somebody better might have drawn it.

Six weeks to make something. Three weeks to carry a few things into a room and say they were mine.

I could at least begin with the cardboard.