Twelve Minutes

On tape five, Joop took forty-five minutes to get round to the harbour. Before that came the interviewer's brother, a broken outboard motor and whether anyone from the school still lived in the village. Liv had noted the times during the transfer. Even so, she started listening a little earlier than she needed to.

Joop wanted to get something straight. Without his lead-in, he sounded as though he'd had a whole account ready the moment he was asked. In fact, he first asked which winter they meant. The interviewer couldn't remember the year. They worked it out together, taking a detour through a hard frost which, according to Joop, had nothing to do with it.

Liv chose an extract that kept that question and marked the end. She wasn't going to edit it so Willem seemed wrong simply because Joop talked for longer. Both accounts could stand at the listening afternoon. She wrote Anouk a note explaining why the opening couldn't be shorter, read it back and cut the first two sentences. Anouk hadn't objected to Willem's extract being longer. She didn't need to win their conversation after it was over.

Footsteps sounded in the passage. Liv slipped one earcup off her ear. The steps stopped on the landing, went back and faded downstairs. A little later a vacuum cleaner started. She put the headphones on properly again.

Els knocked just after six. Liv had left yesterday's bread on a corner of the desk and forgotten to eat it. Els carried a bowl on a saucer.

‘Leftovers.’

‘The soup?’

‘No, the paint. For your window frame.’

Liv got up laughing and cleared a space. Els stayed in the doorway as she set down the bowl. The towel was dry now, hanging over the chair. Liv hadn't pushed the bed back; the grille was still visible behind the headboard.

‘Heard anything else?’ Els asked.

‘Just the hoover.’

‘That was me.’

‘I thought so.’

Els looked at the small device beside the laptop. Liv had taken her recorder from the bag's front pocket. She didn't use it for the old tapes, but sometimes took room recordings where people wanted to play audio.

‘Going to sit beside that thing with it?’

‘I want to know if anything else comes through. My phone only got rain yesterday.’

‘Might be quiet tonight.’

‘Then I'll have a recording of quiet.’

Els nodded, though Liv could see she didn't find that a particularly useful outcome. She asked whether the bed was all right where it was and told Liv to ring if she needed anything. Her number was on the card beside the kettle. She lived just downstairs, behind the breakfast room.

The soup was still hot. Liv didn't wait for Els to leave and burnt her tongue on the first spoonful. She set the bowl down and took the bread from the desk. Its crust wouldn't fit inside the narrow rim. She broke it in two and noticed soup on one of her work sheets. Only the corner. She slid it aside to dry.

Later her neighbour rang. The roofers had collected another extension lead from the shed; that was all right, wasn't it? Liv said yes. Her neighbour asked how the work was going. Liv told her about the soup and the quiet street, then asked whether there was anything in the fridge she could use, since she had a key.

‘The yoghurt, then.’

‘That's from last week.’

‘Perhaps not.’

They agreed to speak on Tuesday. When Liv hung up, the last extract was still open. She saved the trial version and entered what she'd done on her timesheet. Working evenings wouldn't be enough to meet her first estimate for the three interviews now. Tomorrow she'd go through the rest. It ought to be possible at an ordinary working pace too.

Towards midnight she unplugged her phone charger. She hadn't looked at the grille again for hours. Now she set the recorder on the low ledge behind the headboard, its microphones clear of the fabric. She left the towel on the chair. She checked the battery symbol and the recording space.

The clock read 00:17 when she started recording.

She switched off the desk lamp. The bedside lamp stayed on. Her work session was closed on the laptop; only the clock at the bottom of the screen remained against the dark background.

Three taps.

From the wall again. Liv looked at the recorder without touching it.

‘Don't close it. Then we won't know where it ends.’

Her own voice.

Not a voice she might have mistaken for hers because she wanted something familiar. She heard the lower pitch she always had on recordings, the small pause before the final word. She wasn't breathing with the speech. Her mouth was shut.

She stayed on the edge of the bed until the recording had run for half a minute. Then she pressed stop. Her fingers were cold. The silence afterwards was no different from before. Outside, a car passed along the street.

Liv picked up the recorder and looked at its screen. The file was there. No need to search. Her thumb hovered over play. She'd just heard the voice. She was gripping the device so tightly that her nail pressed against the edge of the screen. She put it down, took the card beside the kettle and rang Els.

‘Are you still awake?’

‘I am now. What's wrong?’

‘Could you come upstairs?’

A brief silence. ‘Shall I bring anything?’

‘No. I've recorded something.’

Els came in a cardigan over her nightdress, with a different sock on one foot. Instead of shutting the door at once, she looked at Liv's face.

‘Has someone been in?’

‘No.’

Liv moved to let her sit at the foot of the bed. She picked up the recorder and played the beginning. Els leaned towards the little speaker. After the words, she looked up.

‘That's you.’

‘I didn't say it.’

Els looked at the grille. The headboard's shadow fell over its lower holes. She didn't ask whether Liv was mistaken. That made it harder to say what else it could have been.

Liv slid the recorder towards her. ‘I was sitting here. I put it there because a woman spoke yesterday. I didn't say anything.’

‘Could your computer have played something?’

‘It was closed already. The session, I mean. The computer wasn't off.’

She'd corrected something Els hadn't asked about. There was no program playing sound on the screen. She showed her, without knowing what that proved.

Els held out a hand. ‘Again.’

Liv played the beginning again. The little hesitation before ends was still there. This time Els watched the wall as she listened. Then Liv played it a third time, stopping before the file finished.

‘Have you ever recorded anything like that?’ Els asked.

‘Not that sentence.’

‘For work?’

‘No.’

She couldn't go through every sentence she'd spoken in thirty-six years. The voice had come from the wall while she sat beside it. She'd heard it before playing anything back. She wanted to explain the distinction, but Els had already got up.

Liv watched her take the dry towel from the chair and fold it in half. Not a hurried movement. She folded it narrower still and held it in front of the brass holes.

‘We'll block it up, then.’

‘Don't close it. Then we won't know where it ends.’

The sentence was out before Liv could choose her words. She bit her lip.

Els held her hand above the grille. A little thread frayed from the corner of the towel, close to her thumb. Neither of them moved it.

Liv looked from her hand to the recorder. Beside the file, the little screen said 00:17. She turned towards the clock on her laptop.

00:29.

Twelve minutes.

She knew she'd heard the words, then said them. They were no longer two independent events she could join with a straight line. She'd wanted to resist them, and used them to do it. But when the voice behind her had spoken, she hadn't thought of them yet.

‘That was it,’ said Els.

Liv nodded. Her lip hurt where she'd bitten it.

Els lowered the towel. She watched the device as though it might start again. Liv rested her hand on it without pressing anything. The bedside lamp lit the wall and the dry fabric. Downstairs came a brief click, followed by the familiar long hum of something starting up.

‘Where's the other opening?’ Liv asked.

Els looked towards the door. ‘In eight.’

She didn't leave straight away. First she set the recorder on the desk and put the towel beside it. Liv stood, felt the cold floor through her socks, and put on her shoes.