The Repaired Corner

The photograph arrived while Vera was pushing the empty milk crate under the bar. Her phone vibrated against the wood. She thought Milan had a question about the evening, but it was Anouk: first a picture, then a message. Look at the bottom left corner.

Two boxes on a floor. A worktable leg at the back, part of a chair cut off on the right. The sort of photograph someone took to give another person a rough idea of size. No ruler, no neatly arranged contents. On the nearer box Vera could see a three and two strips of reinforcing tape overlapping at the bottom corner.

She put her coffee on the shelf and rang Anouk back. Yasmin, at the till, pointed at the crate. Vera pushed it further in before answering.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘A photograph Dorus sent round. Tine found the email while she was looking for that old list.’

Vera enlarged the corner. The tape was dull, white where a small part had folded back on itself. She did not know the box well enough to announce that this was it. Anouk's inventory mentioned the repaired corner to distinguish box three from the others. That had meant something different when the boxes were simply supposed to be at Dorus's.

‘There's a message with it,’ Anouk said. ‘I'll send the whole thing. Not just the picture.’

Vera asked when she could come over. Yasmin looked up, not cross, but Vera saw the order in front of her. She promised to finish baking the bread for lunch and leave at half past ten. Back at half past one to cover the usual break. Was that an arrangement or a hope, Yasmin asked.

‘An arrangement.’

‘Good. I'll get myself a sandwich somewhere else, then.’

Anouk had printed the message by the time Vera arrived. Tine had found an email sent before their recent call. She had never responded to the offer; it was among messages from people leaving houses, workshops and storage units. Dorus had asked whether she knew anyone interested in his photographic collection of everyday railway work. Tine had never seen the boxes at Anouk's. She had not known he was offering Anouk's material. In a later message he had mentioned Bente Vos, a dealer who was also looking at it. Nothing said she had bought it. The photograph of the two boxes had apparently been sent to show prospective buyers what was available.

‘She forwarded it because it was addressed to her,’ Anouk said. ‘You needn't ask how Tine got into his emails.’

Vera sat down. ‘I wasn't going to.’

‘I was. Only yesterday. In my head.’

The copy of the inventory lay on the table, including Anouk's description of the repair. She had damaged the box while packing it, she said. It had not worn through or collapsed: she had lifted it by one handle when it was already full. Vera looked at the little folded-back white patch. Anouk remembered her own botched repair exactly. Not just the tape, but the bit she had torn too short and used anyway.

‘That doesn't mean you have to be certain straight away,’ Anouk said. ‘I recognise it. You don't.’

Vera drew the paper closer. The message predated the request for the boxes back. She checked the date again. Dorus had made the offer while Anouk believed he was still making copies.

There was no full inventory attached. Work sequences, negatives with their accompanying sheets, smaller private photographs. Anouk underlined the last part so hard that she tore the paper a little.

‘I expect he said those were “interesting too”.’

Vera said nothing. Anouk put down the pen, left the little tear alone and slipped the sheet under the printed photograph.

They found Bente Vos's shop through her website. Books, loose prints, small collections. No announcement about Anouk's archive. Vera knew the street: there had once been a bicycle repair shop there. She had stood outside its locked door with a broken rear light. Bente's opening hours were more complicated. Shop hours on certain days; archive material by appointment only.

‘You ring,’ Vera said.

‘That was the plan.’

Anouk did not use the speaker. Vera heard her introduce herself, explain what she believed had been sold and mention the email she had received. Then silence. Anouk studied the photograph as she listened, her free hand flat on her knee.

‘Then I'll send the corner and the number,’ she said. ‘And the part of the commission covering those two boxes. Not the whole archive.’

She made a note, repeated an email address and ended the call.

‘She wants to see what I'm talking about first.’

‘Did she say she's got them?’

‘She said she wasn't discussing her purchases on the strength of a phone call. I can find that annoying, but I haven't shown her that the boxes have anything to do with me yet.’

The email took longer to put together than Vera expected. Anouk meant to attach the full commission to remove any doubt, saw the section describing the private material and started again. Vera had her notes ready, but Anouk took the keyboard back. Her own name, the date she had handed over the material, the purpose of the commission and the two box numbers. A copy of the relevant section. The message first asked for the material to be kept safe and for a conversation, not immediate release to whoever appeared at the door.

‘Do we still need the photograph of the corner?’ Vera asked.

Anouk looked at her. ‘That was where we started.’

They both wanted to laugh and neither did. Anouk attached the photograph, checked the address and sent the email. Then she watched the screen as though an answer might already be taking shape beneath her words.

An alarm sounded on her phone. Not a message from Bente: a name and a time. Anouk looked at it and cleared the papers from the table.

‘My client's due. A portrait. I confirmed it yesterday.’

Vera got up to help. Anouk showed her where she could put the loose prints, then fetched a narrow roll of background paper. There was no separate studio now. She moved the dining table, set a chair in front of it and looked through the viewfinder. Vera waited by the door, coat over her arm.

‘Should I move that plant?’

‘It's out of shot.’

Anouk shifted the chair five centimetres. Only then did she fetch a little table from behind Vera and put her camera bag on it. She checked a lamp, then switched it off. There was enough window light for now. She drew the thin curtain, looked again and left it half open.

The client arrived before Vera left. A woman of about her own age with a dark blazer over one arm. She wanted a photograph for her business website. Not too formal, she said, but not looking as though she was on holiday either. Anouk greeted her and asked whether she wanted to try the blazer or start without it. She glanced at Vera.

