An Errand

The next morning Liv was in the kitchen waiting for the coffee when Mara replied. No call: four lines and a seven-second audio file. Liv put down her mug and found her headphones.

In Mara's file she heard the transition she had made the previous evening. A slight jump in the background hiss, then Joop van Dijk began speaking in the middle of a breath. Mara hadn't changed anything, just isolated that section. Beneath her message she had written: it's all right to let people hear that these are two separate moments. As it is, you sound as if you're covering up a mistake.

Liv listened again. She had wanted the join to be as clean as possible, and had made it sound as though everything came from the same conversation. She left a gap, with a short introduction, then sent Mara the new arrangement. Her coffee had grown too strong. She added hot water, tasted it and decided that hadn't helped.

Mara replied with a thumbs-up and a photograph of a child's bicycle sticking halfway out of a car boot. Liv wished her a good day. There wasn't another task to slip in at the last minute.

An envelope from the roofing company lay at the other end of the table. She had opened it, read the figures and set up the payment. Still she took the paper out again. The amount hadn't changed. One item was higher because more had needed replacing beneath the old roof covering than they had expected. She had seen the photographs, heard the explanation, said yes. Calling wouldn't make this bill any smaller.

She put it back and straightened her chair at the desk. Today she had to work on the remaining interviews. The first two voices had lodged so firmly in her mind that she had almost forgotten how much material there was. She opened the list of twelve, checked her markers and added a small cross beside a passage briefly drowned out by a chair scraping. She couldn't extract something she couldn't hear.

At a quarter past ten she stopped for breakfast. The butter was hard. She scraped little curls onto a slice of bread, searched among the knives for a cleaner one and watched the time change on her phone. She called Els at exactly half past ten.

It rang until the voicemail came on.

Liv didn't speak at once. She heard herself waiting for a few seconds, then hung up. Els might be in the shower. She might be out, at Roos's bakery or the supermarket behind the house. They hadn't agreed she would sit in a chair until the phone rang.

Liv sent a message: I'm here. Call when it suits you.

Then she sat with her bread on a plate beside the laptop. She listened to a passage, stopped when someone in the recording began to laugh and took off her headphones. Without her, the laughter carried on for another two seconds. She didn't need breakfast company from a man who had sat at a different table decades ago.

At eleven she looked again. The message was unread.

Roos didn't answer either. Liv heard her own breath on the phone and realised she was holding it too close to her mouth. After the beep she gave her name, asked if Els was still with her and said it wasn't necessarily urgent. She let necessarily stand.

The guesthouse number diverted to Els's mobile too, and after the same number of rings reached her voicemail. Liv ended the call before leaving her own number yet again.

She went to the bathroom, brushed her hair and got dressed. As she pulled on a sock, the phone vibrated on the basin. Roos.

‘She's popped out,’ she said. ‘There's a note.’

‘Where to?’

‘Home. To get food out of the fridge. She wanted to cook it here tonight.’

Liv put her foot down. ‘When did she leave?’

‘Doesn't say. I've just come home to fetch something. She's had breakfast. Her plate's on the worktop.’

‘Is she not answering?’

‘No. That's why I'm ringing.’

A door shut at the other end. Roos asked whether they had arranged something. Liv told her about half past ten. It sounded exactly as they had agreed: an ordinary call, no rescue plan. That didn't make her feel any calmer.

‘Perhaps she's left her phone somewhere,’ said Roos.

‘Yes.’

‘I can't get away now. We're short-staffed.’

Liv said she could go and check. First Roos wanted to know whether she had been going to the guesthouse anyway. No. But she was at home, with no appointment elsewhere.

‘If she's at the back door with a pan in her hands, she'll have something to say about that,’ said Roos.

‘I expect she will.’

They agreed Liv would send a message once she had spoken to Els. Roos didn't ask for a copy of a recording. Liv found her coat, took her keys and left the work window open. At the door she turned back. She shut the laptop down after all. She didn't know when she would be home.

On the way she kept her phone in her bag. Roadworks held her up while a lorry reversed into a drive. A man in an orange jacket glanced over his shoulder and signalled for her to stay where she was. She hadn't done anything wrong, but only relaxed when he looked away.

There was no car outside the guesthouse. Liv stood beside the entrance and listened. Nothing from the breakfast room. Further along the street someone turned a key in a roller shutter. The rattling stopped. She rang the bell.

No footsteps.

She rang again, then tried the handle. The door wasn't locked. It yielded against the familiar weight of the closer. Liv stepped over the threshold and called Els's name.

An open cool bag stood on a chair in the hall. Two containers, a packet of butter, a bag secured with an elastic band. A folded cloth beneath them to catch the meltwater. Someone was still packing it; it wasn't ready to go. Els's phone lay charging on the counter. The screen lit when Liv rang it. Her own name appeared, beside a little photograph Els must have chosen. She hung up.

‘Els?’

A floorboard creaked upstairs.

Liv looked towards the staircase. She couldn't see the far end of the landing from here. As she went up, her hand slid along the banister. She called again. This time someone answered.

‘Yes?’

Els's voice, without a phone between them. Liv only saw her as she took the last few steps. She stood outside eight with one hand on the doorframe. No coat. A dishcloth lay over her shoulder, out of place.

‘What are you doing here?’ Els asked.

