Without a Transcript

Her own kettle woke Liv. She'd switched it on, sat on the kitchen step stool to straighten a sock, and closed her eyes. The click as it switched off sounded louder than the boiling.

She had slept. Not well enough to look forward to the day, but enough that she couldn't call it a sleepless night. On the kitchen table lay the contractor's photograph of the roof battens. He'd listed the hours separately, as she'd asked. The old wood was dark in a patch she wouldn't have noticed without his arrow.

She read the explanation, wrote back and added the amount to that month's payments. She didn't have to be entirely happy with everything he'd said to see that something had needed replacing. The bill was still unwelcome. Staring at it wouldn't make it smaller.

Mara rang at nine. Yesterday Liv had asked whether she had ten minutes this morning to listen to something. Mara had said yes, before her first meeting, if Liv sent the file ahead.

She had. The strange file, unedited. No transcript.

‘Are you home again?’ Mara asked.

‘Since yesterday.’

‘I can hear. Your coffee machine.’

‘Kettle.’

‘That, then.’

Liv took her mug into the workroom. She didn't want to discuss the recording among bread and invoices. Mara asked whether the roofers had finished. Liv said yes, then heard herself hurry on.

‘Have you listened?’

‘Once. Do you want to tell me what it's for?’

‘I'd rather hear what you hear first.’

‘All right. A room. A few taps. You, I think. Or somebody who sounds like you. Then not much for a while.’

‘What do I say?’

Mara repeated the opening words, hesitating over the rest. She hadn't written the sentence down. Liv didn't let her guess. She said she'd got the beginning right.

‘Is it a test for something?’

‘No.’

‘Am I supposed to find something?’

Liv drew her chair closer. She might have asked a client the same question if they'd sent a hum with the instruction listen carefully. She'd told Mara nothing. Somehow she'd still expected her to understand, without explanation, why it was wrong.

‘I recorded the voice at the guesthouse. I was sitting beside it. I didn't speak.’

Mara didn't answer at once. Paper rustled at her end, or a sleeve brushing a table. Liv looked at her own arms, still on the desk.

‘Then I'm not quite sure what you're asking. I can hear what's on it. I can't hear whether you had your mouth shut.’

‘I know.’

‘You sound as though that isn't enough.’

Liv looked at the small file in its folder. Mara wasn't the one who had to prove anything. She told her about the grille, the woman on the first night, Els at the foot of the bed. She kept the times distinct. She said she'd repeated the words herself at 00:29, after hearing them.

‘So hearing them earlier had something to do with your saying them,’ Mara said.

‘Yes. Not with how they came out of the tube in the first place.’

‘No. I'm not saying it did.’

Liv turned her mug by its handle and kept hold of it while she waited.

‘And the end?’

‘What about the end?’

She didn't want to suggest the zip. Mara wasn't there for a hearing test. Liv said she'd noticed another sound at home and asked whether Mara could listen again later, whenever she had time.

‘I can do it once more in a bit. Then I've got to go to a client. All right?’

‘Of course.’

They agreed Mara would keep the short recording to herself. Liv didn't think a file was dangerous; she simply didn't want her own voice turning up among the jokes in a group chat. Mara said she wouldn't have done that even without being asked.

‘How are the three interviews coming?’

Liv opened the work folder. They'd agreed Mara would check the first listening copies once, at a set time. Liv had meant to confirm it yesterday at the guesthouse. She hadn't sent the confirmation.

‘Willem's ready. Joop nearly. Nine isn't.’

‘I thought I'd have two by now.’

‘You can have them.’

‘I've got until two today. Tomorrow I'm off late afternoon, and I won't be at my screen over the weekend either.’

She was visiting her brother, she told Liv when she asked. They'd already postponed once because Mara had wanted to take work with her. This time the laptop was staying home. She didn't sound as though she was making a point for Liv's benefit. Meanwhile she was searching for her meeting link, saying it always arrived at the last moment.

‘Put the work files in the other folder, will you? Keep them separate from your wall.’

Liv laughed and promised. Afterwards she felt relieved and disappointed together. Mara hadn't laughed at her. Nor could she say how it had happened. Liv ought to be able to bear the difference without offering her one more sound.

She worked on Joop first. The interviewer had asked why a boat could still come in at a particular point. Joop had put something on the table to explain. It landed with a tap. His hand brushed along it. Further on, the interviewer asked him to point again. Liv didn't have to replace what she couldn't see with a confident written statement. She kept the question and noted for Anouk that a short introduction to the old route would help.

A thin, harsh buzz grew stronger when Joop turned towards the door. Liv tried a small adjustment on a working copy, then switched it off. The voice sounded worse than the buzz. She reduced the effect and listened to the beginning and end, not only the part she'd changed. His words still belonged to the same room. She could use that.

