One Folder

On Monday morning the gate at the top of the bridge was shut. Vera had seen it from the tram before getting off at the station. A red-and-white sign could be read from the bottom step. Even so, a man with a folding bike had picked it up and only turned back halfway. He came into the café behind her, cross with the steps and apparently with his chain as well.

Yasmin explained where the underpass started. The man pointed to a black smear on his trouser leg.

‘There's water at the basin back there,’ she said.

He looked as though he had expected something else, but went to the back. Vera held the door for him. Then she hung up her coat and set the business folder on the little table beside the kitchen. She had put the sheet with Anouk's appointment time inside, so she wouldn't end up covering the table with something else once it got busy.

Anouk arrived just before eleven, carrying a dark red bag that sagged at the bottom. There couldn't be much in it. She asked for an ordinary coffee and stood by the table until Vera pulled out the other chair.

‘I saw your message,’ Vera said.

Anouk nodded. ‘I didn't have everything with me on Thursday. I only wanted to know whether you'd seen anything bigger arrive.’

‘I took in one folder. I really did.’

‘I'm not saying you did anything wrong.’

She said it carefully, which only made Vera more uneasy. It wasn't the sort of sentence that found a missing parcel. She put Anouk's coffee down and sat with her own glass of water. The business folder lay closed between them.

‘Can I see exactly what he wrote first?’

Anouk opened her phone and found it quickly. The message was at the top of a conversation full of short lines, Vera noticed without reading the older ones. Anouk slid the phone across until it lay squarely in front of her.

All five boxes had been returned. Dorus named the Tuesday before Ria first came in: with Erik, through the station café. Anouk had collected them. The receipt was the proof. No other delivery, the next line said; Dorus didn't want them talking at cross purposes.

Vera read it twice. There was no question mark, no perhaps. It had been written to leave no doubt.

‘That Tuesday?’

Anouk named the Tuesday before Ria's three evenings. Vera turned back through her diary. She had had the freezer checked that day and cleared a space for the repairman. A small square with an exclamation mark sat in the corner of the page. It helped, though it couldn't bring the whole day back.

‘A man came with a folder,’ she said. ‘He was in a hurry. Had to get on. He asked if he could leave it here for you.’

‘A flat folder.’

‘Yes. With a wide flap.’

Anouk showed her the size with her hands. Vera nodded. It wouldn't fit in an ordinary drawer, but it would on the deep shelf above the store cupboard. She had stood it on its side so nothing could fall on it. The wrapper was thick brown cardboard, with a fastening you threaded a cord through.

She heard Yasmin repeating a bill at the till. At another table a child began crying because its cup was too full. Nothing spilt. The child kept crying a moment longer, as though otherwise the incident might not count.

‘I know I signed,’ Vera said. ‘He had the paper on his clipboard already. I read your name.’

‘Did you see five boxes?’

‘No.’

‘Not by the door either?’

Vera looked towards the window where deliveries were sometimes left. It was tempting to picture the whole corner empty of boxes. She could just as easily be making that picture up.

‘I can't remember every moment of that afternoon. But he handed me that folder. I know that.’

Anouk lifted her bag and took it out. Not the big outer wrapper, but the thin inner folder, cut to fit. Repeated closing had rounded the corners of the flap. She put it beside the business folder and kept her fingers on the elastic bands a little longer.

‘This was inside.’

Small proof copies. A man at a door, a cart in a yard, people lifting something together. Vera recognised one image from the poster. She wanted to point, but waited for Anouk to lay the top copy on the flap herself.

‘Twenty-eight,’ Anouk said. ‘One for each selected image. New little proofs to look at.’

‘Not the boxes.’

Anouk pulled the bands back round the folder. ‘No.’

There was no relief in her answer. She had known already. It was new to Vera that someone could receive a folder and still be waiting for something larger. She had assumed that what Anouk came to collect was everything Anouk ought to receive.

Milan came through the back door without his coat and nodded to Yasmin, who took her coffee into the kitchen. Their short overlap for her break was always less orderly on Mondays than they wanted. Somebody had to bring bread, somebody didn't want to eat until eleven, somebody else thought eleven was far too late.

‘Have you got five minutes?’ Vera asked.

‘If nobody orders.’

He stayed standing, tea towel in hand, while Vera described the delivery day. At first all he remembered was the repairman. Then he pointed with the towel to the top shelf.

‘That's where I put the empty wrapper. You couldn't get the fastening to work.’

‘The outer wrapper?’ Anouk asked.

