New Lettering

Ada had laid the first version of the new sign on the workbench. The words fitted; the numbers didn't. Beside Saturday, the ten was so close to the edge that the one looked as though it didn't quite belong.

Mara studied it with her coat still on. Her laptop was in her bag, as her mother had asked. Beside the sign lay the sheet where they'd changed the opening hours. From the first full week of January, it said at the top. The current December hours were still in the window.

‘If you start a little tighter here,’ she said, ‘you'll have room there.’

Ada held the rubber above Saturday. ‘Just that line?’

‘Then it won't line up. I'd do the whole column.’

Her mother sighed. She pulled up a chair and rubbed out the numbers. A scrap with the correct times was taped to the end of her pencil so she needn't keep looking at the larger sheet. It fell off as she rubbed.

Mara picked it up. Monday: workshop. Wednesday: closed. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: open to customers from eleven until five. Saturday: ten until one. The short working sessions before opening were on the other sheet in Ada's notebook. They needn't all go on the shopfront.

‘You do need to tell people they can't come in on Mondays,’ Mara said.

‘That's why it says workshop.’

‘They might not all understand.’

Ada looked at her. Mara looked back at the figures. She could add another strip saying not open to customers and please ring first and exceptions by appointment. The sign would be wider than the door.

‘Closed to visitors,’ she said. ‘Underneath. Small but readable.’

Ada wrote it on the loose sheet first, then read it with her glasses a little further down her nose. ‘That'll do.’

Mara took off her coat. A moped went past, audible long after it had left the street. There were no clock parts beside the sign. Her mother had put down a clean protective mat. Nothing had to go on the floor because Mara had brought a laptop.

She switched it on and turned the screen towards Ada. The login details hadn't changed. Her mother found the slip in her notebook; a strip of tape now mended the page. She typed slowly. Mara pointed once to a box she still needed to open. Otherwise, she kept her hands round her coffee.

Ada changed the website first. She read the times aloud, paused at Monday and checked her own sheet. She added the date they took effect and saved the change. Then she wanted to see it. The normal page still showed the old version.

‘It hasn't done it.’

‘You might need to open this again.’

Ada did. The announcement appeared. She studied it without touching anything. The current hours were still visible, the new January hours below. On the other screen, where she managed the shop's listing, she scheduled the future change. Finding the right date took longer there. Mara waited while her mother went back a week, then forwards again.

‘That's the trouble with all these arrows,’ Ada said. ‘They take you everywhere except where you want to go.’

Once the change was scheduled, she asked how she'd check later that it had actually happened. Mara showed her where to look as an ordinary visitor. Ada wrote the few words on the back of her times slip. She didn't fold it small; it went at the front of the notebook, where she could find it.

The bell rang. A woman Mara had seen before came to collect a modern little clock. Ada had accepted it the previous Tuesday to fit a new hanging loop, one of the small new jobs on the separate clipboard. The woman asked whether it could go without a box. Ada looked at its size and asked whether she had anything to protect it. They discussed a bag in her husband's panniers. Mara half-closed her laptop to move the coffee standing beside the screen.

‘You must be the one behind this new plan,’ the woman said to her, pointing at the sign's still-empty Saturday column.

Mara looked up. ‘My mother chose the hours. I'm helping with the lettering.’

‘Oh. My daughter does everything on the computer for me too.’

Ada returned with the clock and some wrapping. She showed the woman the new hanging loop at the back. She hadn't heard the question to Mara. The customer said she particularly liked Mondays, when the rest of the street was quiet. Ada explained when the change would take effect. The woman wasn't keen, but put the opening-hours card with her receipt.

‘I'll have to come on Fridays, then,’ she said.

‘From eleven,’ Ada said.

The woman checked the card and nodded. She went outside to find her husband and the pannier. Mara looked at Saturday on the sign. Her mother had brushed away the rubbings, but faint marks still showed in the light.

They drew the numbers again. Mara held the sheet with the right spacing beside the edge. Ada wrote, asking at the final zero whether it was too narrow. It wasn't Mara's handwriting, nor the precise lettering she'd have printed for a client at work. From a few steps back, she could read everything.

