Cancelled

Fleur held a hand in front of the paper while Hester locked her bicycle. There was something odd about the gesture, as though she were protecting a photograph from sunlight. Behind her stood a woman with two shopping bags, reading round Fleur's wrist.

'Could someone not have told me sooner?' she asked. 'I was coming with my sister.'

'Nothing's been cancelled,' Fleur said.

'It says it has.'

Hester read the sheet without touching it. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, the organisers were cancelling the planned open day and associated gatherings. There was an apology, a promise of further information and, at the bottom: On behalf of the organisers of De Werf. No name, telephone number or date. The logo had been copied from an old flyer; a fragment of text ran along one edge of the image.

'When did this go up?' Hester asked.

'I got back from the printer twenty minutes ago. I went to discuss the paper. Amir was working at the back door. He hasn't seen anyone at the front.'

'Did you decide this?'

Fleur gave her a sharp look. 'Of course not.'

'I have to ask outright.'

The woman with the bags sighed. Hester asked her to wait a minute. She gave her name and explained that she was coordinating the programme, that an incorrect notice had been put on the door and that she was checking who had put it there. The woman mainly wanted to know whether her sister would make a wasted trip on Sunday. Hester could no longer promise a large programme, but said the final information would be posted where the event was already advertised. The woman copied the website address from the genuine flyer.

'Then put what is going ahead at the top,' she said. 'I'm not reading it all again.'

Hester thanked her and waited until she was out of shot. She photographed the whole door first, then the text. Fleur already had her phone to her ear.

'Jasper isn't answering.'

'Call his co-owner. The foundation isn't the only party involved.'

Fleur scrolled through her contacts. Hester could tell by her mouth that she was searching for a polite opening and gave up. She said who she was, asked whether a cancellation had been decided and listened. Her answers were two noes and an address to send a photograph to. Then she handed Hester the phone.

The co-owner introduced himself again. Hester knew his name from the contract, not from the old group. He had approved no cancellation. Access to the hired rooms and the usual arrangements remained unchanged. He wanted to be kept informed of any safety problems. He asked whether Hester was using the building now.

'For preparations,' she said. 'There are no visitors inside.'

'Let me know if that changes. And let me know first if anyone starts refunding costs on our behalf.'

She promised only what she could report herself. He did not want old arguments on the telephone, and she had no grounds to draw him into them. When they hung up, Fleur wrote the outcome on the back of a proof.

Amir came into the foyer with an empty crate. He had let a supplier in through the front door at a quarter past three. According to him, nothing had been hanging there then. Afterwards he had gone to the storeroom. He immediately added that he had not looked at the clock when he passed the door.

'I can get my delivery note,' he said. 'Then you'll know when the man was here. I can't be more exact than that.'

Hester asked him to keep the note with his own paperwork. He did not have to reconstruct a list of local residents. No one had been watching the front door during the preparations. Anyone could tape a sheet of paper to glass. Even that simple possibility made her angry: it took no special power to cost them an hour's work.

Fleur pointed to the edge of the tape. 'Are you taking it down?'

'I'll call to report it first. One minute.'

Ellen was not directly available. Hester rang the contact number she had been given, said it was not an immediate emergency and explained that an unauthorised cancellation notice had appeared on the door. She gave her location and described what she had recorded. The person taking the call asked whether it contained threats. Hester read out the text. She also explained that the disruption followed their earlier report. A request for a return call was noted; she could keep the sheet without doing anything else to it.

It sounded undramatic. The woman on the telephone did not know who used to have keys here, or who stood to gain from Robin being faced with an empty hall. That did not have to be solved in a single conversation. Hester took her work folder from her bag and laid a clean plastic sleeve on the table.

Fleur carefully peeled off the sheet. Two pieces of tape stayed on the glass. At Hester's request, she slipped the paper into the sleeve, loose edges of tape still attached. On a note Hester wrote who had found it and who had removed it.

'That wording,' Fleur said. 'Unforeseen circumstances. That's how your mother writes.'

Hester had thought the same. She could almost hear Marjan explaining that wording should leave people room to manoeuvre. She also knew how often she had used those words in an event plan herself.

'Lots of people write like that.'

'But she had the old logo.'

'So did the whole foundation. And anyone who took one of those leaflets home.'