‘I'm going,’ Vera said.

‘Could you hold that white board a moment?’ Anouk indicated a lightweight reflector beside the table. ‘Saves me propping it up with a chair. If that's all right with you.’

The woman nodded. ‘As long as she doesn't tell me to “just smile” as well.’

Vera laughed and picked it up. The encouragement had indeed been ready on her tongue. Anouk showed her where to stand beside the chair, tilting the reflector until the shadow on the other side of the woman's face softened.

She asked the woman to sit, looked through the viewfinder and directed her gaze elsewhere first: to Anouk's own hand beside the lens. She moved it slightly, then lowered it when the woman had found the spot. A few quick clicks. Rather than examine the screen straight away, she asked whether the chair was comfortable.

The woman shifted her feet. Her blazer pulled crooked at the shoulder. Anouk went over, asked to straighten the collar and waited for a yes. Then she did it quickly, without going on tugging at everything else. Vera suddenly saw how easily Anouk could wait when it was part of her everyday work.

After a few photographs the woman looked at the screen with her. She rejected one because the mouth did not look like hers. Anouk did not defend it. She asked what felt odd, listened and changed the angle of the chair. The next set took less time. The woman let out a relieved breath when she recognised herself.

Anouk took the reflector from Vera and secured it beside the chair. She thanked her and said she would ring if Bente replied. Vera picked up her coat and indicated the hall as she left.

‘Good luck.’

Anouk looked back into the room. ‘This part I can manage.’

She smiled. Vera went out through the entrance hall and fetched her bicycle from outside. In recent weeks she had seen so much that Anouk could no longer pick up, show or put away for herself. Behind her the door closed on an appointment where Anouk decided where the chair went. Out on the pavement, Vera did not reach for her phone. She pulled on her gloves and cycled back to her own work.

She was at the café by a quarter to one. Yasmin took her coat straight from its hook. ‘Still soup. No hot rolls left.’

An ordinary handover, but she watched as Vera took her phone from her coat pocket. Vera put it on the kitchen shelf. A man at the bar wanted two coffees and took so long finding his bank card that she managed to take another order. A train arrived. The passage by the window filled with coats, haste and requests to use the toilet without buying anything.

Only when Yasmin came back could she look. Anouk had had a reply. Bente confirmed buying two boxes from Dorus and asked Anouk to ring that afternoon. At bought, something tightened beneath Vera's ribs. This was no longer somebody's memory of a box Vera had not seen.

She wrote back that Anouk could ring her during the conversation if she wanted. Then put the phone away. At three she would be on her own; nobody had agreed that Yasmin should stay because a message seemed important.

Bente rang the café directly at half past three. Was this Vera, the recipient named on the delivery receipt? Vera did not go into the back. Two people were still waiting for coffee. Could she ring back in ten minutes? Bente suggested five o'clock. Vera looked at the door and the coffee running through, and agreed, provided they kept it short.

Anouk came in before then. She did not order a drink out of politeness. She sat on the empty stool at the end of the bar and said Bente had paid four hundred and eighty euros. For two boxes. Dorus had offered them as a lot from his collection. Bente wanted to inspect them with Anouk on Monday morning, with the commission to hand. Vera could come, since she was involved in the delivery question, but Bente wanted no crowd of interested people in her back room.

‘She says it isn't just a matter of changing a price tag,’ Anouk said.

‘Is she angry?’

‘With whom?’

Vera set out two saucers. She did not know. With Dorus, with Anouk for asking for something back, with herself for buying it. Perhaps all she wanted for now was to keep the shop from appearing online before Monday attached to a story nobody had asked her about.

At five it was quiet enough to ring. Anouk stayed at the bar. Vera told Bente exactly what she had accepted and what she could not remember. She did not present the five-box claim as her own.

‘And you're coming on Monday to explain the signature?’ Bente asked.

‘I'm coming because Anouk wants me there. We'll see the full receipt with the driver on Tuesday. I can't read you something I haven't got yet.’

A pause at the other end. Then Bente said that much, at least, was clear.

Half past nine. Bring identification and the original commission, which Anouk still had. They agreed nothing would be photographed there without asking separately. Bente said nothing about taking boxes home. Vera asked.

‘First we need to establish that we're discussing the same purchase,’ Bente said. ‘Some material has gone on elsewhere. I'm not denying that. Nor am I going to list it from memory while I'm at the shop counter.’

Vera looked at Anouk. She could tell from Vera's silence, Vera realised. Strange how well someone could follow a conversation when she heard only half.

‘We'll look on Monday, then,’ Vera said.

She repeated the last part as soon as she hung up. Anouk closed her eyes briefly. She did not ask how much, to whom, how soon. The questions were there, but she was not going to behave as though Vera was withholding the answers.

‘I thought I might find two boxes nobody had opened,’ she said.

Rain began outside. A traveller raised a hand and asked to leave his bag beside the bar while he used the toilet. Vera showed him a place he could see from the door. A matter of seconds. When she turned back, Anouk had put her coat on.

‘Half past eight here?’ Anouk asked. ‘We can cycle together.’

Vera agreed and wrote it in her diary. Erik was already under Tuesday. Two addresses, two things they would no longer have to extract from someone's memory. Anouk checked the arrangement as Vera wrote, nodded and went out without waiting for the rain to ease.