No Lesson

At twenty to eleven, Mara pushed the last sheet into the stapler. It put in three staples, only two of which went through the paper. She picked out the crooked third with her nail. A little hole remained beside the name of the second venue.

Lotte looked up from her screen. ‘You can keep that copy.’

‘I was going to.’

‘You looked ready to defend it.’

Mara put the sheet on top of her own folder. She worked until a quarter to eleven. The time had been blocked out since Friday, along with the hour she'd make up later that afternoon. No meeting needed moving. The arrangement with her mother was simple: Wednesday, eleven o'clock, by the bridge. A walk, and both of them to bring a sandwich. Yet as she put on her coat, she glanced at the phone on her desk. A blue light was blinking. She had no idea who it was for.

‘I'll be back before one,’ she said.

Lotte pointed her pen at the schedule on the wall. ‘It's down.’

Outside, it was windy. Mara had to tuck the folder under her arm to zip up her bag. She didn't need it on the walk, but it wouldn't fit in the desk drawer, and if she left it on her chair someone would sit on it. She went back inside, laid it flat on the cupboard and went out again. This time she said nothing.

Ada was already at the bridge. She wore a dark green coat Mara didn't recognise. Its sleeves stopped a little short of her gloves. A rolled-up tote bag was tucked under her arm; she'd left her usual shopping bag behind.

‘New coat?’ Mara asked.

‘Different coat.’

Ada tugged the zip, its tab almost lost beneath her scarf. She'd had the coat for years, she explained. Hanging behind the raincoat. She'd never been able to do it up over that thick jumper.

‘You're not wearing that today?’

‘Well spotted.’

They set off along the car-free side of the water. At first the path ran behind houses, past fences and a shed with plastic stretched over its roof. An upturned crate floated in the water, only its bottom corners showing.

‘Haven't you got your lesson at twelve?’ Mara asked.

Her mother looked at her. ‘Kamal's away.’

‘Oh, yes.’

She remembered now. Ada had mentioned it when they arranged the walk. A holiday booked ages ago, somewhere he said it rained even when the photograph showed sunshine. Mara had thought her mother might open for a few hours on a Wednesday like that. It had seemed so obvious that she now had to remind herself Ada had said no such thing.

‘What time do you need to be at the sports hall, then?’

‘Two. We've got time to walk.’

A man sat on a bench with a bag of bread on his knee. A dog was watching the bag intently. Mara waited for her mother to pass through the gate and pulled her bag's zip a little further shut. She'd hastily made herself two cheese sandwiches, the cheese sticking out on one side. Ada had brought pears. Mara discovered this when her mother took one from her coat pocket and held it out.

‘Want it?’

‘Already?’

‘It's heavy.’

Mara took the pear. Its skin was cool and smooth under her thumb. She put it in her bag's outer pocket beside a pen she'd given up expecting to find there.

At the next bridge, Ada turned left.

‘I thought we were going straight on,’ Mara said.

‘We can. The ironmonger's is just here. I want to see if he's still got those little catches.’

Mara dropped half a step behind. It wasn't her shop, or Ada's workbench, but she'd heard the just before it was spoken. The first shops stood across the road. A florist was moving buckets inside.

‘Weren't we staying away from the shops?’

Ada didn't turn at once. ‘This isn't the shopping street.’

‘I know. But you want something for a clock.’

Her mother looked at the tote bag under her arm. She pulled it out and tapped it against her thigh.

‘I haven't measured them, either.’

‘What?’

‘The catches. I don't know the spacing.’

They stood on the bridge for a moment. Someone on a cargo bike rang their bell. Ada stepped aside to let them pass. Across the road, they could see the blue shop sign, though a bus still hid the shop itself.

‘Not much point looking, then,’ she said. She tucked the bag back under her arm and headed towards the water.

Mara followed. She'd already begun working out what she could say if her mother went in anyway. It had taken a little time. Now the beginning of the sentence was still in her head, with nothing left for it to do.

The path narrowed. Their shoes made soft sucking sounds on the wet leaves. Ada kept to the paving beside the grass. Mara walked partly on the edge to stay alongside her.

‘You could go in front,’ Ada said.

‘Then I can't hear you.’

‘I wasn't saying anything.’

Mara burst out laughing. Her mother glanced at her and carried on. At the next wider stretch, they fell into step again.

It was strange how little they were sorting out. Usually, within a few minutes, something came to the table: a letter, an appliance that wouldn't work, an appointment her mother couldn't find a convenient time for. Now there was no table. Ada said the changing room behind the courts had six mirrors and not one hook at a sensible height. Last week she'd put her coat on a shoe rack.

‘Isn't that what the low benches are for?’ Mara asked.

‘People were sitting on them.’

‘Awkward.’

‘Very inconvenient for my coat.’

Mara looked across the water. A woman hurried along the far side, talking to somebody who must be able to hear through her earpiece how hard the wind was blowing. Mara hadn't checked her own phone yet. It only struck her as unusual once she thought about it.