Fleur pulled a chair towards her. 'I'm not trying to get her arrested over a logo.'

'Neither am I.'

Hester stayed on her feet. Her hands were dirty from the bicycle and she wanted to wash them before touching anything else. In the kitchen she turned on the tap. Through the ordinary window she saw the yard, the trolleys beside the wall and the rear exit from the side corridor. The towpath gate was closed, not concealed. She thought of all those ways in and out, serving two different times at once in her head. She had to be able to say what was happening today without mixing in everything from 2004.

Her mother called as she dried her hands. Marjan began by asking what time she was coming that evening. Hester had made no arrangement and said so.

'I thought we could have a quiet talk.'

'About what?'

'What's happening. I hear people are ringing each other. I don't think it's wise for everyone to go doing their own thing.'

Hester looked at the window. 'Who told you that?'

'People who know me. That's still allowed.'

'A false notice was put on the door at De Werf. Saying Sunday's cancelled. We've taken it down.'

Marjan said nothing for a moment. Hester heard crockery, metal tapping a plate.

'Perhaps someone was trying to be sensible,' her mother said.

'Did you put it up?'

'What sort of question is that?'

'A straightforward one. Did you make that notice or put it up?'

'I'm not employed by you to put notices up there. Nor do I have to account to you for every moment of my day.'

It was not a denial, but neither was it an admission. Hester tightened the tap; it was still dripping. She could turn the question into a battle that ended with her mother as an elderly woman who had been badly treated. Or she could establish what she had and had not heard.

'I'm reporting it as an unauthorised notice,' she said. 'The client hasn't cancelled.'

'If that's more important to you than how your sister is coping.'

'I'll ask Merel what she needs myself.'

'Yes. I'm sure she'll enjoy that. More questions.'

Marjan did not end the call angrily. She wished Hester a peaceful afternoon and said there was always food. That made it harder to put down her phone, not easier.

Two people were now standing outside the foyer glass. Fleur was explaining that the printed cancellation had not come from them. One woman showed her a photograph someone had shared in the neighbourhood messaging group. Just enough of the logo was visible to make it look genuine.

Hester asked whether she knew the original sender. Not to question him, she said, but so they could get a correction to the same place. The woman forwarded the message to Fleur. It had already been forwarded twice. No one knew who had made the sheet.

They drafted a brief correction: an unauthorised notice had been removed; the programme was being revised; visitors could check the final information on Friday. Hester did not want to write that everything was going ahead as planned. She did not know that, and it was exactly that rush to reassure that had made the old story so useful.

'Can't we just say it was a misunderstanding?' Fleur asked.

'Then people will ask whose. And we haven't got an answer.'

Fleur looked at the photograph. 'The board will be down on me over this.'

'Then I'll send you a factual account.'

'I don't want another account. I want someone to do what they said they'd do.'

Hester let her vent. She had wanted exactly that when Merel was nineteen: someone to stay in their role, because otherwise the consequences were too big to sort out. Fleur took her phone and sent the correction to the woman outside. Then she sat down to send the same text to the volunteer reception team.

Ellen rang back towards five. Hester went outside, where she could tell her without onlookers that neither the client nor the co-owner had made the notice. She described her call with Marjan as a conversation, without calling the tone evidence. Ellen asked her to keep the sheet and photographs available and report any changes in the situation. Was anyone at the building threatening them now?

'No.'

'And the exits are usable?'

'Both. We're only working downstairs.'

'Good. Stick to the ordinary limits of your job. Don't go detaining anyone because you think you know who did this.'

Hester confirmed she understood and wrote down their arrangements afterwards.

When she came back in, Amir was ready to leave. He pointed to the bare glass. 'I can take that tape off on Saturday. I haven't got time to look for cleaning stuff now.'

'Leave it. I'll do it.'

He said goodbye and went through the side corridor to his bicycle. Fleur put the proofs in her bag. Three more calls came, one from someone wanting a refund for a ticket to a free gathering. Fleur closed her eyes, answered patiently and then wrote down which mistake needed putting right.

Hester found a bottle of glass cleaner in the kitchen. She sprayed a cloth, not the door itself, and rubbed the first strip of tape loose. Beneath her thumb the glue rolled into a thin grey thread. Jasper was walking along the other side of the street. He stopped when he saw her, half raised his hand, then came towards her after all.