One Chair Too Many

The stack of folding chairs was blocking the rear exit. Hester set her bag on the bottom step of the stage, took the top chair and stood it against the wall. She had moved six before she even took off her coat.

'Those don't have to go until Sunday,' Fleur said behind her.

'Then let's pretend it's Sunday already.'

Fleur laughed, a short, bright laugh that could once have made a failed funding application sound like a valuable lesson. She wore dark green trousers and white trainers untouched by the mud outside the door. Hester had not seen her for five years. In the photographs accompanying her posts about the foundation, Fleur always looked slightly past the camera, towards a future apparently just out of shot.

'Welcome back,' she said.

Hester put down the last chair. 'Show me the fuse cupboard first.'

It proved a comfortable place to start. A fuse cupboard could be a mess without anyone finding something to say about her youth. Fleur showed her a cupboard in the foyer, where an old bag of fairy lights had been stuffed behind a fire extinguisher. Hester photographed the circuit list and noted that someone qualified needed to look at the loose cables by the coffee point. She would not plug anything in herself to see what happened. Twenty years of events had supplied enough minor disasters to teach her that curiosity was no substitute for a safety check.

The foyer was smaller than she remembered. That was the new reception desk, she told herself. Every bit of space that had once been left around things had acquired a use. The noticeboard had been replaced by a glass panel bearing a silver logo: DE WERF. Where teenagers used to pile their cycle helmets and coats stood a rack with numbered hooks. Through the door to the hall came the smell of painted wood and the cleaning fluid of buildings used only a few days a week.

Fleur led the way, explaining the proposed sale. A company that ran training days was interested. Nothing signed, but discussions were under way. The foundation had permission to hold an open day and reunion on Sunday. A last chance to show the workshop's history before somebody filled it with flipcharts and bean-to-cup coffee machines.

'We're not saying goodbye to the building,' she added. 'We're being careful about that. We're marking a moment.'

'How many people?'

'We're aiming for eighty, spread over the afternoon. Former participants, neighbours, people from the council. But no politicians on a platform. I've already made that clear.'

'Eighty at once or eighty altogether?'

Fleur glanced at the notebook. 'Altogether. I think.'

Hester wrote down the question mark. A row of new lights hung above the hall. The wooden staircase was still to the right of the stage, with the small landing at the top and the office door beside it. The railing looked sturdier than she remembered. She looked no longer than she needed to.

'Upstairs stays closed to the public,' she said.

'Of course. Jasper's using the office for the renovation. It's full of stuff.'

'Then I want that in the event plan. And someone keeping visitors from wandering up there while we're open.'

Fleur nodded without argument. Hester liked that. She had not taken the job for old times' sake. Fleur had contacted her through her business address, they had discussed a quote, and the deposit had arrived on Friday. Four days' preparation and attendance on Sunday; extra work by agreement. A small job, but no favour. A Rotterdam client had just postponed a conference by a month. The gap in her income looked the same however politely it had been explained.

Fleur also wanted to know whether to leave a slot in the programme for Marjan. Hester's mother had opened previous events. Hester asked how long these openings usually took. Fleur looked at her shoes and said five minutes was a sensible aim.

'Then nothing's agreed yet,' Hester said. 'First we decide what sort of afternoon we're having.'

'She has done a lot for this place.'

'I'm not denying that. But whatever you promise her, I have to make it work.'

Fleur took out her phone and amended a note. Hester waited until she had put it away. A small postponement, but she did not want to inherit a section of the programme in her first hour without anyone actually agreeing to it.

They went down the side corridor. The kitchen was in the same place, with a larger cooker and a dishwasher where there had once been a washing-up bowl. Further along, the corridor passed the storeroom and ended at the back door. Two wooden planters and a roll of plastic sheeting stood in the yard. Beyond the planters was the low gate to the towpath. From here the water was hidden; only the tops of a line of willows showed. Hester checked that the back door opened from inside without a key, then pulled it closed.

'How often do you use that gate?' she asked.

'Hardly ever. It sticks a bit.'

'Then it won't be a visitor route. We can use the yard once this is out of the way.' She pointed at the sheeting. 'Who's doing that?'

'Jasper. He'll be here soon.'

A supplier in Rotterdam had messaged about the wrong number of table skirts. Hester replied while Fleur held the door. Sixteen, not six. She knew the man well enough to fix it with a sentence and a photograph of the order. When she put her phone away, Fleur was watching her as though waiting for something.

'What?'

'You've just got straight on with it.'

'Isn't that why you called me?'

'Yes. Absolutely.' Fleur straightened her cardigan. 'I'm just glad it's you.'

Normally Hester would have made a joke then. About her rates, perhaps, or the difference between a warm feeling and a paid invoice. Instead she kept to the question of where the caterer could unload his crates. On the way here she had resolved not to go along with people the moment they started talking about the past.

