The Other End

The towel was on the floor. Liv saw it as she put a foot out of bed. She'd slept for several hours without waking. On her phone was a half-written message to the roofer that she apparently hadn't sent. She hadn't touched the main light switch during the night. The bedside lamp still shone.

She picked up the towel. A narrow damp line ran across the fabric. No broad patch, no trail she could follow. The tube behind the grille felt cold. She held her hand in front of the holes for a moment, then hung the towel over the chair.

Condensation clouded the bottom of the window. Outside, a baker's van stood halfway onto the pavement. A man pulled a crate from the back and shouldered a shop door. Liv waited to see whether he could get through before drawing her curtain further back. It was lighter than yesterday.

Already the voice had changed in her memory. She thought she remembered a higher pitch than she'd heard in the night. She couldn't play it back: all her phone had caught was rain and the laptop. She didn't play the minute. There was nothing she could do with a breath that wasn't on it.

Downstairs, coffee stood beside her plate. Els came from the kitchen carrying a jug, switching hands to straighten a chair.

‘Did the baker wake you?’

‘No. I heard something through that grille behind my bed.’

Els put the jug down. ‘What sort of thing?’

‘A woman. Asking if the light could stay on. Not loudly, but I could understand her.’

‘Through the round thing?’

Liv nodded. She'd brought her phone and laid it beside her plate, without pushing it towards Els.

‘A speaking tube,’ said Els. ‘You used to call down to the kitchen through it. No electricity.’ She topped up the coffee. ‘My father preferred anything that didn't use electricity.’

‘Where's the other end?’

‘Not in the kitchen any more. We had that done nine years ago.’

Els looked across at the other table. An egg sat in an eggcup, half covered by a napkin. The bread on its board hadn't been touched.

‘Perhaps he couldn't find his breakfast.’

‘The half-six man?’

‘I'm only expecting one man today.’

She went to the door, listened and came back. Liv cut open a roll. She didn't want to jump up and follow Els round her own house as though they had something to track down. An ordinary voice travelling from somewhere else through an old tube still seemed the likeliest explanation.

‘Could we have a look later?’ she asked.

‘I'll get the plan. Save me explaining something I only half remember.’

Els took a broad folder from a low cupboard beside the counter. The plastic holding the plans was creased. She had to support the bundle with both hands to ease its top out of the folder. Liv moved the empty sugar bowl.

The drawing showed a layout that no longer quite matched the house. A kitchen counter occupied the place where the cupboard now stood. A thin line descended from room seven, bent above the kitchen and forked. Liv followed both ends without running her finger across the paper.

‘There's another branch here.’

‘To eight,’ said Els. ‘The staff used to sleep there. Someone could answer from there after the kitchen had shut.’

‘And now?’

‘Mostly furniture sleeps there now.’

Els held down her side of the plan. Liv photographed the whole line, room numbers included. She didn't want to be left with just the fork and have to ask again which way was up.

In the kitchen, Els tried shifting the freestanding cupboard away from the wall. It was harder than she'd expected. Liv took the other side. Between them, they made just enough room to see behind it. A round patch of plaster was slightly smoother than the surrounding wall. Liv photographed it and tapped gently. Solid. She didn't press harder.

‘So it's closed off there.’

‘There, yes.’

A bag of pasta slid towards the front of a shelf. Els caught it.

‘We'd better put this back before the whole lot falls out.’

They pushed the cupboard into place. The kitchen door stayed open. Els had set an oven timer, and at its beep she looked straight at the dish on the worktop. Three half-loaves lay under a cloth. She picked one up to inspect the bottom.

‘For this afternoon. Roos is coming for soup. She brought the bread, so I'd better not ruin it.’

‘Is she the baker?’

‘She doesn't own the shop. She works there. Otherwise I could ask her for a replacement loaf.’

Liv stepped aside to let her reach the oven. She could hear herself offering advice about a lower temperature for longer, as though a woman who made breakfast every morning needed tips from a guest who'd bought ready-made salad yesterday.

Els took off her oven gloves and looked into the hall. ‘Come on. You might as well know where the other end is.’

Eight's door opened inwards, scraping the threshold. Els gave it a final shove with her knee. It swung along the empty left-hand wall. On the right stood chairs, partly nested together, though they didn't all fit. A broad dark frame stuck out beneath a light, curved back. The rubber foot on one leg was cracked.

‘They don't belong together,’ said Els. ‘But whichever one I need is always at the bottom.’

