Not Her Whole Life

Summer drinks was still written on the back of the card. Vera turned it over and wrote photo evening at the top of the blank side. She used a pencil so she could change the time. Not enough people passed on a Thursday to try something; Friday looked better, after dinner. She did not put a date. The foundation’s presentation had to go ahead first.

Milan came in with the outdoor menu under his arm. It was raining too hard to put it out. He saw the pencil and asked whether she had lost another bill.

‘An idea.’

‘Have we got a folder for those now, too?’

‘A very small one.’

He stood the wet menu against the wall. Vera slipped her sheet under the ordering list, not to hide it but because a customer had come in for coffee. Anouk followed him inside. She had the small presentation folder with her and took off her coat before Vera could offer to take it.

They sat by the kitchen door. Milan looked after the counter. Vera had to be back for his break at half past ten. She had made herself a second coffee, although the first was still beside the till.

‘Tuesday’s possible,’ Anouk said. ‘Sanne’s set aside some time.’

She gave her the morning time and Vera wrote it down. Anouk would bring the commission and contents list. Together they would look at the two boxes and the photographs the foundation had taken when they arrived. No forwarding whole files without knowing what they were for. Vera had put it more broadly in her draft message; she changed everything to the mounted work photographs and let Anouk read the sentence. Then she sent it.

‘There,’ Anouk said. She put her phone away. ‘What did Dorus give you?’

Vera took the copy from her bag. Anouk recognised the crop at once. Erik’s number had been added beneath it, in the ink that had skipped the first few strokes. Dorus had shown her nothing else.

‘The same thing,’ Anouk said.

‘I’m going to speak to Erik.’

‘Has he replied yet?’

‘I still have to call. I wanted to check with you first.’

Anouk looked at the number. ‘You don’t need to wait for me to ask about your own delivery.’

Vera felt caught postponing something she had kept saying was important. She had worked behind the counter on Friday afternoon. Then it had been evening. And she had begun Saturday with a card for a photo evening which nobody even knew could happen.

‘I’ll call today,’ she said.

Anouk nodded. She lifted the small folder to put it on the empty chair beside her. Vera’s sheet was lying there, not quite flat beneath the list. The card slid forward, showing the word at the top.

‘What’s that?’

Vera did not pull it away. ‘I was thinking of an evening here. When the foundation shows those photographs. With some people who remember what it was like.’

‘Here?’

‘Not instead of the presentation. Alongside it, more. People could start here, or come another time and tell us something. It needn’t be a proper exhibition.’

She heard how quickly she was making it smaller. Anouk had only asked where. She looked at the time Vera had written in the corner and the blank space for a date.

‘Who’s going to tell us something?’

‘I don’t know yet. Plenty of people were around then.’

‘Have you asked them?’

‘It’s an idea.’

‘So you said.’

A teaspoon fell to the floor at the counter. Milan picked it up and put a clean one on the customer’s saucer. Vera had wanted to look over at him, do something ordinary for a moment, but he did not need her.

‘Sanne said it would be all right to leave cards here,’ she said.

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘No.’

On Wednesday she had offered more space than Sanne had asked for. It had sounded simple then. Cards on a table, people meeting one another. She would pour the coffee. Perhaps they would come back another time.

Anouk left the card on the table. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Nothing now. I just thought you might tell people what was in the pictures. Once you’ve got everything back.’

‘Vera, I don’t even know where it all is yet.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not rehearsing for an evening in your café.’

Vera set down her cup. She had not finished it, and did not want to drink any more while she had to answer. The words photo evening seemed much bigger now than they looked in pencil on the card.

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘But you’ve already thought it up.’

‘I’ve also thought that I don’t want to stand behind a piece of paper saying I took in five boxes. I haven’t lost anything.’

Anouk looked up. ‘I’m not saying you have, am I?’

‘Dorus says it was returned here. On a receipt with my initial underneath. And in the meantime his collection is hanging in my window.’

She was speaking more loudly than she meant to. A man at the reading table glanced at them and back at his newspaper. Anouk laid a hand on the small folder as though she had to keep it from slipping away.

‘Then you want to get to the bottom of that. I understand. But I want my work back. Including the things that don’t fit into that evening. I have to keep asking, as though I’m being difficult.’

Vera thought of her question on Monday: what sort of boxes were they? She had asked because a folder was not the same as five boxes. Anouk had heard it after spending days explaining exactly that to someone who knew what was inside.

