The Spare Room

Roos opened the door with an oven glove on her left hand. She raised it when Els tried to hand her something.

‘Not in there. On the table.’

Els had brought a bag of mandarins. One rolled out through the torn opening and over the threshold. Liv bent to pick it up. By the time she straightened, the two women had gone through to the kitchen. She followed, still wearing her coat, the mandarin in her hand.

A hot oven dish stood on the worktop. Roos pushed it back from the edge and turned down the oven with her free hand. The kitchen was small, with just enough room between table and worktop to get past someone if they stayed seated. Els settled without thinking into the chair by the radiator. Her bag still hung from her shoulder.

‘Put that thing down,’ said Roos. ‘You're not going anywhere.’

‘That's what I thought when I got up this morning.’

Roos glanced at Liv. ‘Will you eat with us?’

‘I still have to get home.’

‘That wasn't what I asked.’

Liv could smell cheese and something sweet, fried onion perhaps. She had eaten nothing but a biscuit since lunch. She said yes and hung her coat on the hook Roos pointed out. Two baker's caps poked out of a cotton bag beneath the other coats. On the floor stood work shoes with flour in the seams. Liv took off her own shoes and slid them under the bench beneath the coat hooks rather than leaving them alongside.

Els had unlocked her phone. She searched through several screens, then laid it face down beside her plate.

‘I've diverted the calls,’ she told Liv.

‘Good.’

‘You can check, you know.’

‘No need.’

Els looked at her. Liv still had the mandarin. She put it beside the bag and pulled out a chair, its leg scraping over the tiles. Roos set down a trivet where Liv had almost rested her elbow and brought the dish to the table.

There were leeks and potatoes beneath a brown crust, thicker on one side. Roos cut that side off for herself. She asked whether Els still claimed not to like crunchy edges. Els said it depended on the edges. They slid their plates towards one another without lifting the dish. Liv received a generous piece with a strand of melted cheese still attached.

For the first few minutes they talked about a woman who had ordered a cake from Roos and only mentioned, on collecting it, that none of them could have milk. Roos told the story without doing the woman's voice. That made it worse. Three days earlier they had discussed that cake right down to the difference in colour between the lettering and the icing.

‘What did you do?’ asked Els.

‘Asked whether they were allergic to paying as well.’

Els laughed with her mouth full. Liv had to put down her fork. Roos looked pleased, but went on to explain that between them they had found something the woman could take away. Pastries, rather than another cake. She still hadn't decided which of them had been less happy about it.

The food made Liv drowsy. Warmth gathered behind her eyes. She noticed that she was gradually turning her chair away from the door. When she wanted water, Els reached for the jug before she could ask. The glass was filled and the jug put back. Neither of them had needed someone on another floor to do it.

Only when the plates were empty did Roos ask what they were doing about the spare room. Clean bedding was ready, but there were still two crates of groceries in there. She could shift them now.

‘Don't go rearranging everything for me,’ said Els.

‘You'll be sleeping among the soft drinks, then.’

‘I've let out worse rooms in my time.’

‘That I can believe.’

Roos went upstairs. Els began to gather the plates, but stayed seated when her friend called down that she wasn't to keep running up and down the stairs to pass over one crate at a time. Liv looked at the bag hanging from Els's chair. A soft green nightshirt with a frayed hem poked out. Glasses in a case, a packet of medicine from the chemist, the handle of a hairbrush. She hadn't seen what else Els had packed, nor did she need to.

‘I'll call you tomorrow,’ she said.

‘When?’

It sounded such an ordinary question that Liv almost said, when I wake up. She thought of her desk, the files she would have open, and Els leaving her phone here while she helped Roos.

‘After ten. I want to get some work done first.’

‘Make it half past, then. Roos will be out by six. I can get my own breakfast.’

‘You could have a lie-in.’

‘Tell me that again when I can.’

Roos came back with a crate braced against her hip. Liv stood to take it. It was heavier than it looked; she needed both hands. She set it where Roos pointed, beneath the lowest shelf in the hall cupboard. A little box had fallen behind it. Roos bent, felt around and drew it forwards with a shoehorn.

‘So that's where it got to.’

‘What?’

‘The shed key. Three times last week I thought I was losing my mind.’

Without another word she hooked it on the nail beside the cupboard door. Liv stood for a moment with her empty hands. Roos wanted to get past her to open the dishwasher. She stepped aside.

Upstairs, Roos showed them the spare room. Liv stayed on the landing while Els put her bag on a blue chair. The window looked out over the back of a supermarket. Below the sill the wallpaper had faded. No idyllic room, no perfect quiet. Further along, a lorry beeped as it reversed, and someone raised their voice above its engine.

‘Early on Saturdays, that one,’ said Roos. ‘If you're woken up early, that'll be why.’

Els sat on the bed and tested the mattress with her hand. She said it was good. Roos pointed out the towels and went downstairs. Liv stayed where she was.

‘I'll leave my phone on tonight.’

Els unzipped her bag. ‘For who?’

‘If there's anything.’

‘And if I can't sleep?’

