The Empty Afternoon

Ada had picked her bag up from the chair and put it back three times. Inside were a bottle of water, a towel and some trainers whose soles she wasn’t sure were still any good. She had bought them years ago because they were comfortable. They had never been inside a sports hall.

The advertisement lay on the kitchen table. Wednesday afternoons, two o’clock, beginners and returning players welcome. Returning players was what had made her take the leaflet. It didn’t say how much you were allowed to have forgotten. She had played badminton at school, with a racket whose handle turned in her hand. The shuttle usually went over the fence. Perhaps that had been part of the game then.

She tucked the advertisement between the towel and bottle, pulled it out again and folded it into her coat pocket. There was a telephone number, but she hadn’t rung. Somebody might have said they would be expecting her.

A week after the Wednesday when Mara took the case away, she walked to the shopping street at a quarter to twelve. Her third lesson with Kamal. She had left her bicycle at home. The queue at the bakery reached the door. She looked at the rolls as though she had forgotten what day it was, then walked on.

Outside the shop, she paused. GESLOTEN was easy to read at a distance, though the final letter sloped upwards. Mara hadn’t mentioned the lettering again. The photograph of the donated case was still in their messages. Ada hadn’t needed a photograph of the empty back seat to know what was missing.

The learner car arrived on time. Kamal stopped a few doors away and waited until she came round to the passenger side.

‘Over there today,’ he said, pointing to the driver’s side.

‘Same as the last two times.’

‘You know the way, then.’

He lifted his folder from the other seat. Ada got in and took her bag from between her feet. Kamal pointed to the back seat. She put it there. Next she had to adjust the seat. Last week she had found the lever straight away. Now she felt beneath the wrong edge until her fingers met the metal.

The mirror showed a piece of Kamal’s shoulder. She readjusted it. Outside, a boy passed with a delivery bag; a patch of sunlight lay on her empty shop counter.

Kamal asked what she remembered from the previous lesson. She mentioned the corner by the garage doors.

‘And what did you do there?’

‘Went too wide.’

‘First time. Not afterwards.’

He wrote in the folder. Ada wanted to see whether he put it on the right line, but he had already closed it. Her hands rested on the wheel, their knuckles paler than usual.

She knew the first stretch now. The car no longer went too fast of its own accord, as she had thought in her first lesson; she had done something with her foot without properly feeling the effect. She still couldn’t quite feel it, but it surprised her less.

At the side road, she let a cyclist go first. He raised a hand and rode on. She watched him until Kamal told her to look ahead again.

‘I was checking he’d really gone.’

‘He’s gone.’

In the shop, she could draw her work towards her. Here, things came from every direction. A bus stop, a woman with a red shopping bag, a lorry whose driver looked much too high up behind the glass. Ada had cycled this road for years. Behind the wheel the distances were different, as though somebody had narrowed the street without touching the buildings.

She drove into the quieter residential streets. Kamal had her stop at another junction. The engine remained steady. Her shoulders didn’t.

‘You needn’t lean so far forward,’ he said.

Ada sat back against the seat. She could still reach the wheel.

She had to turn by the little park. She noticed the kerb on the left too late, then steered back too soon. Kamal said her name, quietly. His hand came close to the wheel. The car stayed on the road.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

‘I want to go round there again,’ she said when they were heading straight on.

‘We will.’

The second time, she watched the kerb so carefully that she forgot to look down the other street. Further on, Kamal had her stop. He asked what she had seen.

‘That post.’

‘What else?’

She thought of the bin beside the zebra crossing. She had seen it, though perhaps that didn’t count. She said it anyway. Kamal waited. Ada looked towards the street behind them.

‘I didn’t look properly to the right.’

‘Let’s talk about that.’

He explained again. Outside, somebody wheeled a tall suitcase along the pavement, its little wheels briefly rattling louder than his voice. Ada listened, impatient for him to finish so that she could try again. She had already made the mistake; apparently the answer still had to come from her.

Towards the end of the lesson, she managed the turn without his hand coming near. It wasn’t elegant. A woman on the corner had to keep her bicycle a little further back because Ada had left so much room while waiting. Once she was past, Ada didn’t look round to see whether the woman was watching.

Kamal drove the last stretch back. Ada sat on the other side again, her bag on her lap. He asked whether the same time next week still suited her.

‘Yes.’

‘Twelve, here.’

She didn’t write it down. It was already on her calendar. Even so, as she got out, she checked her coat pocket for her phone.

Across the road was the packaging shop. She needed small boxes. Four left, perhaps five, and it was useful to have more in stock. She was halfway across before she remembered going in last week for exactly that order. The new boxes were under her workbench. She hadn’t unpacked them yet.

She stopped on the traffic island. Opposite, the shopkeeper opened his door and put a crate outside. He nodded to her. Ada nodded back, turned round and walked to the bus stop.

At home, she changed her trousers. Instead of hanging her blouse up properly, she draped it over a chair. The oil mark was still on the pocket. She rubbed it with a damp cloth and watched the stain grow. She left the blouse where it was.

The bread she took into the kitchen hadn’t thawed. She laid two slices side by side and ate a piece of cheese from her hand first. The advertisement wasn’t on the table any more. She went looking, found it in her coat and studied the little map.