She ate before sending the files. There was milk again. She'd gone to the shop, bought only what she needed and come straight back. At the till she'd met someone she knew, who asked whether the house was watertight. Liv said the roof was finished. Was she happy with it? ‘Yes,’ she'd said. Easier to say about her roof than her night.

Upstairs she put both trial files in the agreed folder. She told Mara which parts weren't final and asked her to pay particular attention to intelligibility and the full opening. Then she sent Anouk a short message: the second trial version would follow today, after checking.

Mara replied towards half one.

Willem twice. Joop sounds remarkably like him.

Liv opened the second file. She didn't need headphones. The opening words were Willem's, though the file bore Joop's name. When exporting, she'd reopened the previous selection and simply given the new file a different name.

She closed her eyes. It was fixable; that was exactly why she hadn't wanted Mara to find it. She replied at once, explaining she'd exported the wrong selection. She didn't just send a new file and ask whether that was better. She removed the wrong trial version from the shared folder, left her original material untouched and added the correct copy. Then she played its opening herself.

Joop asked whether the interviewer meant to the left or right of the boat.

Liv listened through the answer. She wrote that this was now the right extract. She didn't ask Mara to find more time after two. Mara had offered until two. The mistake just fitted inside it.

At two minutes to two, Mara rang.

‘You're not going to like me saying you're tired.’

‘Doesn't make it untrue.’

‘And it doesn't suddenly make everything you heard that night untrue either.’

Liv said nothing. She'd expected Mara to take the wrong file as evidence she'd misheard the voice. Instead, Mara said Joop was easy to follow, the lead-in seemed necessary and the buzz didn't obscure his words. She'd send Anouk her comments as agreed, copying Liv.

‘I've listened to the other thing again too. There's a soft scraping sound after the voice. Brief. I couldn't tell you what it is.’

‘A zip,’ Liv said.

‘Could be. Or something brushing the microphone. I didn't see you.’

‘Neither did I,’ Liv said, laughing before she knew why.

Mara laughed briefly too, then said she had to go. Liv thanked her for listening and checking the work. They didn't arrange another sound test.

Els didn't answer when Liv rang. She called back ten minutes later. A van was outside, she said, a laundry delivery. Liv asked whether to call later.

‘He can unload it himself. What is it?’

Liv said she was home, that the night had been reasonably all right, that she'd played the recording. Much more of a report than she'd intended. Els asked whether there was anything new on it.

‘Not new. A sound I hadn't noticed before.’

‘What?’

‘A zip, I thought. But I can't make anything of it.’

Something scraped across a floor at the other end. Els called that it could stay by the door. Then her voice came close again.

‘I've listened to it again too.’

‘To what?’

‘The recording. I washed the cups and put it on. It sounded quieter down here.’

‘Different speaker.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

Liv wanted to ask how often. She didn't yet know why she wanted to know, and asked first whether Els had slept.

‘A bit.’

‘Heard anything else?’

‘Plenty of ordinary noises.’

Too quick to reassure, too vague to draw anything from. There was a knock at Els's end, clearly someone at the door now, and a few words about a receipt. Liv waited for her to come back.

‘Perhaps you could come over again,’ Els said. ‘Not to stay and work. Just have a look together.’

‘At what?’

‘I don't really know. The case, that sort of thing. We did it all in the middle of the night.’

Liv looked at her work list. Mara had no time this weekend. Anouk was waiting for the third trial extract. Her house was dry again; she had no reason to leave it. She'd left the guesthouse precisely because she didn't want another night listening there.

‘I could come tomorrow in the daytime. A few hours, then back here.’

‘That would be good.’

Els answered straight away. Liv asked whether there was someone else she could speak to if she felt unsettled tonight. Roos, perhaps, who brought the bread. Els said Roos started early the next morning. That didn't mean she couldn't ring her about anything, she added, as though catching Liv out in an assumption.

They fixed a time. Liv would drive over after working in the morning. She didn't want the train and two bags again; her car was outside. She'd take the small laptop bag. Her holdall would stay in the hall downstairs.

After the call she sent Anouk the two checked trial extracts and said when the third would arrive. She didn't mention being out for a few hours tomorrow. The commission didn't require her to sit at the same desk all day, but the wrong Willem had been her mistake. She put the delivery in her diary and kept the preceding morning clear.

Towards evening she went for a walk. Her street was busier than the guesthouse's. A cyclist rang his bell and she stepped aside without looking up. Back home she noticed the hall light was still on. She switched it off, took off her shoes and got her bag ready for tomorrow, drive and notebook inside.