The Left Window

Ivo held the gate with his knee while Vera explained what Ria wanted. He looked at her phone, then at the signal-box door. It already had a new lock, gleaming against the peeling paint.

‘Film inside?’

‘Just what's still there,’ Ria said.

‘There isn't much left.’

‘A radiator guard, I hope.’

He had to think. He pulled the gate towards him once more. This time the catch snapped behind the metal and held. His colleague raised a hand further along.

Ivo took out his phone and made a call. Vera heard him repeat their request, give the location and say he would stay with them. He listened, said yes twice and put the phone away.

‘We can go in for a bit. Don't touch anything. Even if you used to be allowed to.’

Ria nodded. The tin knocked against her knee. Vera took it from her as they went up the steps. It weighed next to nothing, but with the phone and the loose lead, another hand helped.

On the bridge Ria stopped at the chalk mark. She fitted her phone into the clamp and checked that it was secure. Now Vera could see the two rubber ends pressing against the handrail. Ria gave it another careful tug.

‘I don't fancy going after it,’ she said.

She opened the camera and aimed at the bend. The lamp above them didn't quite fit in the shot. She moved the clamp a little, checked, then turned it back. Ivo waited, keys in hand.

‘Inside first?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I just need to remember how this goes.’

She checked the chalk mark once more and took the phone out. At Ria's request, Vera held the tin with the cable in it at hip height. They went to the door together.

The lights worked. One fluorescent tube came on straight away; the other flickered a few times and gave up. Half the room was dimmer. It smelt of cold dust and something dry that made Vera think of paper bags. Ivo stayed in the doorway.

Ria didn't look towards the corner where the levers had been, but at the wall by the window. There was the guard. Vera would never have thought to record it if someone had asked her to film the signal box. She would have shown the windows, the view, the empty space where the controls had stood.

‘You can't see the top,’ she said.

Ria stepped back. For a moment she held the phone too high, checked the screen, then bent her knees. Something in her shoe squeaked.

‘I'm recording,’ she said. ‘He'll see that too, then.’

Vera stood still with the tin. On the screen the guard was a vague rectangle. Ria tapped the picture. It brightened, revealing the flaking edge.

‘This is where you used to dry your gloves. Nothing on it now. In case you think I haven't filmed them.’

She spoke to the phone rather than to Vera. It felt strange to be standing there, as though Vera had walked into a room where someone was reading a letter aloud. Ivo looked outside.

Ria turned slowly to the other wall. A pale square showed through the paint. Four little holes, one at each corner.

‘The calendar's gone too. The one with the ship. I always thought a ship was a silly thing to hang up here, but you said at least it wasn't a locomotive.’

She lowered the phone and looked at the patch again. Then she aimed at the windowsill. The scratch went deep into the wood, with a ragged white edge on one side where something had scraped past.

‘And that was your cupboard,’ Ria said. ‘Not our dad. You've been getting it wrong for thirty years. I was standing here holding the door.’

She stopped recording. Bending down had flushed her face.

‘I'm talking all the way through,’ she told Vera.

‘You can put captions on it.’

‘He always does that himself. Tells me what to look at, or I end up talking about the wrong things.’

She opened the automatic captions and played the clip. Words ran below the windowsill. At the scratch, the text said they had tried to get custard through the window.

Ria snorted. ‘That's a new one.’

She paused it and tapped, then tapped again. The keyboard kept vanishing. Vera began to reach for it and stopped herself. Ria lifted the phone a little higher and found the right line.

‘Cupboard,’ she said as she typed. ‘Not custard. What do you think?’

Ivo looked up from the threshold. ‘What?’

‘Not you.’

He nodded as though he was used to that. Vera laughed and held the tin further from the door so it wouldn't knock anything.

Once the captions were right, Ria went to the left-hand window and filmed the latch. Seeing that she had no free hand, Vera put the tin on the clean sill on the other side, well clear of the lead.

‘Does that open?’

‘I was wondering that myself,’ Ria said.

Vera glanced at Ivo. He nodded towards the bottom of the window. ‘Don't hang off it.’

She pressed her palm against the wood and pushed. It gave a little, more the whole frame moving than the window itself. With her other hand she tried to hold the latch clear. The wood dug painfully into her palm.

‘Leave it,’ Ria said.

Vera stopped pushing. The window settled back where it had been. She fastened the latch and rubbed the mark on her hand.

‘Still the same,’ Ria said. When she turned the screen towards herself, Vera saw that she had filmed the attempt. Not her face, just the hand and the frame.