‘Yes. With the cord. I thought it could go. Then Vera said there might still be something inside.’

Now Vera remembered: she had tried to fold the flap, but the cord caught. She had told Anouk to leave the wrapper. Milan had moved it out of the way.

‘Was I still here then?’ Anouk asked.

‘You had the inside bit under your arm,’ Milan said. ‘I came past with some glasses. I don't remember much else.’

‘So you didn't see any boxes either?’ Vera asked.

He pulled a face. ‘I came in towards evening. There could have been an elephant in the kitchen before that.’

‘Milan.’

‘I saw the wrapper. That's what I'm saying.’

Someone was at the bar, purse in hand. Milan went over. Vera watched him go, heat rising in her face as though he had told her off in front of Anouk. He had answered the question, that was all. She had wanted his answer to do more.

Anouk picked up her phone again.

‘I thanked you that evening. Here.’

She showed her the ordinary message. Thanks for taking it in, folder got here safely. Below it was Vera's thumbs-up and a question about whether the outer wrapper was still needed. Anouk had said it could go, but if the cord was intact she could use that later.

Vera gave a brief laugh. ‘The cord's bound to be here somewhere, then.’

She opened the business folder. Old order lists, maintenance notes, scraps that didn't quite belong anywhere. She took out the repairman's invoice to anchor the date. Behind it was a delivery note from a completely different supplier. No receipt from Erik.

‘He took the signed sheet with him,’ she said.

Anouk nodded.

‘I knew that. Otherwise I'd have seen it here on Thursday.’ Vera heard herself and stopped. She went through the thin plastic sleeves once more, slowly. No receipt for the folder. She closed the file.

Outside, two people approached the bridge steps, saw the gate and turned back. One pointed to the underpass sign. The other shrugged. The poster stood between them and Vera, the handcart at an angle, one wheel half out of the picture.

‘Sanne brought this in,’ Vera said. ‘From the foundation.’

‘I've rung her.’

‘And?’

‘She says she's got material from Dorus. For the presentation. She couldn't tell me everything on Friday. There was another appointment in the room.’

Vera wanted to say Sanne should move the other appointment, then. She didn't. She had made Anouk wait until Monday herself, even if she hadn't sent her away without an answer.

‘What was in the boxes?’

Anouk rested her hands flat on her bag. ‘Different things. Not five lots of the same thing. That's what I keep trying to explain.’

‘To Dorus?’

‘Him too.’

The silence lasted long enough for Vera to hear the fridge behind the bar switch on. She moved her water further from the folder. There was no reason to spill it, but she didn't want to get anything wet on top of everything else.

‘I have to start somewhere,’ Anouk said. ‘He writes that everything came here. You say one folder. I came to collect one folder. We don't have to pretend we were both drunk that evening.’

‘We're not.’

‘No. But I keep feeling I've sent a thank-you for things I never received.’

Her fingers covered the edges of the phone. Vera thought of her own thumbs-up beneath the message. One tiny reply now being attached to five boxes, because somebody else had written another story round it.

Yasmin came back from the kitchen. A glance asked whether they would need the table for lunch. Vera nodded: it would be free. Anouk saw and stood up.

‘You can come round tomorrow if you'd like to see the list. I'm at home in the morning.’

‘I would.’

Vera asked about Erik. Anouk had the name from Dorus; she hadn't arranged the delivery. There was no phone number on the little piece of paper. The image didn't even show the top.

‘Perhaps Dorus has the whole sheet,’ Vera said.

‘Then he can show us.’

Anouk paid for her coffee before Vera could offer it on the house. She took the little folder and left her bag open rather than force it back inside.

At the door she stopped. Vera thought she would mention the poster, but she pointed to the man with the bicycle, inspecting the black mark on his trousers.

‘It's a nuisance, a bridge closing like that.’

‘There's an underpass.’

‘I know.’

Anouk left. Vera carried the cups to the bar. Milan looked up from folding cloths.

‘I didn't mean you shouldn't ask,’ he said.

‘I asked you something you couldn't know.’

‘I remembered the wrapper.’

‘Yes.’

He put down the pile. Yasmin needed another bag of coffee beans. Vera fetched it from the store cupboard and looked up at the shelf: two old menus, an empty napkin box and a coil of brown cord. She left them until after lunch.

Before closing the cupboard, she glanced at the floor below. Milk cartons and a crate of empty bottles. No boxes belonging to Anouk. She could see that now. The floor couldn't tell her what had been there two weeks earlier.

She took the bag of beans in both hands and went back to the bar.