Two, Five and Nine

When Liv arrived, Anouk wasn't at her desk. She was on the floor beside a cupboard of leaflet holders, her phone wedged between shoulder and ear, trying to shut a cardboard box with one hand.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But if it's at the school, it isn't here.’

She saw Liv, raised her free hand and pointed to a chair. Liv sat with her bag on her lap. On the desk a coffee cup stood on a sheet of paper. A brown coffee mark ran along the bottom of a photograph. Low winter light fell across a map of the coast. Small place names, a great deal of blue.

‘No, don't arrange a collection,’ Anouk said. ‘Let him look first.’

She listened. Her face relaxed.

‘Good. Let me know. Thanks.’

She put down the phone and pressed the box shut with both hands.

‘One speaker to lend out,’ she said. ‘Three people wanting it for different things. Nobody who remembers seeing it last.’

‘It wasn't left behind after the listening session?’

‘No, that one's back. It's the other one. The one labelled “the other one”.’

Liv laughed, realising how tense she'd been. She put her bag at her feet and opened it.

‘I've brought two, five and nine. They're in the folder we agreed on as well. This is the delivery we arranged, not another trial version.’

‘Good. Give me two minutes.’

Anouk got up with a hand on the cupboard. She slid the box underneath, took her coffee off the paper and inspected the brown mark.

‘My own fault.’

She put the photograph on a clear stretch of windowsill and sat at her desk. Liv took out her laptop. She'd checked the files once more that morning. Not listened all the way through; she'd done that. Names, order, three accompanying texts, where the copies were stored. A job she'd been able to finish.

Anouk opened the folder on her own computer and angled the screen towards Liv.

‘Let me check I've understood. These are the interviews we can now give people to listen to.’

‘Yes. The three listening copies. The transfers I've been working from stay as they are.’

‘We're not getting rid of those, then.’

‘No.’

‘Someone asked on Tuesday whether you could just throw away the old noise. That's why I ask.’

‘The noise and the voice aren't on separate shelves.’

Anouk smiled. ‘Shall I remember that answer?’

‘As long as it isn't the whole explanation.’

They pulled their chairs alongside each other. Anouk found the Willem Kooij passage in the second recording. Liv didn't have to tell her where it was; Anouk had a time marked in her notes. That was pleasant. Someone else knew where something belonged.

Willem's voice came from the little desktop speakers, thinner than through Liv's headphones. He hurried over one word and gave the next all the time it needed. In the background something slid across a table. He described their boat running aground in the mud that particular morning. When the interviewer broadened the question to the harbour, he answered more quickly. That wasn't what he meant.

Anouk stopped it.

‘There.’ She tapped her paper. ‘One boat, one morning. And I've managed to close the entire channel in the caption.’

‘I'm leaving his answer in.’

‘That's not what I mean. How do we word the caption? It says, “The channel was unusable at low tide”.’

Liv read it. A tidy little summary. It fitted the space and used no obscure terms. You could understand it without the recording. She could see how it had ended up there.

‘That's too definite.’

‘I thought so.’

‘We could say he's talking about choosing a route to suit the tide. Then the caption needn't decide what his answer is before we hear it.’

‘That's rather general, though.’

Liv looked at the map. Pale blue patches marked the shallows. Someone who'd sailed there would see a different map from hers.

‘What do the people coming to listen actually want to know?’ she asked.

‘How people worked here. Not just when the harbour silted up. What you actually did when you took a boat out in the morning.’

‘Put that in. “Willem Kooij on choosing a route to suit the tide.” Then his hesitation doesn't have to become an answer to a question he hasn't been asked.’

Anouk tried the sentence in the text box. A few words too long. She shortened it, read it aloud and looked at Liv.

‘Willem Kooij on his route with the tide.’

‘Could do.’

‘Sounds as though he took the tide with him.’

They tried two more versions, then returned to the first in a smaller font. Liv enjoyed the fuss. A few words someone would actually read. No sweeping objection that changed nothing about what happened next.

Anouk had another problem with the ninth recording. Someone at the listening session thought they'd heard a name in a passage Liv had left unclear. Anouk pointed to the note.

‘Two people are saying he means that person now.’

‘Did they get it from each other?’

‘Probably. I can't prove who said it first.’

‘Neither can I.’

They listened. The speaker talked quickly, turning away from the microphone, and a scraping sound swallowed the rest. Liv knew the passage so well that she had to make herself listen instead of anticipating the next word. She watched the edge of the screen.

Anouk stopped it and said the suggested name.