A rectangular table in the hall held seven folders, each with a foundation sticker on the cover. Seven white cups stood upside down on a tray. Fleur had already prepared tonight's schedule: at half past seven the old group would discuss what each of them could contribute. The others knew Hester was running the event. They had all agreed to come, even Ruben, though Fleur said that last part so casually that it betrayed her relief.

'I'm coming to that meeting as the coordinator,' Hester said. 'If you need anything else, we discuss that separately.'

'It's mainly practical. Photographs, old posters, who's coming on Sunday. No sharing circle.'

'Good.'

Beside the folders lay a thick cream envelope. It bore her name and business postal address in Rotterdam, but no stamp. The flap was unsealed.

'That was dropped off this morning,' Fleur said. 'For you, I thought. There are invitations inside.'

'From whom?'

'Nobody was here when I arrived. One of the volunteers, perhaps. I assumed it was part of your printing.'

Hester looked at the table. All she had ordered for this job so far were digital proofs, still awaiting approval. She slipped her thumb under the flap. The paper was heavy enough to feel expensive without being so: the sort sold in packs of ten sheets in a stationer's. Eight smaller envelopes, each bearing a name. No addresses. Hester Koster. Merel Koster. Ruben Smit. Jasper de Vries. Tessa van Loon. Daan Vos. Fleur Ruiter.

She put down the seventh. At the bottom lay Brecht Boon.

Fleur stopped moving a folder. Hester looked again, this time for a second line, as though someone else with the same name might have signed up for an exhibition. There was only Brecht Boon, in the same black type as the rest.

'Is this yours?' she asked.

'No.'

'Not through somebody at the foundation?'

'Not that I know of.'

Hester opened her own envelope. Inside was an invitation for Sunday, 27 September, two o'clock, De Werf, Vlietdam. No logo. The text promised no programme, only a gathering of the seven former volunteers. At the bottom it said: There is a place for those who are absent, too. A narrow card lay loose inside, bearing a single question.

Who’s saving her a place?

She showed Fleur the card. Fleur drew back her hand without touching it.

'What a nasty thing to do.'

'Hang on.' Hester turned the invitation over. No printer's name, no handwritten addition. 'Perhaps somebody needs to tell us something.'

'Like this?'

A good question. Hester put the card face down. The old hall came back to her, but she brought her attention to the table: seven folders, eight envelopes, her phone beside the notebook. She did not have to decide in the middle of Monday morning what she owed this sender.

'Have you opened the eighth one as well?' Fleur asked.

'Not yet.'

'They can't mean it seriously.'

Hester lifted the flap. Brecht's invitation was identical to hers. The same date, the same starting time. Only the name on the envelope differed. She slid the sheet back inside, noticing how flat she kept her fingers so as not to crease it.

They had handed out papers in this hall twenty-two years ago, too. Posters for a fundraising evening, paper borrowed from the copy shop, a bottle of wine in the kitchen that nobody was supposed to open. This was not a memory catching her unprepared for the first time. She had thought about it at home when the quote came through. On the way here she had worked out that Brecht would now have been forty-four. Being able to turn the thought into arithmetic had helped, until she saw the envelope.

'I'll call the other board members,' Fleur said.

'Ask first whether anybody arranged this. Don't send the photograph straight round.'

'I do know how to be discreet.'

Hester looked up. Fleur flushed. They faced one another with the awkwardness of people who expected their old division of labour to resume without discussion. Fleur managed the relationships; Hester made sure the tables were ready. A reasonable arrangement for the present, until somebody assumed it covered everything else.

'Go ahead,' Hester said. 'I'd just rather have an answer before twenty people start guessing.'

Fleur went into the foyer with her phone. Hester took her own envelope and the eighth, put the other six back, and noted the time she had opened the packet. Then she noted that it was not part of her event arrangements. It looked childishly businesslike. She left the sentence there.

Through the open door she could see Fleur on the phone, one hand over her ear. A van braked outside. Hester heard the tail lift drop and a man's voice asking about a key. The building became a place where work needed doing again.

She took a chair from the stack she had moved away from the rear exit and set it beside the table. It did not match the other seven: a blue seat, a rubber foot askew on one leg. When she realised what she was doing, she let go of the back. She had no wish to perform somebody else's symbolism.

She put the chair against the wall with the others. Brecht's envelope went on top of her notebook, with the programme folder over it. Not discarded. Just out of the way for a moment.

Then she went to the foyer to let in the man with the van. She still had a paid job, a delivery absent from her schedule, and a question to which Fleur might shortly have a perfectly ordinary answer. At the front door she offered Jasper her hand. He looked past her into the hall and said something had gone wrong with the invitations.

'That was quick,' Hester said. 'Who told you?'