A Recording of Her Own

Five canisters without lids stood on the bottom shelf of the sideboard. Els took them out one at a time and put them on the table. Each time she tilted her head, as though the weight might tell her whether this was the one.

‘You don't have to empty the whole thing,’ Liv said.

‘I know. I'm looking for something.’

‘An envelope's fairly flat.’

‘It could have slipped behind something.’

Bram had written an address on the back of his job sheet. Els wanted to keep it with the kitchen bill, but the large envelope of papers wasn't in the sideboard. Now half the crockery was on the table, and Liv was holding a coffee jug with nowhere to put it. The worktop was full. Beside the breadboard were two drawers they'd taken out, containing pencils, batteries and a loose handle.

She put the jug on the floor beside her chair.

‘I'll walk into that,’ Els said.

Liv picked it up.

‘Here.’ Els moved a canister. ‘The envelope matters to you too. You can see what's already been done to the kitchen.’

‘I believe you about the kitchen.’

‘That's not what I meant.’

She didn't sound angry, but she let the flap of the sideboard fall harder than it needed to. Liv put the jug in the circle Els had cleared on the table. Through the window she saw a man and a dog waiting by the empty cycle rack. The dog sniffed, sat down, stood again. A woman came out of the shop next door with a pack of kitchen rolls under her arm. She said something to the man. He shook his head, then opened the bag hanging from his handlebars after all.

Liv wanted to be outside. She wanted to be able to forget a pack of kitchen rolls without it affecting whether she could leave someone alone.

‘Where shall I put this?’ she asked.

She was still holding Bram's sheet.

‘Leave it on the table.’

As Els stepped back, Liv's own voice came from among the cups.

‘Don't close it. Then we won't know where it ends.’

Liv stood still. The voice was quiet, lower than the one she heard when she spoke, with that hesitation before the last word. For a moment the table seemed to be in the wrong place, too far to the right, as though she were looking at their things in someone else's sitting room.

Els turned at once. She pulled a folded tea towel off a small black device and pressed a button with her thumb.

The voice stopped.

Now Liv could see the speaker holes, the row of buttons, the little lit screen. A portable recorder. Older and wider than her own, with a silver strip along the side where the lettering had worn away. A lead ran to a socket behind the curtains.

Els unplugged it.

‘I'd left it on.’

In her head, Liv heard the faint zip that came later in the file. Only then did she realise playback had stopped. Here downstairs, the real fridge started up. A short hum, a click against the worktop. A sound that belonged to this kitchen. It didn't make those few seconds any less unpleasant.

‘What were you playing?’

Els laid the lead on top of the device. ‘What you sent me.’

‘You've copied it onto there.’

‘I can't hear it properly on my phone.’

Liv looked at the little screen. A filename ending in numbers, a bar halfway across. Beside the recorder was a cable with a different plug at each end. No earphones. Els had been sitting at the table with it in front of her.

‘How long have you been doing this?’

Els drew the tea towel towards her and folded it again. ‘I've had it for years. For appointments. When the kitchen was being done, I recorded the conversations. Otherwise I'd have forgotten half of it before the men had left.’

‘That's not what I asked.’

‘You're asking as though I've taken something from you.’

Els moved the coffee jug back to the floor beside Liv's chair so she could get at the drawer. Liv put down the job sheet. It stuck to a drop of coffee and came up with her fingers. She let go.

‘We agreed you wouldn't sit here listening on your own.’

‘I wasn't listening. I was looking for the envelope.’

‘It was playing.’

‘Yes. Still.’

The word hung between them. Els took a canister off the table and put it on the wrong shelf. She noticed, took it out again and stood holding it.

Liv wanted to pick up the recorder. Not to listen, she told herself. Just to see how often the file had been played. But the device probably wouldn't tell her. She didn't know the model. Even if there was a counter, it wouldn't explain what Els had done with it.

She put her hands in her cardigan pockets.

‘Have you been listening upstairs too?’

Els looked towards the window.

‘Els.’

‘Yes.’

‘On your own?’

‘There wasn't anyone else.’

The man with the bicycle lifted his dog into the crate on the front. The dog was too big for it; one front paw hung over the edge for a while. Liv watched the man tuck it gently back inside and stroke the dog's head. She watched for so long that Els said, ‘You don't have to keep looking at me.’

‘I'm not.’

‘That's what I mean.’

Liv sat down. There wasn't much space between her chair and the sideboard. She edged forward, knocked the coffee jug with her knee and held her breath until it stopped wobbling.

‘What are you hoping to hear?’

Els put down the canister. ‘I don't know.’

‘Something more than what's on it?’

‘Perhaps that I heard it wrong.’

Liv looked at the dark screen.

‘By playing it again?’

‘You do it too.’

She had no answer ready. She'd played the file more than once at home, on different days, sometimes after deciding she'd finished with it for the day. She hadn't had a new question each time. She'd wanted to ask the same one again.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘That's why we made the agreement.’