One sound fitted. Another wasn't there, to Liv's ears. She knew how easily a few repetitions might make her hear that one too.

‘I can't put a name to that,’ she said.

‘Not even in a footnote?’

‘Then the name's there. People will read it before they've heard him.’

Anouk struck through her note. One line, without tearing the paper.

‘We'll leave it unresolved, then.’

Liv looked at her. She'd prepared for a longer discussion, for disappointment that her equipment hadn't solved everything.

Anouk noticed. ‘What?’

‘Nothing. I thought you'd be disappointed.’

‘I am.’ She put down her pen. ‘But I don't need everything to depend on that one name.’

Liv let that settle. She looked at the damp edge of the photograph on the windowsill. An ordinary harbour photograph, a man looking away from the camera. She wanted to tell Anouk about the guesthouse, more than the practical reason her week had gone wrong. The table, the recorder, Els saying at least she knew what the sounds were there.

‘Everything else all right?’ Anouk asked.

Liv didn't want to launch into an account of it. She wanted to close her laptop without spending the rest of the morning talking about the guesthouse.

‘It's been a difficult week,’ she said. ‘I'm helping someone with her house this afternoon. I'll be home tomorrow.’

‘And the rest of the interviews?’

The question she'd come prepared to answer honestly.

Liv told her how long she and Mara needed for the remaining nine. She hadn't left a spare day in which she might somehow catch up, or counted any evening twice. Tomorrow they'd work out the order together, then she'd send Anouk a brief confirmation.

Anouk opened her diary. She went back to their first arrangement, checked a note and turned forward again.

‘That's later than I'd hoped.’

‘Yes.’

‘I can use these three. I can start with them. But I don't want two different collections and nobody knowing which one's final.’

‘There'll be one complete delivery. These three will be in it in the same form. If any text changes, I'll tell you.’

‘You won't just overwrite the file.’

‘No.’

Anouk wrote it down. Liv did the same. The disappointment was easier to bear now she hadn't immediately offered an impossible earlier date. She still felt guilty as she closed her laptop.

‘You don't have to look like that,’ Anouk said. ‘I'd rather you told me what you're going to do.’

‘I'm trying not to look like that.’

‘Well, it's not working.’

They both laughed. Anouk retrieved the damaged photograph. It was nearly dry, the edge buckled.

‘It's only a print for the leaflet folder. I'll make another.’

Liv put on her coat. In the hall a man approached with a speaker under his arm. A strip of tape labelled “other” hung from the handle. He turned sideways to get past her.

‘They've been looking for that,’ she said.

‘I put it back yesterday.’

He looked at Anouk's closed door, sighed and knocked.

Outside it was brighter than Liv expected. The clouds had parted. She took a detour before returning to her car, buying two filled rolls and a bottle of water from a little shop. At the till she asked for a bag. The woman pointed to a roll beneath the counter. Liv tore one off and pulled it shut crookedly, leaving the ends of the rolls sticking out.

She ate the first on a bench by the car park. Too much mustard for her taste. She drank some water, checked the time and rang Mara.

‘Tell me you haven't moved everything again,’ Mara said.

‘Not again.’

‘Really?’

Liv told her about the delivery. Two, five and nine, the two captions, the whole collection still to come. Mara asked about a decision in the fifth interview. Liv could answer without opening her laptop. Then she lowered her roll onto its bag.

‘You were right. I couldn't just invent an extra half-day somewhere.’

‘I know. Glad you know it too, though.’

A child called in the background. Mara covered the phone and said something Liv couldn't catch. Then she was back.

‘We'll talk on Friday. I have to go. You're still helping this afternoon?’

‘Yes. In daylight. Four of us.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Home.’

‘Good.’

Liv turned off the screen. She finished the roll and wiped the mustard from her fingers with a napkin that had come torn out of the dispenser.

On the way to the guesthouse she passed the sign she'd used to find the turning on her first visit. Its lettering was faded on one side, clear from the other. She knew where she was going now. Yet it felt different driving into the street without considering where she'd sleep that night.

Bram was by his van, its rear doors open. When she got out, he looked up and laid a pair of work gloves on the edge.

‘You're on time.’

‘Roos here already?’

‘Inside.’

‘And Els?’

‘Her too. We'll take it steadily. Need to make some room first.’

Liv took her bag and the second roll. Bram pointed to the water bottle she'd left on the seat.

‘I'd take that.’

She opened the car again. No missed calls on her phone. She put it in her trouser pocket, picked up the water and walked to the front door with Bram.