‘I never said you had to come and do anything.’

‘Not yet.’

There was no malice in Anouk’s voice. She glanced at the counter, where the customer was pushing his cup towards the edge. ‘That’s why I’m saying it now.’

Vera pulled the ordering list from under the card. The paper stuck to a ring of coffee, then came free with one damp corner. She had not sent the whole proposal to anyone. It was on the back of an old card. She could put it away without cancelling a roomful of people.

But she did not want to put it away only because Anouk was watching.

‘Fewer people come past,’ she said. ‘Since the tunnel. They didn’t all stop before, but you saw them. Now they’re already through to the other side down there before they think of having a coffee.’

‘That’s difficult.’

‘Yes.’

She heard how small it sounded. A business question about where the customers had gone, to someone searching for her entire archive. That was why she had not wanted to say it. It would sound as if she mainly needed the boxes to fill her tables.

Anouk looked at the window. The poster was still there. ‘I had to work on a smaller scale too, because the studio cost too much.’

‘That’s why I thought you’d understand.’

‘I do understand. But my photographs aren’t a signpost to your door.’

It was a harsh sentence, all the more so because Anouk said it calmly. Vera took the card and slipped it back under her own list. Not among Anouk’s papers.

‘I won’t put you down for it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I won’t send round a photograph of the boxes to find someone who knows something about them. I did think of that as well.’

Anouk closed her eyes for a moment. ‘You were going to put that online?’

‘I haven’t done it.’

‘Then don’t, for now. Someone will name a neighbour and I’ll have to explain that he’s got nothing to do with it.’

Vera nodded. She picked up her phone and opened her notes. Beneath Dorus’s address was a line: recognisable corner, ask people? She deleted it. It was no great sacrifice; that was precisely why it was unpleasant to notice how long she had left it there.

‘Erik first,’ she said. ‘He actually made that delivery.’

‘Yes.’

Milan came to ask whether he could take the cups. Vera let him take hers. Anouk’s was empty. He did not look at the card now half under the ordering list, or mention the time. She did see him glance at the clock.

‘Paying someone to cover for you costs money, too,’ Anouk said when he went back to the counter.

‘I know.’

‘You don’t have to fill all your free time for me.’

Vera wanted to say it was not that bad. She had paid for four hours on Wednesday. At the rate she budgeted for cover, that was eighty-eight euros. There were still over six hundred left. She could make time for a few appointments.

Only it was also the money for three days away. She had not booked a trip. She had found a small flat on the coast, outside the school holidays, and worked out how she could keep the café running with Milan and Yasmin. Not in summer, when everyone wanted something, but now that it was growing quieter. She could stay in bed in the morning without anyone needing bread. She had even checked for a proper kitchen, because in a hotel room she always ended up eating on the chair.

That was what her seven hundred had been for. It was not money which would automatically come in again at the end of the month.

She had not told Anouk, because then her help would start to look like a bill. Anouk had not asked her to pay for four hours. Nor had Sanne. She had decided herself to visit the two boxes on Wednesday.

‘I’ve put money aside for it,’ she said. ‘But I do need to agree when I can be away. Otherwise I’ll end up doing half a job in both places.’

‘I don’t mean it as a criticism.’

‘I hear you.’

She put the photo-evening card in the folder with her own business ideas. Not with the delivery receipt. The thought of full tables was still appealing; she did not have to pretend she no longer wanted it. There was simply nobody on the list yet who had agreed to take part.

Anouk took her diary out of her bag. She had not gone with her on Wednesday because she had wanted to keep the portrait commission. It had gone well, she said, no more than that. It had brought her some extra work for the following week, and now she had to be careful not to keep burying the chair under other things. She stood to go home. Vera did not ask to see the photograph.

At the counter Anouk paid for her coffee. Milan looked at Vera about the second cup. She said it was her own, and he rang it up without comment. Anouk paused at the outer door.

‘We’ll go through that list on Tuesday. Then at least we’ll know what’s actually there.’

‘Yes.’

‘And call the man.’

Vera held up her phone. Anouk smiled a little and went out. The rain had eased. She turned up her collar and went through the tunnel.

Vera called Erik before she put the cups in the rack. She left her name, the café address, the Tuesday in question and her reason for wanting to see the form. No photo evening, no whole life story. One delivery and her own signature.

He did not answer. She put her phone beside the till, where she would not miss the notification if he called back, and went behind the counter for Milan’s break.