The Last Wall

The library smelt of warm coats. Mara waited by the sliding door for a group of children to pass. One girl held a book against her chest, its bottom corner knocking her knees. An adult reached to help, but the girl had already lifted it higher.

Beyond the reception desk, Mara saw the first photographs from Op straat. The library hadn't arranged the exhibition as the old post office had. Here, people walked between book trolleys and low shelves. One freestanding frame faced away from the entrance. Mara went round it and looked at the distance from the door.

‘There's nothing wrong with where it is,’ Hester said behind her.

Mara turned. ‘I was only looking.’

‘I saw.’

Hester van Roon carried an enormous cloth bag. Two tubes stuck out, one stopped with a wad of kitchen roll. She'd nearly caught the bag in a revolving door on the way, she said. Here she could walk straight in, baggage and all.

Nora arrived a little later, coat over her arm, and asked where Lotte was.

‘At the office,’ Mara said. ‘She's working on the other project.’

‘Oh yes. Good.’

They'd scheduled the review three weeks after the second installation. Today, they would look round what was actually in place, then discuss the final accounts and the next two venues. Mara had brought the packing lists, corrected texts and delivery confirmations for the four panels missing at the first opening. The pile was thinner than the folder she'd taken to the post office that first time.

Hester stopped at a photograph of an old shop. A bicycle leant against a step in the foreground. Behind it was a window full of white boxes and a name partly obscured, from the wrong side of the street, by a lamp post. The revised caption had the right street number. The archive credit was correct now too.

‘This was the one I meant,’ Hester said.

Mara nodded. She could still picture the original file. The wrong version number had looked harmless enough. Only when the text was printed large had the error acquired the space it needed for everyone to read it.

A woman carrying a stack of travel guides stopped beside them.

‘That was the shoe shop,’ she said.

Hester asked whether she remembered it. The woman set her books on the low shelving and pointed to a small door beside the window. That had been the entrance to the flat above, she said. Her aunt had lived there. Or perhaps it had been someone who used to visit her aunt, she corrected. It was a long time ago.

Mara looked at the caption and said nothing. She needn't decide immediately whether they needed another version. Hester listened and asked the woman to leave the information at the desk once she'd checked. There were forms for people's memories beside the exhibition.

‘With my name?’ the woman asked.

‘Only if you want. Ideally, a way of contacting you if we have another question.’

The woman picked up her books. She studied the little door again, as though someone better informed might emerge. Then she went to the desk.

Nora moved to the next frame. Mara took the remaining sheet from her folder. Four panels had needed to arrive later. All four were here, in the right order and on the agreed stands. No boxes in corridors, no promises on delivery notes. She went along them, checking whether the lowest text was still at a comfortable reading height.

‘You needn't crouch,’ Hester said. ‘There's a stool.’

Mara sat on it. It was meant for children. Her knees almost reached her chin. From there, she could see that one frame wasn't quite parallel with the bookcase. The text was easy to read. She made only a note about the memory forms. They were behind a tall planter, easily missed by someone who'd just looked at a photograph and still had books under one arm.

They asked at the desk. A small tray could go on the other side of the plant. The member of staff moved it himself and removed an out-of-date direction sign still standing behind it. Mara didn't need to raise a job sheet for that.

They had coffee in a glass-walled room behind the reading area. Outside, a cardboard box had blown against a courtyard fence. It shifted a few centimetres, then caught again. The cups on the table were all the same size, their spoons different.

Hester laid the account beside the packing list.

‘The extra frames are here.’

‘Yes,’ Nora said.

‘And this part of the print run was replaced.’

Mara put the delivery confirmation beside it. ‘These four. The new captions were checked before the second installation.’

Hester read the sheet. Once the post office opening date was fixed, she'd chosen the later delivery herself. That didn't undo the mistake. Visitors on the first day had passed an empty space. Nor had the library suddenly acquired four walls because the panels were ready.

‘For the next two, I want the spaces confirmed first,’ she said. ‘Before an installation date goes in the announcement.’

Mara had prepared that sentence herself. Hearing it from someone else made her want to defend herself: she hadn't chosen the first date alone. But she'd said it could be done. She sipped her coffee and asked when the next venues could send photographs and measurements.

‘One has,’ Hester said. ‘The other hasn't yet. I'll ask again.’

Nora opened her diary. ‘If we get those by Friday, can we give them a layout on Monday?’