Els pulled out a chair but didn't sit. ‘I haven't been waiting for you to leave so I can do things behind your back. I couldn't sleep. At Roos's I hear her walking upstairs and keep thinking she's about to call me. Then I think: why would she? She doesn't need to call me. I'm in her house, she lives there, I'm the one who—’

She bit her lip and rubbed two fingers beneath her nose.

Liv waited.

‘At least here I know what the sounds are,’ Els said.

They both looked at the recorder.

Els gave a short, joyless laugh. ‘Yes. Stupid thing to say.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘You don't have to say that.’

Liv heard a car pull in by the kerb. A door, footsteps, the bell of the shop next door. She could follow it without looking up. That was what Els meant: finding her way through the world by its little sounds. The fridge. Someone searching for a key at the bottom of a bag. Roos kicking off her shoes against a kitchen cupboard.

‘Have you recorded anything new?’ Liv asked.

‘A few times.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing I've thought you ought to hear.’

‘Leave it, then.’

Els looked up.

Liv was tempted to take it back. A few recordings needn't mean a whole afternoon. She could take them with her, listen on the way, rule something out. She knew how to reduce noise beneath speech, how to bring out a quiet breath. She also knew how, after ten listens, someone could turn the same noise into an answer. Switching on the recorder at this table would help neither of them.

‘Really,’ she said. ‘Leave it alone.’

‘You think I'm making it up.’

‘No.’

‘Then surely you want to know—’

‘What I want right now is not to be the only person who has to decide what something means. Not again.’

Her own vehemence surprised her. Els drew her hand back from the recorder, though she hadn't touched it.

‘I didn't ask you to.’

‘You have it playing while I'm here.’

‘I didn't know you'd be back so soon.’

They fell silent.

Liv rubbed her forehead. ‘That came out wrong.’

‘A bit.’

‘I'm not saying you tricked me into this.’

At last Els sat down. She pulled the nearest drawer towards her and began putting back the batteries that had rolled out. Two large, three small, one with an illegible label. At the last one she stopped.

‘That's flat. Why do I keep it?’

‘Because it hasn't got “flat” written on it.’

Els set it aside. The reply was so small and ordinary that Liv almost cried.

She pushed back her chair and went to the worktop for water. A tile by the tap was cracked, an old crack with dirt in its finest line. She'd only noticed it today. She wondered how much she'd missed in this house by watching something else.

‘I'll come and help tomorrow,’ she said. ‘As we agreed with Bram.’

Els nodded without looking up.

‘In daylight. With the rest of you here. But I'm not staying tonight. And I'm not sitting anywhere waiting to hear whether something happens.’

‘I didn't ask you to.’

‘I'm saying it because sometimes I need reminding too.’

She drank. The water was lukewarm; she'd turned the hot tap a little as well. She shut it off and filled her glass again.

‘What about that?’ Els asked.

The recorder lay among the canisters, black and unobtrusive now its screen was dark.

‘Put it in your bag. Switched off. Take it to Roos's or wherever you want to keep it. Don't set it up upstairs.’

‘It's mine.’

‘Yes.’

‘I could throw it out.’

‘You don't need to.’

‘You're looking at it as though it's poisonous.’

Liv looked down at the glass. ‘My own reaction frightened me. I heard my voice and for a moment I didn't know where I was. It was a recording, on this table. And I didn't know.’

Els slowly straightened the lead. She didn't coil it tightly, just laid it in a curve, the way you might lay out a shoelace. Then she tucked it beneath the recorder.

‘I'll take it with me.’

‘Thank you.’

Els looked at her. ‘You don't need to thank me for putting my own things away.’

‘All right.’

They were both tired. It showed in everything: the canisters on the table, the reply given too quickly, the jug on the floor. But it was still afternoon. The shop next door was open. Tomorrow Bram would bring tools for a problem he knew how to deal with. Liv could help him clear the beds without putting on headphones again.

Els took the flat battery to the tray by the front door. Two coins and a screw lay on its rim. She picked out the screw and put it on the windowsill.

‘If you want to go, go,’ she said.

‘I'd like to clear this up first.’

‘Then don't leave the coffee jug on the floor.’

Liv picked it up. This time she found room in the cupboard beside the cooker. Els put back the canisters, in a different order: wide ones behind, narrow ones in front. One wouldn't fit. She turned it, tried again, then handed it to Liv.

‘That can go in the breakfast room.’

Liv carried it along the hall, past the smell of cleaning fluid and a coat that wouldn't dry. She put it on the long table and paused beside a chair. Its smooth wood was cool under her hand. She could account for every sound. It didn't reassure her, but it gave her time to breathe normally again.

When she came back, Els had found the envelope. It had slipped beneath the removable insert in the bottom drawer, which was too small for it.

‘See?’ She held it up. ‘Sometimes you do have to take everything out.’

She added Bram's sheet. On the front, Liv saw a date from nine years ago in blue ink, and the name of the company that had done the kitchen. Els smoothed down the flap and put the envelope on the shelf she'd cleared.

The recorder stayed on the table. Els didn't cover it with the tea towel again.