The sports hall wasn’t at any of Mara’s old schools. It was across the canal, behind the supermarket. Two stops on the bus. She could have cycled, but her shoes were already in the bag and she didn’t want to tie that to the handlebars again.

Ten minutes until the bus. Ada put her plate in the sink and went to the door. The small space between the table and the kitchen worktop was full of things that needed nothing urgently.

In the sports hall’s entrance, a fan turned without any audible hurry. A boy behind the reception desk looked up when she asked where the badminton was.

‘Two o’clock.’

‘I know.’

He pointed to the bench by the changing rooms. ‘They’ll be here in a minute.’

Ada sat down, her bag between her feet. Across the hall hung a photograph of a team in yellow shirts. Everyone wore the same shirt except a man at the end, who was in an ordinary jumper, looking at something outside the photograph.

Two women came in together. One carried a racket sticking out of the top of its cover. Ada was about to stand and ask whether they were in the group, but they went straight into the changing room. She followed at what felt an unnecessarily long distance.

Inside, it smelt of shower gel and rubber. The woman with the racket cover put her coat on a bench and sat down to change her shoes.

‘First time?’

‘Depends. Here, yes.’

‘I’m Leonie.’

Ada introduced herself. The other woman was already disappearing through the door at the far end. Leonie pulled a knot out of her shoelace with her teeth. Ada avoided looking at her face while she did it.

‘Do I need to pay?’

‘Man in the blue shirt. Three euros for your first go, I think. You can borrow a racket.’

The nets were already up. Ada had to cross a line exactly the same colour as another running diagonally through it. In one half of the hall, two people were gently knocking a shuttle back and forth. It seemed to hang in the air until somebody hit it.

The man in blue asked whether she had played before. Ada said it had been a long time.

‘We won’t start by keeping score, then.’

He gave her a racket. The grip was thicker than she remembered. At first she held it too close to the head, then slid her hand down. Leonie waited across the net.

The first shuttle hit Ada on top of the wrist. She had seen it; her hand was simply somewhere else.

‘Another one,’ Leonie said.

Ada bent down but couldn’t scoop it off the floor with her racket as the others did. She picked it up between two fingers. The feathers tickled her thumb.

Her first serve went straight into the net. The second went underneath. On the third, the shuttle flew unexpectedly high, beyond Leonie, who let it fall without hurrying.

‘No need for me to chase that one,’ she said.

Ada laughed, too late to show she had understood straight away. She glanced behind her to see whether anyone else was waiting. Nobody. Further along, a woman with a grey plait walked slowly towards a shuttle. There was no whistle.

After a while, Leonie came to play beside her and two people took the other side. Ada didn’t know which line marked the edge. She asked once, then watched the wrong one.

A shuttle came between them. Ada stepped towards it. So did Leonie. Their rackets clacked together loudly enough for the man in blue to look up.

‘I had that,’ Leonie said.

‘I thought—’

‘Doesn’t matter. Call for it, though.’

Next time, Ada shouted ‘Mine!’ when the shuttle was already on the floor. Leonie bent to pick it up. Heat climbed Ada’s neck.

At the drinks break, she sat on a bench against the wall. Her water was lukewarm. She hadn’t done much, yet her arm felt heavier than when she’d arrived. Leonie took two long swallows from a metal bottle and watched the people now playing on court.

‘He used to smash everything,’ she said. ‘Now you have to hold back or he’ll send you running past.’

Ada followed her gaze. She couldn’t tell who she meant, and said so.

‘Red trousers.’

There were two pairs of red trousers. Ada pointed to the wrong man, and Leonie shook her head. Then she picked up her racket. Somebody was waiting on the other side.

Ada stayed on the bench a moment longer. She could have said she’d had enough. Her coat was in the changing room. Nobody knew whether she had other plans.

The woman with the plait asked whether she fancied another knockabout. Ada got up.

‘Without scoring?’

‘Much nicer.’

This time the shuttle came back more often. Not always. Sometimes Ada swung at the place it had just left. But once it crossed the net five times, and at the sixth shot she noticed her mouth was open.

At half three, they took down the nets. Ada carried one of the loose posts towards the wall and waited for somebody to show her where it went. In the changing room, Leonie already had her coat on.

‘Next week?’ Ada asked.

‘I usually come. If work allows.’

‘Perhaps see you, then.’

She said it to a door that was already half closed. A forgotten hair elastic lay on the bench. Ada tied her own laces and left it there.

Outside, the afternoon had brightened. Her bus wasn’t due for another quarter of an hour. She walked a little way along the sports hall and came to a low fence with a cycle rack behind it. A shuttle lay point down in the grass. There was a dark spot on it. She walked on without picking it up.

At home, she put her trainers beneath the coat rack. Her work shoes were still beside them. She opened the window a crack, took the advertisement from her pocket and wrote the time of the return bus on the back. Then she put it by the calendar.

In the kitchen, the bread had softened. She ate a slice standing up, looking at the last of the afternoon light on the table. She could feel her arm when she lifted her mug. She tried the movement again with her empty hand, felt faintly ridiculous, and put the kettle on.