The Name Before the Name

Nora Bell worked in the library's local-history room, where a sign asked people not to bring food and a drawer contained emergency biscuits.

“Separate categories,” she told me when I noticed. “The sign concerns visitors. The biscuits concern the survival of staff.”

I showed her the photograph.

She recognised Salt House immediately.

“It stood above the Old Steps. Demolished during the coastal works, after the winter storms made the foundations unsafe. Lovely place to look at. Terrible place to get a refrigerator into.”

“Did you know Mae Lark?”

“A little. I know Mae Hart better. She comes in when she's home.”

I hesitated over the word home. From Agnes's stories, I had imagined a person leaving one place and becoming permanently attached to a more impressive one. Nora said it as though people could have several addresses without betraying the first.

“Would you be able to give her my number?” I asked. “I'm not after hers without asking. It's about something Grandad made.”

“That's the right way round.”

She wrote down my details and the reason for the request. Then she asked whether she could keep a digital copy of the photograph for the local archive. I said I would ask Gran, since it had come from her trunk. Nora looked pleased that the same rule could apply in more than one direction.

While she scanned a map for me, I looked through the folder on Salt House. The narrow building had once belonged to a family who ran a boarding kitchen for seasonal workers. In later photographs it was simply a house, with laundry outside and a pear tree leaning over the wall. Its story was not improved by pretending everybody who lived there had known it would someday be missed.

On a newspaper page about a youth concert, I found Mae at eighteen beside Agnes at about the same age. Mae was smiling. Agnes had a fringe so straight it looked as though she had cut it during an argument.

I photographed it for future use.

“What are you making?” Nora asked.

“The coat isn't mine.”

“I meant your own work. Agnes said you'd applied to a design course.”

“Oh. A folding frame. And some repair things.”

“What sort of repair things?”

I described the mending kit, then heard myself shrinking the explanation as I went. It was only a box. Just a different opening. Nothing very clever.

Nora put down her pen.

“Is it easier to use than the box you started with?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can say that without apologising to every box that came before it.”

I laughed. She returned to the map, apparently satisfied that she had performed enough informal teaching for an afternoon.

My phone lit up while I was writing down the permitted footpath to the old house site. Eli had sent a photograph of a cardboard hinge holding itself at a ridiculous angle.

Might have made a model of your model. It's being difficult. Available for consultation after four.

Bex's next message was a photograph of the backdrop corner with a ruler beside it and the words JUST THIS BIT, DESIGN EMPEROR.

Then Dad: Looking forward to tomorrow. Pip clapped at the toaster. Standards still developing.

I answered all three. It took less time than worrying about the messages had.

Nora called me back before I reached the stairs.

“I've spoken to Mae. She's happy for you and Agnes to come on Monday. Above the old chemist's. Four o'clock.”

“That was quick.”

“She'd just texted about returning a book. Sometimes history is conveniently using its phone.”

“Should we bring the coat?”

“Would that be sensible?”

“No.”

“Then don't.”

Outside, Quay Street was full of people doing unremarkable things beside buildings I had begun to think of as history. The old chemist's now sold kitchenware. A woman came out carrying a colander. Somewhere above her, the girl in the photograph was an adult deciding where to put a library book.

At the shed, Eli cleared me a space and handed over a pencil.

“Your turn.”

I expected advice. Instead he waited while I changed the model. He didn't snatch the card when I cut the wrong edge. He asked whether I wanted another piece.

By the time I left, the hinge folded in one direction without trying to consume a finger. It still couldn't hold weight. I wrote that underneath rather than deciding the afternoon had failed.

Eli walked me to the lane.

“Let me know what you find out about the coat.”

“I will.”

“And the frame.”

“That might be less exciting.”

“Depends what it catches fire with.”

“It won't catch fire.”

“Then definitely keep me updated. I like a project with boundaries.”

I laughed all the way to the corner, then stopped because I could hear myself and was concerned about becoming the sort of person whose good mood was visible from several streets away.