‘How was Monday?’ Ada asked.

‘At work?’

‘That's what I meant.’

Mara told her about the meeting. Not all the figures; they wouldn't mean anything to her mother, and she'd have to go back to the beginning. She described the four panels missing at the first installation, the mistake she had to leave against her own name and the conversation in which she'd promised a delivery date without knowing whether the designer could meet it.

‘And now?’

‘Now we've got a date that works. As far as we can tell.’

‘Agreed with that woman?’

‘Lotte. Yes.’

Ada nodded. For a few paces, she said nothing.

‘It wasn't only because I was with you,’ Mara said.

‘What?’

‘When I moved that meeting. I'd promised something I didn't have time for as well. I'd have done that anyway.’

Her mother looked at the railing. ‘I didn't realise that was why you were telling me.’

Mara wasn't sure herself. She hadn't meant to offer an explanation Ada would have to accept. Yet she kept picturing that Wednesday in September as the first domino, the one you could point to. It had been comforting to have one definite thing. She'd stood plenty of the other dominoes up herself.

They reached a little park with two empty benches. One was wet. On the other lay a large pile of dog mess, neatly in the middle as though someone had saved a place.

‘We could keep walking,’ Ada said.

A little further on, they found a shelter with a wide wooden ledge. They ate standing up. Mara couldn't get her sandwich out of its bag without the cheese slipping out. Ada held the bag open and looked at the half-dried streak of mustard on the crust.

‘There used to be a sandwich place there,’ she said, nodding towards the low building opposite. ‘I went with you when you had your arm in plaster.’

‘I've never had my arm in plaster.’

Ada chewed. ‘Your cousin, then.’

Mara could picture a small tiled room, but it might have been a different café altogether. She didn't even want to know whether she'd really been there. A man came out of the building, trailing a vacuum cleaner. It caught on the threshold.

‘Ellen's moved,’ she said.

‘All done?’

‘A few streets away. Two fewer flights of stairs. No garden, but a balcony with room for exactly one chair.’

‘Have you been round?’

‘Not yet.’

Ada bit into her pear. Mara rubbed a mustard seed off her thumb. She'd promised to help Ellen on the day she'd ended up at that first venue with a stack of panels and the wrong packing list. Even cancelling had come too late. Afterwards she'd wanted to go one Sunday, but Ellen was out. Another time Mara couldn't make it. Since then, every time she saw the name on her phone, she'd felt she needed something worthwhile to offer first.

‘I need to arrange something with her,’ she said.

‘You'd better do that, then.’

There was no reproach in it. For a moment, the sentence felt rather bare.

‘She's busy.’

‘So are you.’

Ada folded her empty sandwich bag. She hadn't said it as though that made meeting impossible, but she wasn't making a plan out of it either. Mara looked at the vacuum cleaner, now outside. The man had gone back in for an extension lead.

On the way back, they followed the other side of the water. Sunlight crossed the path between two houses. The outward walk had taken longer than Mara expected, but it wasn't twelve yet. At the bridge, she took out her phone to check the time. Two messages: one from the office, one an advertisement. The work message was for everyone. Someone had ordered coffee beans.

‘Do you need to go?’ Ada asked.

‘In ten minutes or so.’

Her mother paused by a tree whose small pears lay crushed into brown discs on the ground. She pointed to a solitary fruit high in the branches.

‘Not like ours, those.’

‘No good for a snack?’

‘If you like a mouthful of flour.’

Mara felt for her own pear. The edge of the bag had left a dark bruise on it. She'd have to eat it at her desk before somebody put it among the samples and glue.

They parted where the path branched towards the bus stop. Ada had to fetch her sports shoes from home. She wanted to get there early; sometimes all the rackets at the desk were already on loan.

‘Why don't you buy one?’ Mara asked.

‘Perhaps later. I don't know if those really expensive ones feel any different. Leonie says I'll notice, but she also notices the lights over court three are too high.’

Mara kissed her cheek. Ada's scarf scratched her chin.

On the way to the office, she waited at a crossing with no traffic. The wind rocked the pedestrian light. She looked at Ellen's name on her phone, put it back in her bag and took it out again. She couldn't start asking when are you free now. She'd be at work in ten minutes. She wrote that she'd like to come round, that she'd check her diary that afternoon and that Ellen needn't keep anything free.

She sent it before the light changed to green.

Her folder still lay on the cupboard at work. Someone had put a pack of sticky notes on top. She moved them, laid the folder on her desk and looked at the sheet with its crooked staple. Lotte came in with tea.

‘Good walk?’

‘Yes.’

‘I've added the new measurements. On the back.’

Mara turned the sheet over. Three figures, with a question underneath about the width of the door. She picked up the phone and called the venue before putting them into the schedule. With her other hand, she took the pear from her bag. The bruise was small enough to eat round.