Liv looked at the little bedside lamp. Its lead ran behind the headboard to a socket she could see. She wanted to tell Els to call. That was what you said when you didn't want to send someone to bed with her fear. Already she could see herself at home, sitting bolt upright in her chair, waiting for the screen.

‘Then I hope there's something else you can do here,’ she said. ‘I don't know how much use I'd be on the phone.’

Els laid her brush on the bedside table. ‘No. Neither do I.’

She didn't look offended. Tired, rather, as though it were both a relief and a disappointment that something, at last, wasn't being offered. Liv wished her a good night and left the door open. Els stood to take her glasses out of the bag.

Downstairs, Roos tried to give Liv a plastic container of food. Liv said she had eaten plenty.

‘For tomorrow,’ said Roos.

She put the container into Liv's hands, along with a lid that didn't fit. Three attempts later she found the right one. Els called down to ask where to switch off the landing light. Roos called back that the switch was behind her, not beside the bedroom door. There was a short laugh. Liv didn't wait for anything else. She put on her coat.

At home, the hall was colder than the street. She had turned the heating down before going out again. An advertising leaflet lay between door and mat, folded over until it looked like a narrow white envelope. She pushed it aside with her foot before setting down her bag.

Upstairs, she opened the radiator valve. At first the pipe gave a dry, uneven ticking. She stood with her hand on the knob. One of the roofers had left a small empty screw box on the windowsill. She picked it up and felt how light it was. A size was written underneath in marker. She didn't know whether to keep it, in case a screw turned out to be missing somewhere.

She put it on the little shelf in the hall, then went back to take off her coat.

On her desk the speakers stood the same distance from the laptop. She pushed back the chair and put the food in the fridge. A note she had written before going away was stuck to the door: collect parcel from next door. The parcel was already beside the fridge. She pulled off the note and screwed it up.

Her phone vibrated. Mara had asked whether there was anything she needed to look at before Monday. In the next message she said they had come home earlier than expected; she could spend a little time at her own computer on Saturday morning, then she was going out again with her family. Liv typed that she would put the selected passages together herself. What she needed was fresh ears to tell her whether the transitions made sense.

She pressed and held to delete made sense, and replaced it with were clear.

Mara rang.

‘What exactly do you want me to do with that?’

‘I'll send a short selection. Not three quarters of an hour.’

‘That isn't what I'm asking. Am I listening to the content or the edit?’

Liv turned her chair away from the desk. ‘The order. I've got two passages that both start as if something's already been explained.’

‘So I do need to hear the content.’

‘Yes.’

Mara waited. Liv heard a chair move at the other end and someone in the background asking where the charger was. Mara told them where to look, came back and said she wouldn't be much use beside Liv if she only heard the two cut-out sections. She needed the question before each one, and a little of what followed.

‘I'll include it,’ said Liv.

‘And your notes. Otherwise I'll spend tomorrow guessing what you're trying to do.’

Liv agreed. Mara asked how things were at the guesthouse. Liv could have told her about the afternoon, Els's closed mouth and the voice they had both heard all the same. The account was ready in her head, with all the qualifications that would protect her from the most obvious objection.

‘She's staying with a friend tonight.’

‘And you?’

‘Home.’

‘Good. Send it over, then do something else.’

After the call Liv put the two passages back into the full interview. In the first, the man explained that at low tide the boats sometimes had to wait outside. In the second, he said they had always got through. She had chosen to place them together because the contradiction was so neat. Now she listened to the question again.

The interviewer had been asking about two different periods.

She pulled her notebook towards her. She had underlined always, with an exclamation mark after it. Hers, not the man's. She crossed it out and added a reference to the earlier question. The second extract could stay, but not as an answer to the first.

Which meant there wasn't a neat contrast ready for Tuesday after all. She opened the other interview, found the point she had marked and listened with her hand off the mouse. Outside, a car door slammed. In the recording someone drew a chair closer to the table. The old microphone had made it sound thin and shrill, but the whole question that followed was there.

This man was talking about access from the land. People with baskets waiting for the road to clear, rather than the draught of the boats. She could put the two accounts together if she first told the listener what they were hearing. She wrote two short sentences, read them back and deleted one. She sent what remained to Mara with the longer extracts.

Then she closed the working window. The strange file was in another folder. She didn't have to pass its name to shut down her laptop.

In the bathroom she brushed her teeth as the boiler fired. The radiator downstairs stopped ticking, then started again. Liv looked at her face above the basin. Tired, but not unfamiliar. A little piece of leek was caught between two teeth. She rinsed and laughed quietly, with water still cupped in her hand.

In bed she heard her neighbour climb the stairs. A tap ran; someone coughed. A question was already forming before she knew who she wanted to ask. She turned over and tucked the pillow under her ear.

When she next looked at the clock, more than three hours had passed.

Her phone was on the bedside table. No missed calls. Els had sent a photograph of the empty dish on Roos's worktop, with a message saying there would be enough to feed the whole street tomorrow too. Liv didn't reply in the middle of the night. She laid the phone face down and pulled the duvet over her shoulder.