‘Leave it like that,’ she said.

Ada asked her to hold it against the window. A thumb on the corner kept it exactly where it would go. The woman and her husband were cycling away. Someone across the road stopped to read the announcement, then walked on without coming in.

Mara packed her laptop. The sign still needed finishing; her mother would hang it herself, alongside the notice giving the start date. Today's normal Saturday hours still ran until one. The new clock from the trial Monday had been collected on Thursday. When Mara asked whether it had kept running properly, Ada pointed to its card on the clipboard. She said yes and returned to her pencil.

At the door, Mara realised she'd left her scarf on the chair. She went back. Ada pushed it towards her without getting up.

‘Have a good evening.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Say hello from me. Though she probably doesn't know who I am.’

‘She does.’

Outside, Mara wound the scarf round her neck. Her phone was under the laptop in her bag. She didn't take it out until the stop, where she needed to check the bus. Plenty of time for her own shopping and the food she'd arranged with Ellen. She needn't rush straight from the shop to another door.

At five, she rang at the new address. The nameplate was still crooked. Music came from the flat above the entrance, too quiet to recognise. Ellen opened the door with a dishcloth over her shoulder.

‘You found it.’

‘You sent the address.’

‘Some people still manage to go to the old place.’

Two pairs of shoes stood in the hall, a flat box leaning against the wall. No more moving chaos for Mara to negotiate. Ellen took the food bag and asked whether she'd like to see the sitting room first or have wine straight away.

‘Can't we do both?’

‘Good. I've only prepared one tour.’

The sitting room overlooked the backs of houses. The balcony was round the side and, as promised, just wide enough for one chair. A pot with a bare plant stood beside it. According to the label, Ellen said, the plant wasn't supposed to be dead yet. But she wasn't buying it another pot until it showed some sign of life.

‘It can wait until spring,’ Mara said.

‘It can. So can I. Only I haven't got a label saying so.’

They went round the rooms. The upper part of the bedroom window was hard to open. Ellen had bought a pole for it which turned out to be too short. She showed Mara as though the mistake was for them both to enjoy, rather than something that needed fixing now. A box remained closed in the spare room.

‘That one's called winter,’ Ellen said. ‘But it's got my summer shoes in it. I needed another box.’

Mara laughed. She had boxes labelled work that yielded only cables whose devices she'd long forgotten.

Back in the kitchen, Ellen had cleared the table. Only two plates and a bag of nuts remained. Mara unpacked the ingredients. They were making a pasta dish that had looked simpler on paper: the vegetables needed frying first, the sauce required a lemon, and Ellen had only limes.

‘We could ask next door,’ Mara said.

‘I've only spoken to her once. That was already about a ladder I couldn't give back yet. I'd rather not start with a whole borrowing list.’

They used a lime. Ellen chopped vegetables; Mara put the water on. One knife was so blunt that the courgette rolled across the board. Ellen handed her another and said she kept the blunt one only for its beautiful handle. Mara wanted to say she could have it sharpened. She said it anyway. Ellen nodded and slid it back into the drawer, as though both could be true: a knife could be sharpened, and the drawer could close now.

As they cooked, Ellen talked about her new street. Not the quiet she'd moved for; there was usually enough of that. It was the sounds arriving at unexpected times. At seven on Sundays, the neighbour opened a cupboard door that banged against her wall. Someone practised a wind instrument she couldn't identify yet. Yesterday she'd mistaken it for a reversing delivery van.

‘You'll grow fond of both,’ Mara said.

‘The delivery van, perhaps.’

Ellen stirred the pan. She talked about her brother, who'd hired a trolley for the move, then carried every shelf with the same face outwards. Now the worn sides were showing. She hadn't told him, not out of generosity but because she'd only noticed three days later. He had carried all the boxes of books upstairs. She ought to invite him when there was nothing to carry.

Mara looked at the steaming water. ‘You asked me.’

‘Yes.’

‘I should have cancelled sooner.’

Ellen laid the spoon on a plate. ‘That, mostly. When I didn't hear, I thought you were still coming. But it's all upstairs now.’

