The Cost of the Past

Jasper did not say he had seen the cancellation. He asked why she was polishing the door when there was more important work to do. Hester kept him waiting until the second strip of tape was off the glass. Then she held up the cloth.

'Because otherwise a cancellation stays where our programme belongs.'

'I heard it wasn't going ahead.'

'From whom?'

'Fleur sent a message.'

'Fleur said an unauthorised notice had been removed.'

He nodded as though the difference did not matter. Hester went inside and put the bottle on the counter. Fleur had just gone to the printer to look at an alternative panel. They were not spending money again without knowing what could be supplied. Jasper looked at the rolled fabric on the trestles.

'More money down the drain.'

'The banner isn't being thrown away. It isn't being used.'

'I'm sure we'll find something lovely to do with the money.'

He went to the door between the foyer and the hall and held it open for her, though she had not yet decided to go with him. She picked up her folder and followed. They had to have this conversation. There were lists for tomorrow, a co-owner who wanted facts, and a man quite willing to confront her with the cost of changing things now, but unwilling to say what he knew about the last changes.

The three empty panels were now in their new positions in the hall. Jasper pushed two fingers against the edge of the first, testing its stability, and said it would do. Hester asked him to leave it alone until the feet were in their final positions.

'You talk to me as if I've never been here before.'

'You're pushing something that isn't secured yet.'

He lowered his hand. They sat at the long table. He had brought a thick envelope of suppliers' bills. They were not for her, he said at once. His co-owner had questions about expenses Jasper had paid upfront. Hester pulled up a chair so he could put the papers somewhere dry; her cloth had left a wet mark on the tabletop.

'I spoke to him about the notice,' she said.

'He told me. He also said you were quite worried.'

'I was establishing whether it came from the organisers. It didn't.'

'Do you know what uncertainty over Sunday does to a conversation about a sale?'

'No. That's your job.'

He looked up. Her leaving him the responsibility without a fight visibly threw him. He sorted three invoices by date, putting the largest underneath.

'It's your job too, to make this a normal gathering.'

'A gathering that can go ahead without selling people a false programme.'

'Then you keep it small. A look back, coffee, send people home. Not a tribunal.'

'Who's talking about a tribunal?'

'You know what I mean.'

'I know you put pressure on Ruben. That's not the same as revising a programme.'

Jasper glanced towards the entrance. 'Of course he's told you everything.'

'What he told me was his choice. What you did was yours.'

'I told him not to go spouting the same crap everywhere. It's not a crime in three acts.'

Hester did not open her folder. She did not want this to look like an interview with notes he had to talk his way round. 'Then tell him that yourself. And leave him alone from now on.'

He rubbed his eyebrow, a quick movement she remembered from years ago. Jasper's face had always acquired an irritated crease when a job needed doing twice. Marjan would pat his shoulder and tell him he was the only one who could do it properly. He would smile then, usually. Hester wondered whether he had ever been paid for it.

'Who loosened the railing back then?' she asked.

His hand stayed where it was. 'I did. The scenery couldn't get past the stairs otherwise.'

'And why did it stay loose?'

'Because there was more to take up. Because everyone wanted something from me at once. Because I was a twenty-four-year-old idiot who thought he'd finish it later. Want to pick one?'

'I want to know what you know.'

He looked at the wooden stairs. Their surface had been sanded and varnished again in the years since.

'It was unsafe,' he said. 'I know that. I knew it then. I should have cordoned it off. I'm not proud of that work.'

'Did anyone tell you that was why Brecht fell?'

'That was what people said.'

'Who?'

'Your mother. Then everyone.'

Convenient, Hester thought. 'Everyone' gave her no one she could question. She remembered the word accident being used in all sorts of ways that very evening. She no longer knew who had first said it in her presence. She asked what Jasper himself had seen.

He looked straight at her now. 'Not the fall.'

'Where were you?'

'Downstairs. Dealing with stuff. You'll want an exact spot, no doubt, but I haven't got one for you.'

Hester waited. He took a key from his trouser pocket and laid it beside the invoices. The key belonged to the building as it was now; it said nothing about back then, yet the gesture still had an edge of defiance. He owned part of the place where she was asking questions.

'We could do something with the railing,' he said. 'In the programme. Say the work was unsafe at the time and we regret that. Not go through the whole story again. I can take responsibility for that. I had a part in it.'

'What you can take responsibility for isn't the whole story.'

