Another Wednesday

While the coffee brewed, Ada laid the sign on the bench. Wednesday still read 9–18, now covered by a strip of cream paper. The brush beside it was much too big for the lettering.

‘Taking an afternoon off?’ Mara asked.

‘The whole day.’

‘Starting when?’

‘Today.’

Mara looked towards the window. ‘We'll need to change the website. Google, too. People will turn up.’

‘Can you show me how?’

‘I can do it now.’

‘I know.’

Ada poured the coffee and waited for Mara to take out her laptop. Then she pulled up the stool. Reading glasses halfway down her nose, she copied the password from a scrap of paper. It didn't work. On her second attempt, Mara saw that she was reading a capital I as a small l. She pointed, leaving her mother's hands on the keyboard.

‘Save?’

‘Yes.’

Ada clicked. She wanted to see how to check that it had worked. They made the changes on the other page together.

‘Your rent's gone up,’ Mara said.

‘Forty-eight euros.’

‘Exactly.’

Ada pulled a notebook from beneath a box of clock glasses. One page listed the takings for the past twelve Wednesdays. At the bottom, in red, she had written: they'll come on Thursday. Beside that, more faintly: perhaps not all of them.

Mara read the figures. ‘You've been looking into it.’

‘A bit.’

On the facing page was a telephone number and a name: Kamal Driving School. Mara turned the book towards her.

‘You're having driving lessons?’

‘Twelve o'clock.’

‘Today?’

‘I'd be a bit early otherwise.’

Mara looked out at the narrow street, the delivery van on the corner, a cyclist darting between parked cars. Her mother was sixty-eight. She went everywhere on a bicycle with a basket wired to the handlebars. For anything she couldn't carry, she called Mara.

‘Wouldn't an automatic be easier?’

‘It is.’

‘Has he taught people who start a bit later?’

‘He's taught people who can't drive. I thought that would do.’

Mara drank her coffee. She could hear the questions lining up: the test, insurance, a parking permit. She said nothing.

Ada rolled the paintbrush between her fingers. ‘I went last week. Sat in the car. Looked at the controls. He let me drive out of the car park.’

‘How was it?’

‘Turned too wide. He said we ought to leave some road for everyone else.’ She gave a brief laugh, as if trying out the sound.

‘Why didn't you tell me?’

‘You'd have started looking for the best driving school.’

Mara set her mug down carefully. Ada was looking at the paper over Wednesday's hours.

‘And when you've passed? Will you open on Wednesdays again?’

‘First I might try parking at the supermarket.’