Mara checked her phone. Lotte was on another job that Monday. Part of Mara's own day was reserved for transport arrangements. There was time to assess the information, not produce a whole new drawing.

‘I'd like to check with Lotte what we'll need.’

Nora held her pen above the diary. ‘It's mostly the same exhibition, isn't it?’

‘The photographs are. The room isn't. On Monday, I can look through the information and say when we'll have a layout. I can't promise the drawing now.’

Hester pushed her cup aside. ‘That's exactly what I need to know.’

Nora clicked her pen shut. She wasn't angry, but Mara recognised that short breath. An answer less settled than the question demanded took up time in a meeting. Mara put Monday down for checking the supplied information. She didn't add an arrow marking delivery.

They went through the remaining costs. Not all the extra production went in the client's column; Bureau Veld would absorb some. Mara had kept the error on her own summary, with its cause beside it. Hester checked the figures against their agreement and initialled the bottom.

‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘No new copy about these photographs changing the town for ever. Mostly, what's changing in them is a pavement.’

Nora looked at Mara, who burst out laughing. That sentence wasn't in Lotte's corrected captions. It had been in an earlier proposal Mara herself had forwarded.

‘It won't go in,’ she said.

Hester nodded, satisfied, and gathered up the caps for her tubes. One tube rolled onto the floor. Mara picked it up. There was no photograph inside, only a folded plan put in the wrong tube.

On their way out, they passed the exhibition again. The woman with the travel guides had gone. A form in the tray already had writing on it, a phone number at the bottom. Hester didn't read it immediately. She had another appointment and slipped it into her folder for later.

Back at the office, Lotte sat with a ruler over a printout. She indicated a chair without putting down her work.

‘How was it?’

‘Everything's up. The four too. We've gone through the remaining bills.’

‘Good.’

Mara laid out the information for the next two venues: one set complete, one still to come. She told Lotte what Nora had asked and what she'd answered. Lotte looked up at Monday.

‘I'll be on this.’ She tapped the printout.

‘I saw. I only said we'd look through the information then.’

Lotte moved her ruler up. ‘Let's have the door measurements first, then. Not just a nice floor plan.’

Together, they established what they needed. Mara would check which stands could be reused. Lotte wouldn't redraw the photographs' positions until she knew the clear widths. A short assessment would fit on Tuesday afternoon. She entered it herself, then crossed out an empty slot before it: she needed to keep that time for her current design.

Mara looked at the printout. ‘That colour's different.’

‘I know.’

‘Is it meant to be?’

Lotte smiled with her lips closed. ‘That's precisely what I'm trying to find out.’

Mara left her to work. She rang Bram at the printers about transport for another job, all its files already approved. They discussed a parking restriction by a loading door and a vehicle too tall for a low passage. She pulled up the arrangements, checked the number and noted the alternative address.

At a quarter past five, she picked up her bag. No message from her mother. Mara checked once more, then opened Ellen's conversation. There was her own promise to find a day, an answer beginning lovely, then two short replies without a date.

She rang instead of typing. Ellen answered just as Mara was about to hang up.

‘I'm on a stepladder,’ she said. ‘Wait.’

Something scraped, then thudded.

‘Are you all right?’

‘My phone. I was down already.’

Mara suggested the Saturday in two weeks, from about five if that suited Ellen. She'd left that evening clear, and the following morning. Ellen was quiet for a few seconds. Mara heard paper rustle.

‘I can do that. But I'm not making three courses.’

‘I didn't ask you to.’

‘You didn't. My shelf might. There's still so much on it, I'll have nowhere to put a plate otherwise.’

Mara didn't ask whether she should arrive an hour early to tidy up. She offered to bring something for dinner. Ellen didn't want her carrying saucepans on the bus, so they agreed on something simple to cook there. Deciding who would get bread took longer than choosing the date.

At home, Mara set her folder on the floor beside her desk. The wall next to it was empty. One summer evening, she'd thought the clock case might have fitted there after all. Now there was nothing except a vacuum cleaner tube she'd yet to put away. She took it to the storeroom and went into the kitchen.

A message from Ellen appeared: the date, the address Mara already knew, and confirmation that five was fine. She sent a thumbs-up, removed it and wrote that she'd be there. Then she put on a pan of water. A currant bun remained in the bread bin, hard on one side. She cut it open, decided it was too old and added it to the bread she was saving for the ducks. Then she picked up an onion and searched for the knife usually hidden under the tea towel.