Open in Daylight

Bram stood in the hall with a small tool bag. Still in his coat, he wiped his shoes on the mat without looking down. A white mark ran along his sleeve as far as the elbow. He shook Els's hand and nodded to Liv.

‘You recorded something.’

Liv looked at Els, who raised a hand.

‘I told him you had a recording. Not that you'd play it now.’

‘No need to start with that,’ Bram said. ‘Show me where it is first.’

Els took him into the kitchen. Liv laid the plan on the table without getting between them. Bram studied the corner above the cupboard. Was it freestanding? Yes, Els said, though it was fuller than on Monday. The pasta was on the same shelf.

They emptied the upper section before moving it. Bram put his bag beneath the dining table, not on it. Liv took two bags of flour. One was open, so she held it against her body with its mouth facing away. Els grouped the jars on the worktop.

‘What did you come for?’ she asked Bram. ‘I only asked about the door to begin with.’

‘That's not going anywhere.’

‘Not opening very well either.’

He looked at her and waited until she smiled to smile himself. He asked Liv to take the other side of the cupboard. They shifted it from the wall without rattling its contents. The round plaster patch appeared, paler than the paint around it.

‘That's sealed,’ said Bram.

‘Yes,’ Liv said.

He bent to inspect the edge and tapped it with two knuckles. No little hatch to prise off with a knife. Els told him when the kitchen had been done. Had they replaced the upper ceiling section then too?

‘I don't think so. They put that cable through later, that's all.’

Above the cupboard was a rectangular inspection panel, screwed at the corners. Its edge had been painted along with the ceiling. Liv had seen it on Monday without remembering anything more than a flat panel.

Bram fetched a stepladder from his car. Instead of setting it on the sloping tile by the door, he moved it until every foot was firm. Els kept clear beneath him. She took the jars still in the way and handed two to Liv.

The panel wouldn't simply lift away. Bram carefully cut the paint along its edge and undid the screws. He kept them in his hand until he'd climbed down, then put them in a tub from his bag. Liv thought of the loose flap in eight. Not every detached part was something forgotten for good.

Behind the panel was a narrow service space. No room for a person. Bram shone his torch along a metal tube, followed it to a joint and asked for the plan. Els held it up, but he climbed down first.

‘It turns here. Then this way. That's where the fork goes.’

He didn't mark the old paper. He pointed in the air, then let them take turns looking from the ladder. Liv could see the reachable joint, the branch leading to the old kitchen opening and the route continuing beyond it. This view wouldn't tell her where every hidden length ended. The plan gave directions, not certainty about a whole tube behind a wall.

Bram photographed it with his phone.

‘For later. So I know what to bring if I have to do any work on it.’

He photographed the panel too, then returned his phone to his bag. For now, the opening stayed uncovered. The cupboard stood aside, its door shut by Els so nobody could catch a shoulder on it.

‘Upstairs?’ Bram asked.

Els took eight's key and left the plan on the table. Liv followed them up. At the turn Bram didn't pronounce the stairs dangerous. He put his feet on the wide parts, as Els always did.

She opened eight with the usual little lift of the handle. The door scraped its threshold.

‘It's dropped,’ Bram said.

He inspected the hinges and held the door at several angles. The scrape wasn't hidden: a pale edge showed where the paint had worn thin. Had it been doing this before?

‘Yes. Easier to lift it than ring you.’

He didn't start taking anything off. He checked the screws and entered a measurement in his phone. Could he shave the bottom now? First he wanted to know what the hinge needed.

‘Otherwise I shave your door, then hang it properly, and you've got a different problem underneath.’

Inside, Els moved the ironing board aside. Bram waited in the doorway until she'd made room. The chairs nested against the right wall, clear of the door's swing. Their legs didn't quite fit together.

‘Do you still use those?’

‘Sometimes. That one's really too heavy.’

She pointed to the dark frame. Bram bent without pulling. A light chair had one leg caught among the others. He touched the cracked rubber foot, examined what lay beneath it and photographed the stack.

‘If you want these moved, separate them first. You won't lift this comfortably as one piece. I'd like to know what's here before promising to clear it in an hour.’

‘I haven't asked you to clear it.’

‘No. Then something turns up behind it and you will.’

Els looked at the wall. There was no case behind the chairs. The wooden case was beside the door, reachable from the open part of the room. Liv watched Bram save the photographs and put his phone away. She didn't need a courtyard photograph to know there was a window.

He checked it himself. He tested the handle, released it and pushed the window a little outwards. Cold air came in. Monday's bread crate was no longer by the back door below. Bram shut the window and asked whether it had swung outwards when the wind caught it. Els showed him how. The catch hadn't been properly secured then, he said, but was now.

At the wooden case he lowered his torch. Liv didn't hand him tools he hadn't asked for. She explained what Monday's photographs had shown and what they'd put back afterwards. Bram studied the spindle, flap and lever. Had the flap been loose in that box? Liv showed him the earlier photograph.

‘There, then.’

‘Yes.’

He didn't turn the lever at once. First the arrow, then the flap's present angle. Liv said she'd selected the position for eight. Bram pointed at the connection inside the case.

‘That's that direction, at any rate. Without the flap, you can't shut out the other branch. You've got a length running to a closed end, and it can resonate along with the rest.’

‘She said that too,’ Els said.

Bram looked at Liv. She didn't need him to confirm she'd been right, yet it was a relief that he saw the same thing. It made nothing else clearer.

