Four People and a Box of Paper

The invitation came while Leila was eating a yoghurt with a fork.

All the spoons were downstairs. She had considered fetching one, looked at the time and decided a fork was an adequate temporary arrangement. The email arrived halfway through her attempt to persuade the yoghurt to remain on it.

Mum watched her read the screen.

“What?”

“They want me to come in.”

“For the gallery?”

Leila nodded, then read the message aloud, because saying it seemed more reliable than looking at it. A small group session on Friday afternoon. A short practical task. Individual conversations afterwards. No need to prepare a presentation. Bring something comfortable to make notes with.

“That means a pen,” Toby said.

“I know what it means.”

“Then why do they say it like that?”

Mum took the empty yoghurt pot before it fell off the bed.

“Friday. We'll make sure you've got the time.”

Leila looked at the closing line again. It was signed by Anika Mercer, Learning and Visitor Programmes. She had assumed that Mercer belonged only to the building, not to someone who might write to her.

For three days, she tried not to invent the interview. She imagined forgetting every word she knew, dropping a glass of water, being asked to name a famous artist and responding with the name of a sandwich. Esme offered to practise with her, then asked, in a severe voice, “Where do you see yourself in five minutes?”

“Hopefully not here.”

“Excellent honesty. You're hired.”

On Friday, Leila arrived twenty-two minutes early and walked past the gallery twice before going in. She wore her other jeans, a clean shirt and shoes she had scrubbed the night before with a toothbrush no one was using. In her bag were a pen, a spare pen and the notebook she had promised herself not to treat like a shield.

The reception desk held a vase containing three branches and no flowers. A woman with short silver hair looked up.

“Summer assistant session?”

“Yes.”

“Upstairs, first door. Anika will be along.”

There were four chairs around a table in the workshop room. A boy in a yellow sweatshirt was examining the legs of one chair as though checking whether it would remain a chair. A girl with a portfolio case sat beside the window. Another girl came in just after Leila, breathing hard.

“Wrong station exit,” she said. “I'm Keeley.”

“Idris,” said the boy.

The girl by the window was Niamh. Leila introduced herself and sat where she could see the door without appearing to guard it.

Anika Mercer arrived carrying a plastic box full of paper scraps, cardboard tubes, fabric, pencils and blunt scissors. She was younger than Leila had expected and wore paint-marked trainers with a neat navy dress.

“First, no one is being tested on how quickly they can make an attractive cardboard object,” she said. “We're interested in how you approach things together. The job involves quite a lot of finding a missing lid while somebody asks you where the toilets are.”

Leila's shoulders loosened a little.

Anika set the box in the centre of the table.

“You've got twenty minutes to plan a drop-in activity for children aged roughly six to ten. The theme is somewhere you'd like to go. You can use what's here and ordinary materials we'd have in the workshop. Decide how to introduce it, how people can take part, and what you would need to consider. I'll mostly listen.”

Keeley reached for a pencil immediately.

“We could make little houses,” she said. “Or buildings. They could choose.”

“Somewhere you'd like to go doesn't have to be a building,” Idris said. “Could be a planet.”

Niamh opened her portfolio, then shut it. “We could have example pictures.”

Leila looked into the box. There were only two pairs of scissors. She noticed that before anything creative occurred to her.

“If people need to cut a lot,” she said, “they'll be waiting.”

Keeley wrote Scissors on the paper.

“We could cut things beforehand.”

“Some shapes,” Leila said. “But not all of them. Otherwise they'll all end up making the same thing.”

They began arranging possibilities on the table. Idris wanted bridges made from folded card. Niamh suggested drawing a background before adding three-dimensional pieces. Keeley was good at turning their unfinished suggestions into something they could explain.

Leila felt herself becoming the quiet person who would later be described as helpful. She hated the feeling, then hated herself for turning cooperation into a race for attention.

“What if they don't want to make somewhere they know?” she asked.

“That's fine,” Keeley said. “We said a planet.”

“No, I mean—what if they don't know what they want? If we ask straight away, some people will have an answer and some won't.”

Anika looked up from her notes.

Leila continued before she could become too aware of being heard.

“We could ask them to choose something first. A piece of fabric or a colour. Then work out what kind of place might have it. They wouldn't have to come with the whole idea ready.”

Idris picked up a square of silver paper.

“Mine's a place where the pavement's made of foil. Awful in summer.”

They laughed. Niamh began drawing stepping stones instead of houses.

By the time Anika asked them to explain the plan, the table contained a bridge, a fabric hill and something Keeley called a train station despite its resemblance to a hat. Leila talked about how they would offer choices without doing the activity for the children. She remembered Toby's roof and stopped herself from saying passionate.

Anika asked what they would do if a child wanted to keep adding materials after closing time.

“Warn them before the end,” Niamh said.

“Offer something they can finish at home,” Keeley added.

“And explain which things need to stay,” Leila said. “Before they build the scissors into it.”

Anika smiled. “That has happened.”

During the individual conversation, Leila sat opposite Anika with a glass of water she deliberately left untouched. Anika asked about the application, the work Leila liked and how she would handle not knowing an answer.

“I'd ask someone who did,” Leila said.

“Even if the visitor expected you to know?”

“I'd say I was checking. I wouldn't invent a room.”

“Good. We've only got the rooms we've got.”

Then they discussed hours. The role covered agreed mornings and occasional weekend sessions, not every day of the summer. Leila explained her transport, making it sound neither trivial nor impossible. Anika wrote down the bus connection and said that knowing the limits was useful.

“Your address is temporary?” she asked, checking the form.

Leila's fingers tightened around the edge of the chair.

“Yes.”

“Will email and your mobile stay the best ways to reach you?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

That was the whole question. Leila had prepared a defence of her reliability for a conversation about contact details.

At the end, Anika said they would write to everyone the following week. Leila thanked her, picked up her bag and left the pen on the table. Anika called her back for it.

Outside, the town seemed indecently unchanged. People carried shopping bags. A delivery driver argued with a locked door. Leila had spent an hour trying to become a person who might work in the gallery, and nobody passing her could tell.

She found Keeley at the crossing.

“How was yours?” Keeley asked.

“I think fine. Yours?”

“I talked too much about my little cousins. There are seven of them, so the answer to most questions was a cousin.”

They walked together towards the station. Leila had assumed she would dislike the other applicants because one of them might be chosen instead of her. Keeley made that difficult by being pleasant and worried about exactly the same things.

At the bus stop, Leila messaged Mum, Esme and Micah separately. To Mum she wrote that it was done. To Esme, that she had remembered words. To Micah, that nobody had asked her to draw a plant under pressure.

He replied first.

Missed opportunity. Plants are famously understanding interviewers.

Leila laughed out loud. A man beside her looked over, and for once she did not mind being seen.