'But it's true.'

'Part of it can be true and still be used to stop anyone asking about the rest.'

Jasper looked past her at the stage. 'I could have seen you coming when Fleur mentioned your name. Still wanting to straighten everything out. As if that doesn't hurt anyone.'

She could have told him how long she had left things crooked because it suited her. She did not. She would have that conversation with the people who had heard the lie, not use it as an argument to get an answer out of Jasper.

'You don't need to come up with a story for my benefit,' she said. 'Tell Ellen what you did and saw yourself. She has to assess what it means.'

'You've mentioned my name?'

'I told her about the pressure on Ruben. I haven't given an account of your work back then, because I didn't have one.'

He picked up his key. Outside, a lorry drove over a manhole cover. The metal rang through the hall. Jasper did not flinch, but he turned, and Hester wondered how many ordinary sounds this week had already become comparisons with the bang that evening.

'I have a family too,' he said.

She knew. She had glimpsed a photograph of his daughter at her graduation on his phone's home screen. His pride had seemed genuine. She could not use that to diminish him. Nor could he use it to keep everything he had done out of sight.

'Then tell them what you want to tell them. I won't approach them.'

'Easy for you to say.'

'No.'

He left the invoices and stood up. He wanted a cigarette outside. Hester said she had another message to write and he could use the front door. The yard was not out of bounds, but she did not want him turning their conversation into an evasive tour with her following behind.

Once he was outside, his co-owner called. He wanted to know whether the large panels could be stored with a foot folded in after Sunday. He needed photographs of the hall for another hirer. Hester gave him the practical information and said a smaller programme was being prepared. He asked whether Jasper knew. She said they had just been discussing it.

'We can decide about the hire,' he said. 'I want that clear. I'm not asking anyone to investigate a private history for the sale documents.'

'I haven't taken that on either.'

He mentioned an appointment on Friday when he and Jasper would go through the insurance papers. Hester asked whether the venue plan could continue to exclude public access to the stairs explicitly. It could, he said. They confirmed it by email.

When Jasper came back, his invoices were still in the same order. He seemed almost disappointed. She said Sunday's plan would remain on the ground floor and upstairs would not open to visitors.

'There's nothing to see up there,' he said.

'Then no one will miss anything.'

He sat down and picked up the envelope. 'If you tell people something, tell them we all worked for this place. Don't make it sound as if one person did the work and the rest stood watching.'

'Brecht wrote that she wasn't paid for everything.'

'Neither was I.'

'That still doesn't make her design someone else's.'

He closed the envelope flap. Hester saw him consider an answer and reject it. For a moment she thought he would say something about the stairs, a detail he had skipped. Instead he asked whether Fleur needed another worker on Saturday. He could ask someone from his crew.

'Only through the existing schedule,' Hester said. 'I'm not taking anyone on who doesn't know what's open here and what isn't.'

'I'm trying to help.'

'Then send Fleur a name and available hours.'

He walked with her to the foyer. There he collected the coat he had left over the counter. He stopped by the door where the cancellation sheet had hung. A clear rectangle showed on the glass among the smears.

'Your mother really doesn't want things going wrong again,' he said.

'Has she told you that?'

'You don't need a degree to work it out.'

The answer said nothing about who had spoken. Hester opened the door without asking again. He went to his van, looked at his phone and drove away only after typing a message.

An email from the printer arrived. The new captions had been received; the delivery could go ahead. Fleur had copied Hester in. Beneath her brief confirmation was a note that no further banner was required. She had not been able to undo the old order, only stop the next mistake.

Hester sat at the table and opened her timesheet. She did not put the conversation with Jasper down as a technical discussion. She wrote what it had meant for the job: risk and programme. The words looked too tidy for what they had done, but it was not a police statement. Not every sheet of paper had to bear the whole truth.

Then she wrote a message to the seven people who had sat at the table on Monday, adding Marjan separately. That evening she would put right something she herself had said. It was not a meeting Fleur had commissioned. Attendance was not compulsory. They could find her at De Werf at eight; anyone who could not come would receive the same text directly. She reread it before sending and deleted the sentence saying she hoped everyone could be understanding.

Ruben was the first to reply. He would not come. Not out of ill will, he wrote, but because he did not want to sit beside people a second time listening to the old suspicion about himself. Hester typed that she understood. When she put down her phone, the chair opposite was still tucked in. She did not pull it out ready.