She left the chairs alone, stepped past the stack and straightened an ironing board against the wall. Three boxes stood at the back. Someone had written Christmas in thick marker on the top one.

The window was open. The curtain Liv had seen from the courtyard yesterday lay folded over its edge. Els eased it inside. The fabric caught for a moment, then came free without tearing. She pulled the window shut and turned down the handle.

Liv could see her bike below. The courtyard looked no larger from above. The grey back door stood open, an empty bread crate beside it. She could see the threshold, but not anyone moving about in the kitchen.

A small wooden case hung beside the room door. A brass lever projected diagonally from its front. Hands had darkened the wood around it. Liv bent closer without touching. In a box underneath lay a loose metal flap, between two scraps of paper and a hook without a screw.

First she photographed the case as it was. Then the box below. Els watched her put her phone away.

‘You're allowed to look.’

‘I want to remember how it was first. Too many things come back to me after someone's had a fiddle to see whether they're broken.’

‘Are they still broken afterwards?’

‘Yes. Differently.’

Els smiled. She glanced at the time on Liv's phone and pulled the door towards her. It scraped again. She had to lift it slightly by the handle to shut it properly.

‘Bram needs to look at that too. I need him for the cupboard door downstairs anyway.’

‘And the downpipe?’

‘I'll add it. Write everything down and he might stay for a week.’

Liv glanced back at the brass. She wanted to ask whether she could take the flap from the box, but Els had already shut the door.

‘We can look later,’ Els said. ‘First I want to know why that man hasn't touched his breakfast.’

The key lay beside the mandarins. Liv hadn't noticed it on her way to the kitchen. Under it was a scrap from a small notepad. Els read it, held it further away, then read it again.

‘Early start.’

‘Wasn't that the arrangement?’

‘Earlier still, apparently.’

There was no complaint about voices. Els didn't let Liv read the whole note, but said he'd paid for his room and might come back for a proper breakfast another time. She folded it into her cardigan pocket. His coffee was the first thing she cleared from the table.

Upstairs, Liv rang Anouk. Yesterday's trial extract was ready, but she hadn't sent it yet. First she wanted to know how much time they really had for the listening session.

Anouk answered with a hurried ‘Go on’, then asked her to wait. Liv heard a door close. When Anouk spoke again, she sounded calmer.

‘I'm looking for a table that isn't beside the coffee machine. No point discussing the sounds of the old harbour with that thing grinding through every sentence.’

‘Would you like me to restore that too?’

‘Only if you can explain it to the people on reception afterwards.’

Liv explained about the extract. It needed the interviewer's question. That made it three minutes rather than the minute and a half they'd hoped for.

‘Can't we just use his answer?’

‘Then he sounds as though he's answering a question nobody asked.’

‘Yes, but everyone knows the harbour.’

‘Willem was talking about one particular morning. Take out the question and suddenly he's saying the whole harbour was already blocked.’

Anouk went quiet. A chair scraped.

‘Send the three minutes, then. I'll have to persuade the others we can't put quite so many extracts one after another.’

They agreed that the first listening afternoon would be a pilot, a selection of extracts with time for responses. Not a presentation of twelve supposedly finished recordings. Three interviews needed to be usable sooner: two, five and nine on Liv's list. The others would follow after the checks they'd agreed. Anouk repeated the distinction as she wrote it down.

‘And Joop's extract?’

‘I'm starting that today.’

On tape five, Joop van Dijk talked about the boats which, he insisted, had kept coming in as normal for years. He could lose his temper with the interviewer, then two sentences later offer him a piece of cake. Liv hadn't chosen the passage yet. She only said that his account wouldn't fit into the same minute as Willem's.

Anouk laughed. ‘Then we won't make that minute.’

After the call, Liv sent the trial version. She waited for it to finish uploading, then went downstairs for water. Els sat in the breakfast room with a bowl of soup. A crustless slice of bread lay beside her. Across the table, a plate waited empty.

‘Roos is late. I'm starting. Otherwise all I'll do when she gets here is ask crossly why she couldn't have come sooner.’

Liv picked up her glass. The bread crate hadn't moved from the courtyard. The downpipe tapped again, more softly than yesterday. She looked at the kitchen door.

‘There's nobody downstairs now who could have spoken to me last night.’

Els paused with her spoon above the bowl.

‘He was here last night.’

‘Yes.’

Liv put down the glass to straighten her sleeve. She'd dismissed one ordinary possibility too quickly. Els went on eating. When someone called ‘Afternoon’ from the hall, she didn't get up at once.

‘She can find her own chair,’ she said, and took another spoonful.