A Different Signature

The library's coffee machine stood where you could look at the children's books while you drank. Mara had taken a cup because the caretaker said she could. Now she held it while a boy of about eight searched beneath the low tables for a book. His father asked what colour it was. The boy only said it was about a dog.

Beyond the glass wall, the first panels for Op straat were being unpacked. They had been taken down at the previous venue on Friday, along with the four shopfronts delivered later. Those had actually been installed there, on the supports made afterwards, with the correct texts. Mara had done the handover on the agreed afternoon. For this second venue she now had twenty-four panels, the same boxes, different light, and a floor plan whose columns were no longer hidden behind a photograph.

Nora came in with her coat open and a rain hat she immediately stuffed into her bag. She didn't ask why Mara was beside the children's books. She took the empty cup from her hand, set it on the windowsill and pointed towards the little table in the exhibition space.

‘I've got until eleven. We can make the call together if we need to.’

‘I want to ring myself.’

‘Fine. First let's know what we're saying.’

On the table lay the time sheet, Van Dam's extra invoice and the costs of the four supports. Mara hadn't put the entries into a single summary. She had numbered them in sequence with little sticky tabs on the wrong side of the folder. Now she had to turn the whole folder round to find the first amount.

Nora sat down. ‘Leave it. I can read.’

Mara began with what had been made extra for the first venue. The corrected reprint of four panels. The supports. The additional transport and installation hours. Work the agency had paid for and still had to pay for. Hester hadn't suddenly agreed to a bigger bill because they had made new supports. Her original order had been for an exhibition that fitted.

‘The measurement mistake was mine,’ Mara said. ‘I put the overall dimension from the photograph down as usable wall.’

Nora drew the plan towards her. ‘Did anybody else look at this?’

‘I issued it.’

‘That's not what I asked.’

Mara looked at the two boxes for initials. One was hers. She had left the other blank. The installer hadn't received the plan until the day they set up.

‘Not anybody who knew the room.’

‘Right. We know that, then. The printing?’

She could have passed that on as a folder in which everybody found their own mistake. She had kept the file names. She explained how she had put the set back together and restored an older text, then released that set to Bram. Lotte had pointed out earlier errors. Mara hadn't checked the four separate panels against the latest text again. She had assumed the approved whole was still approved after she changed it.

Nora read the amounts. Against one entry she asked why transport appeared twice. Mara explained which trip had brought which materials. It was correct, but felt no better than a mistake. Correct amounts had to be paid too.

‘We're not charging this to you personally,’ Nora said.

Mara hadn't expected it, and discovered she was glad to hear it said.

‘But I want to see how we finish the rest without another separate bill like this. The new entrance strip isn't in here yet.’

The library had asked for a long strip of images by the entrance, showing the four venues and the exhibition's onward journey. Mara had said they could make something. She had thought of it as reusing what they already had. The photographs existed, the texts existed, the venue names existed. The box for hours was still blank. The entrance wall was curved, with an information board used every day.

‘We can't make a bespoke strip within these hours,’ she said.

Nora looked at her. ‘Who discussed it with Lotte?’

‘I mentioned it.’

‘And?’

‘She didn't say she would do it.’

Niels's voice came from the other end of the room. He wanted to know whether the two freestanding supports started on the first side or the second. Mara went over, pointed out the reading order and fetched the caretaker. The panels stayed against the wall until he had checked the route to the lift for visitors with pushchairs. They made one small adjustment. Nothing new had to be produced. When she returned, Nora had written beside the final amount: not yet ordered.

Lotte arrived at quarter past ten. She had come by bus, which hadn't stopped at the stop on the invitation because the road had been dug up. She took off her scarf and left it on the back of a chair. There was a plaster on her thumb.

‘I had a fight with my kitchen cupboard,’ she said when Mara looked. ‘The cupboard won.’

She didn't laugh. She set her laptop down and asked whether the wall screen worked. The caretaker fetched a cable. It didn't fit. Lotte had a second cable in her own bag, but that needed an adaptor she had left at the office. They pulled three chairs round her laptop. It helped bring the meeting down to size.

Mara explained the proposed entrance strip. She hadn't ordered anything for it. But in a message from Hester it appeared as something they were going to get.

‘I've got half of Wednesday for that other client,’ Lotte said. ‘I'm not spending it on this.’

‘You don't have to.’

‘And I'm out on Tuesday evening. It's not marked as a white square in the schedule, but I'm out.’

Nora looked at Mara. Mara had the schedule in front of her and could see the empty square perfectly. There just weren't any working hours in it. The distinction was clear with Lotte sitting beside them.

‘Then we need to make this smaller,’ Nora said. ‘What do people need to understand the route?’

Lotte brought one of the ordinary title sheets up on screen. They could make a small overview, on a separate panel beside the entrance or an A3 print in the existing stand. The photographs didn't need to run the length of the wall. Hester could confirm the order of the four venues in a short text. They shouldn't take the opening hours for the last two from old leaflets themselves.

‘I was thinking of something bigger,’ Mara said.

‘I gathered,’ Lotte said, her finger still on the trackpad. ‘But here people stand in front of it to read. Up there they walk underneath.’

