The Steps

One corner of the Christmas-box lid caught under the rim. Els turned it a quarter turn and lifted it free. On top lay a coloured cable, with a plastic bag clinging to the wire. She replaced the lid.

‘These can go downstairs as they are.’

Roos didn't pull the box towards her. ‘Chair first. Or we'll keep having to turn round with things in our hands.’

A loose chair with a woven seat stood by the window. It wasn't part of the mixed stack along the right-hand wall. Els had kept it separate because people sometimes stood on it to close the window. When weight went on it, one front leg shifted a little sideways. She showed them by pressing the back. Liv barely saw it until she watched the shadow on the floor.

‘Don't stand on it any more,’ said Roos.

‘I wasn't going to.’

They meant to put it downstairs somewhere else, with the things that needed to go. Not out in the street, not until Els had worked out what to do with it. Liv took one side, Roos the other. It wasn't heavy, but its legs stuck out far enough to strike the frame as they turned through the door.

‘Wait. Keep it straight,’ said Roos.

They got through. Liv let go when Roos set the chair on the landing to find a better grip. The way to the stairs was still clear. Els went ahead to make room below, calling back that the shoes were by the back door. Only when Liv looked down did she realise they were her own shoes, left there earlier.

Roos pointed. ‘You take the back. Then we won't both keep catching a leg.’

Liv nodded and gripped the wood where Roos showed her, thumbs along the seat. The woven strip felt cool and faintly greasy. The edge had a bleached patch where hands had often rested.

‘Hang on,’ said Roos. ‘I need my other hand—’

‘Could you pass me that?’

From the right, towards seven. So close that Liv let go without thinking. Els, she thought. Something she couldn't reach. Liv turned towards the other door.

‘What?’

Roos said something sharp and loud. Liv heard the chair land before she quite understood. Not a fall. Four legs on the landing, twice, as Roos set it down and pulled it back out of the turn.

‘Don't let go,’ said Roos.

Seven's door was shut. Els had just gone downstairs. Liv stared at the door, one hand still half raised.

‘I heard someone asking me to pass something.’

Roos stood behind the chair. ‘I asked you to wait.’

Els called up to ask what was wrong. Liv turned and saw her at the foot of the stairs with a pair of shoes in her hand. She looked first at Roos, then at Liv.

‘Nothing,’ said Liv.

‘Something is,’ Roos said. ‘She lets go while I'm turning.’

Liv's face grew hot. She almost said she hadn't meant to, as though Roos had accused her of deliberate sabotage. Instead, she said she had heard Els.

‘I was downstairs,’ said Els.

‘I can see.’

‘I said your shoes were there.’

‘No. After that.’

They stayed at their separate levels. Els below, holding the shoes. Roos just outside eight, neither hand on the chair. Liv between them, close to the landing wall. No second request came from behind seven's door. No breathing. She had spent two nights behind that door herself. Beyond the wood stood her bed, the chair, a little empty floor.

Roos asked exactly what she had heard.

‘Someone asking me to pass something.’

‘What?’

‘She didn't say.’

Els put down the shoes. ‘I didn't.’

Roos looked from Liv to the closed door. She didn't go over to listen. Taking the chair by its back, she carefully pushed it into eight again, back into the space it had come from. The seat stayed clear of the ironing board. Then she came out and held her hands away from her body, as though there were something on them she didn't want on her clothes.

‘This isn't working.’

Els had climbed two steps. ‘No.’

‘I'm not guessing who you can hear while we're carrying things.’

‘You don't have to.’

Roos nodded at the chair. ‘I just did.’

Liv didn't go to seven. She looked at her fingers. Nothing on them showed the moment she had let go. She remembered the words so clearly that it didn't feel possible she had been mistaken. Yet she could still see Roos gripping the chair when her own hand was already gone.

‘I'm sorry.’

Roos breathed out. ‘Yes.’

It didn't help. Nor had anyone asked her to find a better way of saying sorry. Els came the rest of the way up and drew eight's door towards her. The wood scraped on the floor. She closed it without touching the case.

Roos went downstairs. Liv waited until she reached the hall before following. On the last step she looked up again. There hadn't been a sound. She could hardly bear the silence while that other sentence was still in her head.

In the kitchen Roos stood at the sink. She washed her hands, soaped them again and rinsed. Liv sat where she had eaten. She wanted to say that nothing had happened. Roos had put down the chair. No twisted wrist, no slipping foot, no broken glass.

She knew how insulting it would sound.

Els laid a towel beside the sink. Roos took it and looked at the clock. Not yet three. She had offered over an hour more. They wouldn't have her help this afternoon now.

‘Tea before you go?’ asked Els.

‘No. I'm going home.’

‘You don't have to go straight away.’

Roos carefully dried between two fingers. ‘I want to.’

Els went to fetch her bag from the hall. Liv stayed seated. She wasn't used to someone leaving because she hadn't been reliable. Not because of late work or a forgotten message. Someone had held something in the ordinary expectation that Liv would hold it too. She had made a sound more important.