She didn't make those last words sound particularly light. Mara could have explained the wall at the post office, the four panels, that day's calls. Ellen knew the beginning. None of it changed the hours she'd waited.

‘I'm sorry,’ Mara said.

Ellen nodded. ‘Could you get the colander? Under that other pan.’

The colander fitted over the sink, but the pan handle didn't. They had to swing the tap aside. As they drained the pasta, the cloth slipped from Ellen's shoulder into the sink. She threw it in the laundry basket and fetched a clean one. The sauce needed more water. Dinner reached the table before they knew whether they'd made the right amount.

They'd made too much. Ellen wanted to save the extra straight away and got up halfway through dinner to find a container. Mara moved her plate aside when she returned. A small curl of citrus peel stuck to the rim.

‘How's the exhibition going?’ Ellen asked.

Mara told her about the photographs. The big mistake, but also the woman in the library with memories of a shoe shop, and Hester refusing any more copy about towns changed for ever. Ellen asked whether there was a photograph of her old street. Mara wasn't sure. She named the streets she remembered. Ellen produced a newspaper cutting she'd left under a coaster. It concerned another exhibition.

‘I thought this was yours.’

‘No. Ours is smaller.’

‘I'd better go and see the actual one, then.’

They looked through a few photographs on Mara's phone. Ellen enlarged an advertising board behind a tram. Mara thought she wanted the caption, but she pointed to a woman's dress by the stop. Exactly the shape her aunt wore now, she said, only it had a different name again. In the next picture, a dog had moved too quickly. Its head was a blur. They both preferred it to the crisply focused bicycle beside it.

After dinner, Ellen made coffee. Mara carried the plates into the kitchen. The flat box from the hall now leant against the sitting-room door. A narrow unit with three shelves was pictured on the box. Ellen tapped it with her foot as she came back.

‘That's the only bit of help with the move still in its box.’

‘Shall I have a look?’

‘If you feel like it. I reached the second picture and put it all back. The man in the drawing had no fingers.’

They cleared space on the rug. Not the whole room, just enough to lay out the parts. Mara knelt; Ellen took the screws from a sandwich bag inside the box. There were two bags, it turned out. The second held the same kind of screws in a different quantity.

‘Perhaps you've got spares,’ Mara said.

‘Or I'll be missing a top.’

The instructions had no words. In the first drawing, the unit was already half assembled, arrows pointing to holes they could hardly find in the real shelves. They turned over the first side panel. A sticker on the back was upside down. Ellen held it to the light and said the furniture already offered more perspectives than her whole tour.

Mara looked for the right screwdriver. She hadn't brought tools. Ellen had three; the one from a Christmas hamper had the smallest head. They tried the largest first, then the middle one. The smallest fitted best.

After twenty minutes, two shelves were fastened between two uprights. The whole thing still lay on its side. They carefully stood it up and saw that the third shelf would face exactly the wrong way if they continued as the drawing showed. Mara picked up the sheet and traced the fine lines with a finger.

‘This one's back to front.’

Ellen looked at the bottom shelf. ‘It's in so nicely.’

‘It'll come out again.’

‘I've no doubt.’

They both looked at the coffee growing cold on the table. Ellen took her cup and sat on the sofa. Mara held the side panel a moment longer. Then she laid the unit safely down and joined her.

‘At least I've got a very tidy double shelf,’ Ellen said.

They laughed. On television, they found a film Ellen had abandoned halfway through because she couldn't tell whether the problem was the sound or the story. With subtitles, they both understood a little more, but the film made no more sense. A car kept driving to a house nobody seemed to live in.

Mara stayed until it ended. Her phone had vibrated once somewhere in her bag. She checked as she put on her coat. An automatic notification from the shared work calendar. Ellen gave her the container of pasta and kept another herself. The screws were back in their bags beside the shelving unit. Nobody set a date for another job.

On the pavement, Mara turned. Ellen stood in the lit hall, the dishcloth over her shoulder again. She raised a hand, then closed the door. Mara walked to the stop. The container pressed against her laptop sleeve. Before sitting down, she tucked her scarf between them.