Nora asked how many hours it would need. Lotte named a defined block the following morning, including corrections. Mara would have to supply the text today and Hester would have to approve it that afternoon, properly. Bram could print on the agreed day. It wasn't no work; it was work with a starting time that didn't depend on somebody's free evening.

‘We'll do that,’ Nora said. ‘If the client accepts that format. Otherwise she gets a new price and a new date. But you don't promise the big version can still be done for this money.’

Mara rang Hester from the little table. A volunteer passed and asked whether he should refill the coffee pot. She shook her head and waited for him to go by. Then she explained that she had suggested the entrance strip without having the work costed. She offered the smaller overview they could make within the available production time.

‘But that would just be in a stand?’ Hester asked.

‘Yes. Beside the introduction. In the same design.’

‘I'd kept that wall clear for it.’

Mara looked at the curved wall. Hooks remained from something that had hung there last year. The library activities board was on the right. Clear was a relative term, but she had used it herself.

‘I know. I made it sound bigger than I could deliver for your budget and in our time.’

Hester asked if she could see the smaller design today. Lotte shook her head before Mara answered. She pointed to tomorrow morning's block.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Mara said. ‘I can send you the text today.’

‘Then I don't want that stand tucked away with the leaflets where nobody sees it.’

They took the phone to the entrance. Mara described the place, photographed it and sent the picture. Hester looked at the other end. Beside the first introduction, to the left of the visitor route. That would do. She chose the smaller overview and asked them to use the confirmed names of the other two venues. Mara wrote it down as she spoke. When she hung up, the arrangement was already on paper for everyone.

Meanwhile Lotte had opened her latest set of files. The four panels delivered later were right; the shopfront photographs were in the right order. She stopped at a general information sheet, zoomed in and said nothing.

‘What is it?’ Mara asked.

‘I shouldn't have marked that version final.’

She pointed to the file with GOED after the date. In the body text was still the name of a collection Hester wanted credited differently. This sheet was for the second venue, not one of the four reprinted panels. It was going into the folder volunteers could take away.

‘Have we printed that?’ Nora asked.

‘I've printed three proofs,’ Lotte said. ‘I've got them. No print run.’

She took the sheets from her bag. Mara saw the correct name noted beside the text. It hadn't been changed on screen. Lotte had called the file final because the layout was fixed. For Mara, the same word meant the whole thing could go out. They hadn't agreed on those two meanings.

‘I thought you were going to check the text against the email yourself,’ Lotte said.

‘I didn't know that.’

‘No. I didn't put it in.’

She didn't sound pleased that they had now found a shared mistake. Her face reddened at the temples. She took the three proof sheets, crossed them through diagonally and wrote Proof at the top. Then she opened the approved email beside the file and corrected the name while Mara read along. She showed them the change. A small correction. It still took ten minutes that would otherwise have been spent on something else.

Nora asked what they would be able to tell from a file in future. Lotte didn't want a long name with six status labels. Mara didn't want to keep interpreting final. They settled on a brief handover with every release: who had checked the text, who had checked the image, who was sending the file to the printer. The names weren't all Mara's. If Hester changed an address again, somebody would need to read it back again.

‘I just don't want to have to guess every time whether you're still going to do this,’ Lotte said.

‘Neither do I,’ Mara said.

She sounded sharper than she had meant to. Lotte looked up. Then she slid her notebook between them. It held her own hours, a dentist's appointment and half a line with another client's name. It didn't look like the neat schedule Mara sent Nora.

‘I can do it here,’ Lotte said, tapping the morning. ‘Not after that.’

Mara copied the block and added what she herself had to deliver that afternoon. Nora signed off the extra work for the small overview. Beside the costs of putting the earlier mistakes right she added a signature other than Mara's.

After the meeting they helped the caretaker move a table blocking the view of the first photographs. Lotte took one corner, Mara the other. A folded piece of cardboard beneath one leg fell out as they lifted it. The caretaker picked it up and found the new place where the table wobbled.

They ate their sandwiches on the terrace at the front, in their coats, because the space beside the coffee machine was full now. Lotte kept her plaster away from the mustard. She said the cupboard door at home still wouldn't shut. Mara asked whether she had looked at the hinges, then stopped talking. Lotte didn't want help with the hinges at all. She had arranged for the landlord to come and thought the visit would be before the dentist, not afterwards.

‘If he arrives at exactly the wrong time, I'm still going to the dentist,’ she said. ‘My neighbour can see if he's there.’

Mara bit into her sandwich. She too had something unanswered from Ellen: only a photograph of the balcony, a chair with one leg in a plant pot. She had sent back a little laugh. No new arrangement yet.

After lunch Lotte walked to the temporary bus stop. Mara returned to the hall and went round the route with the caretaker. Twenty-four panels, four on their separate supports, clear of the door to the lift. There was space beside the introduction for the agreed small overview. She sent Hester the text, clearly marking the two names that still needed confirmation.

Then she photographed the installation. She kept the pillar and the door in the frame, though they made a less attractive picture. On her work sheet she put down who would do the remaining tasks, and when. For the first time that morning, she didn't have to slide anything underneath to make it fit.