Ivo pointed at his watch. The wind outside had dropped. They followed him back to the bridge and waited while he locked the door. Ria thanked him. He shrugged, looked at Vera's hand and said he had warned her.

‘I wasn't hanging off it.’

‘Good.’

His colleague called from behind the gate, not from the tracks. He picked up his keys and went on.

The freight train hadn't passed yet. Ria put the phone back in the clamp. Her hands seemed less hurried now, Vera noticed. Perhaps because she had the indoor footage at least. She checked the microphone connection and asked Vera to hold the tin a little lower.

‘Where should I stand?’

‘Just there. So long as the lead doesn't pull.’

Vera moved half a pace to the side. A wet leaf kept lifting at her feet and catching against the bottom rail. With her free hand she held her coat closed.

From here she could see the café window. She couldn't read the poster, only make out the dark photograph and the pale space below it. Milan moved among the tables inside. The dishwasher was open now.

Ria didn't start recording yet. She watched the bend.

‘It's later than usual,’ she said.

‘Will it come?’

‘I think so. But if it doesn't, I've got the room. That's what Bas asked for.’

She looked again into the empty bend. The microphone stayed plugged in. The tin felt cold even through Vera's gloves. She had put on thin ones that did very little; her other pair were on the radiator at home.

First a faint light touched the brick wall. Ria straightened. She tapped the screen and checked the red indicator before taking her hands away.

The locomotive came round the bend. Then the sound swelled about them, along the metal and the walls, until Vera felt it briefly in her chest. The lamp glass trembled overhead. Ria tilted the phone up for a moment, then back towards the train. After that she left it alone.

Vera watched the wagons pass beneath the bridge. Wheels, couplings, a flat steel side with a row of small figures. She kept the tin steady. Ria watched the screen, not the train, her mouth slightly open.

Now Vera understood the spot. The lamp and the disappearing wagons were together in the picture. Only here could you see both what moved above your head and what drew away beneath your feet.

When the last wagon went past, Ria stopped recording. She left the phone in the clamp a moment longer.

‘Did you get it?’ Vera asked.

‘I'll have a look first.’

They went down to the lower landing, out of the wind. Vera set the tin on the step above her feet. Ria watched the recording with the volume low, then played the beginning again a little louder. There really was a train in it. No finger, no haze of rain, no dark screen reflecting only the person filming.

‘There,’ she said.

She selected the two clips. On the indoor footage she checked the corrected line again. It still said cupboard. She sent the files and kept the phone out.

Vera sat on the wide bottom step. Her legs ached. Milan appeared in the café doorway for a moment. She raised a hand. He gave her a thumbs-up and went back inside.

‘He's not asleep yet,’ Ria said. ‘He wasn't the other nights either. Says I keep standing up here freezing for nothing.’

The phone lit up. Ria read the message, then held it out to Vera. A photograph of a hand, thumb raised. The edge of a chair behind it. Then a message appeared.

Left window still sticking?

Ria laughed, her voice roughened by the cold. She typed that Vera had tried it. Another reply came: saw that. Nothing else.

‘He knows now,’ Ria said.

She unplugged the cable, first from the phone, then the microphone. It wouldn't go back into its loop straight away. Vera held the tin open while Ria tried again. The boy next door would have no reason to charge her for a new microphone.

The café smelt of the dishwasher's final rinse. The man by the socket had gone. Milan stood behind the till with his coat on; he pointed at the total on the screen and Vera nodded. They could do the rest tomorrow. He had the usual closing stock ready.

Ria asked if there was still any tea. Vera looked at the clock, already past midnight, then at her phone. It was six minutes less late than the wooden case above the door suggested. She fetched the kitchen stool.

‘At last,’ Milan said.

Vera turned the hand back. Exactly six minutes. Back on the floor, she watched Milan check his own phone and give a solemn nod. He took the last bin bag outside.

Ria hung her cardigan over a chair and this time lowered the tea bag into the glass. Vera sat opposite her with water. She no longer needed to ask who she had been waiting for each evening.

Only after Ria had taken the tin and Milan had gone did she open Anouk's Thursday message. The attachment appeared inside a white border. Part of a delivery receipt, scanned at an angle. Bottom right was a V, with the long stroke Vera used when someone was waiting in front of her with a pen.

She enlarged it. Still her V.

In the pane beside the door she could see the back of the photograph she had put up herself. On Wednesday she hadn't thought of the folder at all. She turned off the phone and wrote at the top of Monday's order list: Anouk delivery.

Then she switched off the café lights.