Roos straightened her jumper. ‘I'm happy to help with what needs doing. But not like this.’

‘I understand,’ Liv said.

‘I'm not sure you do.’

Liv looked up.

‘You were still explaining what you heard. I was right there. I don't know what you heard. I know there was no hand at the other end.’

‘I didn't mean it as an excuse.’

‘Don't give it first, then.’

This wasn't anger Liv could put up a hand to stop. Roos took the bag Els brought her, felt inside for her key, then withdrew her hand. She looked at Els.

‘I'll be home when you come. But you're not doing the rest on your own today.’

Els's face tightened. ‘I can carry a box downstairs.’

‘I didn't say you couldn't.’

‘That's how it sounds.’

Roos waited. Liv could so easily step between them, translating an argument she herself had caused. She stayed in her chair.

‘I'm not doing those chairs without help,’ Els said at last.

‘Good.’

‘And I'll come over later.’

‘Good.’

They didn't need to make up before holding a door for each other. Els went with her into the hall. Liv heard a hand brush a sleeve, a question about taking food, Roos saying there was plenty. Then the front door closed.

Liv kept both feet flat on the floor. She realised she was staring at the corner of the ceiling, approximately where the route on the drawing would run. She didn't know whether it ran exactly there. Already she had almost turned an old pencil line on paper into something she could see through plaster.

Els returned and pulled out the opposite chair.

‘Roos doesn't want to help while you're listening to something else.’

‘I'm not doing that.’

‘You know what I'm saying.’

Liv looked at her bag. Her recorder wasn't in it. Just the computer and what she had brought for work. She felt she had to demonstrate that, or the problem wouldn't be taken seriously.

‘I'm not going into that room to see if it's still there.’

Els looked past her towards the open breakfast-room door. ‘You would have wanted to, though.’

Liv said nothing.

A few minutes passed while Els wrapped the bread and put away the remaining butter. Liv stood to clear up, but Els pointed to the chair. Not sternly; more as though she were saying the floor was still wet there. Liv sat again.

‘It was my voice?’ Els asked.

Liv nodded.

‘Like you hear me now?’

‘It seemed that way.’

‘So you went.’

‘Yes.’

Els put down the bread bag. ‘Then you should understand me standing up there yesterday.’

Liv opened her mouth to explain the difference. Yesterday Els had waited for more words; Liv had only stopped what she was doing because she thought someone was asking her something. There was a difference. It wasn't what Els wanted to know.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Els didn't move any closer. She looked at the bread bag and folded its top twice. Her nail caught on a frayed scrap of paper. She pulled it free and brushed it off the table.

‘I don't want to think something's wrong every time I hear a noise. I never used to.’

‘I know.’

‘You've known me a week.’

Suddenly never used to reached further than the two nights Liv had slept here. Els had made breakfasts and opened the door; the guests and suppliers in her stories weren't incidental. She knew the distance to every cupboard. Liv had seen that herself. She had simply stopped counting it whenever a voice spoke.

‘That's true,’ she said.

Els took the bread to the cupboard. The lunch table became an ordinary table again. Liv picked up her phone to tell Anouk the extract would have to wait until Monday. The request was still there, followed by another message: fine, don't spend your Sunday afternoon on it. Neither had known what the other was doing.

Liv slipped the phone into her pocket.

‘I've got work waiting.’

‘You should go, then.’

‘I could just—’

Els looked at her. Liv stopped.

They went together to the back door. It had stopped raining. A plastic flowerpot lay on its side in a corner of the courtyard, soil still in it: a hard clump bound with roots. Els set it upright and nudged it aside with her foot. Liv unlocked her bicycle.

‘We can look again tomorrow,’ said Els. ‘At the ordinary things. Not whether it works.’

‘With Roos?’

‘I'll have to ask her.’

‘Shall I—’

‘No.’

Liv took the handlebars and stood beside her bicycle. She didn't want to make another offer that only crowded everything else out. She said she would do Anouk's work first, then Els could tell her what she needed.

‘You don't have to stay away because you got it wrong,’ Els said.

Liv looked at her.

‘But you don't have to make up for it with another afternoon, either.’

She sounded tired. Liv thought this was the moment to hug her, but there was a bicycle between them and Els already held the door. She said see you later. Els nodded and went in.

At home, the two loaves weren't in the kitchen, the lunch plates weren't on the table. It took Liv a moment to recognise her desk as the place where she had started the morning. Her headphones hung over the back of the chair. She didn't put them on straight away. She filled a glass of water, drew up a chair and read the description she had written for the listeners.

One sentence said both men were describing the same access route. She deleted same. Then she read the rest word by word, without listening.

There was still enough daylight to make out the roofing company's photograph on her envelope. She put it beneath the other papers. Then she started the first interview at the question she was finally going to leave in.