They agreed on an ordinary test. No recording, no sentence to guess. Bram would stay upstairs and say where he was while they listened below. First he wanted Liv to show him the bed edge in seven. She opened the door. He examined the grille without moving its slide. The cracked paint where she'd pushed it on Monday was still visible.

He asked where the recorder had stood. She pointed. He didn't say a voice couldn't have been recorded there. He said looking at a place beside a bed wouldn't tell him its source.

Els went down first. Liv stayed long enough to take the key from seven's lock, then followed. The jars still covered the kitchen worktop. The inspection panel lay beside Bram's bag. Els opened the breakfast-room door so they could hear sound taking its ordinary route through the house too.

Bram's voice came from above. He said he was in eight. Muffled, with no face attached, yet nothing mysterious about it. Liv also heard a shoe tap the floor. He called again, this time clearly from further away from the door.

Els looked up. ‘You could imagine all sorts from that.’

‘He's telling us what he's doing. That's different too.’

Bram came down and asked how he'd sounded. Els had heard him through the house, a little closer by the open ceiling panel. As far as she could distinguish, the plaster patch behind the cupboard had stayed silent. Sound didn't stick neatly to a route on an old drawing, Bram said. A joint, metal against wood, a gap above a ceiling: distance was easy to misjudge.

‘Can you close it off?’ Els asked.

‘We can take the whole old system out of use if you don't want it. Disconnect the reachable parts, cap each end separately. But we need room here and upstairs first. I'm not doing half a job wedged between your things because you want the noise gone today.’

Els looked at the cupboard, one foot on the grout between two tiles. She didn't move it back yet. She asked what he'd need and when he could come. He'd take the measurements, describe the work and give a price. The door could be dealt with on the same visit. He needed to know the sequence before ordering anything.

‘I don't want more plastering before I know if it's all coming out.’

‘Sensible.’

He went into the hall to measure the cupboard door. Liv and Els stayed at the worktop. The freestanding cupboard was shut, still moved aside so the plaster behind it showed. Liv looked at the jars waiting to go back. She wanted something to do with her hands, but not to begin shifting things directly beneath the ceiling opening.

Els picked up a cloth and folded it. Then held it still between her hands.

‘Can you come upstairs for a moment?’

The voice came from the tube's direction, above their heads. Els's voice. Not from the mouth Liv was watching. Her lips stayed closed; her throat moved as she swallowed.

Liv put down the jar she'd picked up. It clicked against another. Els looked at her, not the ceiling.

‘That wasn't me.’

‘I saw.’

Nothing followed. No quieter call, no laughter. Bram stood in the hall. When Liv called, he turned his head.

‘Have you been upstairs again?’

‘No. I'm here.’

He came to the doorway and found them both quiet at the worktop. Els changed her grip on the cloth. Liv didn't know how to explain without beginning the same conversation about a voice and a place.

‘There was a voice above us. Like Els. While I was looking at her and she wasn't speaking.’

Bram looked at Els. She nodded. He didn't ask them to make it happen again, or go to the lever to see whether somebody had touched a control.

‘I can tell you what I can see of the tube. Not what you've just heard.’

‘I understand,’ Els said.

Her voice was low. She didn't sound suddenly content with less explanation. She put the cloth down and asked him again to include removing it in his quote. Not merely reducing the rattling.

He would. Before they moved the cupboard back, he refitted the inspection panel. Every screw went in. They replaced the jars and left the flour on the bottom shelf. Liv brushed the white dust off her jumper with her palm.

At the counter Bram noted where he'd need access. The tube, the door, the cupboard. Eight would remain storage, no guest. He'd bring the proper hinge fittings for the door. They needed to keep the way clear. Liv heard Els repeat the sequence aloud, leaving her to ask her own questions.

After he left, the front door stayed open a moment. Els watched his van, one hand still on the handle as Liv picked up her bag.

‘I'll go home in a bit.’

‘You should.’

‘What about you?’

Els shut the door. ‘Asked Roos if I could come. She said yes.’

Liv nodded. She didn't want to promise everything would be quiet at Roos's. She hadn't heard a wall speak there; she didn't know its fridge either. A different house didn't need to be proved silent to be somewhere else.

Els fetched her phone and rang Roos. This time she went into the breakfast room, not to exclude Liv, but to ask when to come and what there was to eat. Liv heard her say she had bread. Then came the question of the back-door key.

Liv waited at the counter. Anouk had confirmed receipt of all three trial versions. They would discuss the listening afternoon's selection. Nothing needed solving immediately.

Els came back. She'd go this evening, once she'd packed and finished the usual jobs. Roos knew she couldn't stay a whole week; they'd see about a few nights. Els would still need to come into her own guesthouse, if only for post and laundry.

‘I'll pop over tomorrow,’ Liv said, hearing how easily it came.

Els looked up. ‘We haven't agreed that.’

‘No. I meant I could ring.’

‘You can.’

They fixed a time when Els usually had coffee after breakfast. Not a watch beside a microphone, not a day with a phone in her hand. Liv took her keys. Seven's was no longer among them; it hung behind the counter.

Outside she fastened the coat she'd put on indoors. Els didn't stay to wave, but went back to the kitchen. Walking to her car, Liv saw an open roof window opposite. Someone leaned out to shake a rug. She waited for the dust to settle, got in and drove home.