Liv stopped. It took an effort not to ask Els the same thing.

‘You weren't answering.’

Els glanced at her empty hand, as if she had expected her phone to be there. ‘It's downstairs.’

‘I saw.’

‘I wanted another bag.’

Liv looked past her into the room. The ironing board leant against the wall, slipped a little forwards. The chairs seemed to take up more space than she remembered. Nothing had been added; a loose chair had been set across the others. The window was shut. A small damp patch beneath the sill had an edge older than this morning.

‘Which bag?’

‘One of those big zip-up ones. In case that container won't fit in the cool bag.’

She pointed to a folded shopping bag on the ironing board. Within reach. Its long zip was open. Liv looked at it and stopped herself closing it.

‘You were going to call at half past ten,’ she said.

‘You were going to call.’

‘I did.’

‘Yes, I'll see that in a minute.’

Els made no move downstairs. She looked past the chairs at the wooden case by the door. Liv could see the brass lever. The flap was where they had put it back together that night. No reason to touch it.

‘Have you heard something?’

Els ran a hand over the cloth on her shoulder. ‘I thought you were here.’

‘Where?’

‘Downstairs first. Then here.’

Liv felt her palm beginning to stick to the banister. She let go.

‘I was at home.’

‘I know that now.’

‘What did you hear?’

Els pinched the cloth between her fingers. ‘That I could put it down there.’

‘What?’

‘The bag. Or the container. I don't know. You said, put it here.’

Liv looked at the bag on the board. At the chair where a coat might have been draped. At the case, so close to Els's hand that she would barely have to reach to touch its edge.

‘I didn't say that.’

‘You don't have to keep saying it.’

There was enough bite to silence Liv. Els took the bag. Its handles came apart and fell against her wrist. She pushed past Liv towards the stairs.

‘I didn't ask you to come.’

‘No.’

‘I left Roos a note.’

‘She told me.’

Halfway down, Els stopped and looked up. ‘So you did check that.’

Liv imagined the landing as Els saw it. A woman in a coat, standing at the top of Els's own stairs, asking questions. She stepped back so Els could turn away again.

Downstairs Els unplugged her phone. Four missed calls, she said. Liv didn't know whether that included her other attempts or whether Roos had tried more often. She didn't want to take the screen from her. She only wrote that she had spoken to Els and everything was all right.

She looked at those last words and deleted them before sending. Els is here. I've spoken to her.

‘You make me sound like a missing person,’ said Els.

‘What would you like me to send?’

‘Nothing. No, send it. Or Roos will be on the doorstep next.’

She pushed the largest container into the bag. It didn't fit. Its rim rested at an angle on the butter. Liv asked if she could fetch a smaller one and was told where to look. In the kitchen cupboard were five lids without matching bases. She set them on the worktop. Els ran her hand through them, then found the right one in a drawer.

They divided the food. Liv held a container while Els spooned out the contents of the large dish: roast meat in sauce that had set. Els explained that she normally made it on Saturdays for people coming back late. Today she had far too much. Roos wouldn't mind, she said. Roos could turn the rest into something the bakery staff would still be getting through on Monday.

‘Why did you stay upstairs?’ asked Liv.

The spoon stopped.

‘Because I didn't know whether you were going to say anything else.’

Els laid it on the lid. Liv recognised the brief hum from the fridge. It began low and rose to a steady note. She didn't look at the kitchen cupboard door.

‘How long?’

‘I don't know.’

‘A quarter of an hour?’

‘Liv, I don't know.’

They slid the last container into the bag. Els didn't zip it at once; she tugged one corner until there was room. Then she picked up her phone and rang Roos herself. Liv went into the breakfast room. Behind her, Els said she was bringing food and her phone had been on charge. Liv heard nothing about upstairs. She hadn't asked Els to leave that out. Still, she stood as if waiting for the missing sentence.

A pile of clean placemats lay on a table, slightly higher on one side where a folded order form had been slipped between them. Liv drew it out to flatten the paper, realised what she was doing and put it back.

Els came in with her bag over one shoulder. ‘I still have to check the stock. Tomorrow I want to clear a few things out of eight. Just stuff. If Bram needs to work in there, I don't want him having to bring Christmas downstairs first.’

Liv looked at her. ‘With who?’

‘Roos. I'll ask her in a minute. If she has time.’

‘I could help too.’

‘You came about a phone call.’

‘I'm here now.’

Els put down the bag. She seemed to want to say something that wouldn't fit between two sentences about food. Eventually she asked whether Liv really had no work this afternoon.

‘I do.’

‘Then you should do it.’

The way she said it, she wasn't sending Liv away. There was a request in it too: at least let me get that right for you. Liv said she would go home first and call later. Els asked her not to fix an exact time again, as though they were taking shifts on call.

‘This evening, then,’ said Liv.

‘This evening.’

Outside, Els carried her own bag. Liv held the door and walked with her to the pavement. The handles pulled at Els's shoulder. She changed hands without putting it down. At the corner she looked back, lifted her free hand and walked on.

Liv didn't wait until she was out of sight. She took out her phone and didn't ring Mara. She opened the thumbs-up message again, closed it and found Anouk's name. The time she thought she would need for the extracts had changed. She needed to say so before people were sitting in a little room on Tuesday, waiting.