Eva's Explanation

Eva had chosen the third floor for the view. She always said you could think better above the trees. Downstairs the owner rented a room to a nail salon, whose smell reached Lena on the stairs. A coat hung on the landing that had seemed to belong to nobody for years. Its sleeves were too short for most of the people who worked there.

Eva opened the door with a toothpick between her lips. She took it out when she saw Lena.

‘A seed,’ she said. ‘I had one of those rolls. Come and sit down.’

Two mugs waited on the meeting table. One bore the name of a conference they had attended together seven years ago. After the last talk, they had queued for an hour and a half for a replacement train. Eva had produced a pack of cards from her bag, as though she knew to prepare for such things.

Now three printed pages lay beside her laptop.

‘I've had a look,’ she said. ‘I think some of the fields have got mixed up.’

Lena stayed beside her chair. In the car she had rehearsed how to begin: ask what Eva had received before pointing out every discrepancy. Something else came out.

‘I spoke to her on 6 May. The final version says she left on 31 March. That's not one field getting mixed up with another.’

Eva tapped the pages into a neat stack. ‘Sit down, will you? Then we can look at it.’

Lena sat. Outside, a crane swung above a row of poplars. Somewhere in the building a radio was playing.

Eva turned the laptop. She had two files open: Lena's attachment of 7 May and the PDF from the portal. Lena recognised the names. The original attachment had the address and date; the other ended in def. In the top corner were version numbers she had never assigned.

‘So this is your original document,’ Eva said. ‘And that's the project export. The address, the photographs, those came straight from your inspection.’

‘Not all the photographs.’

‘A selection. We often do that. Take out residents' details. No pictures showing cards or snapshots of children on the fridge.’

Lena looked at the cropped kitchen photograph. That explanation made it harder. She herself had once told Eva that a client was not entitled to a tour of somebody's private life. They had agreed not to leave family photographs and notes on fridges visible in exports as a matter of course.

‘That might explain why the photograph's narrower,’ she said. ‘Not why the house is supposed to be empty.’

‘No. I'm asking about that too.’

‘Who are you asking?’

‘The project team. Niels supplied the occupancy information.’

Eva pulled her chair closer. The toothpick lay beside her mouse, a grubby little thing Lena would not have noticed in another conversation.

‘There's a difference between an inspection and a handover,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the file says one thing and meanwhile another arrangement's been made. You know how it goes.’

‘What arrangement?’

‘For her to leave.’

‘She was there on 6 May. She told me she was waiting for a repair. I didn't hear her say she was leaving.’

Eva said nothing. Lena pushed her papers into the middle. Not the whole folder: just the sheet with her original observations and the paragraph that had later changed.

‘The conclusion goes further now, too. Here it says the condition of the property prevents long-term occupation. I described a localised damp patch. I didn't carry out an investigation that could support this conclusion.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Did you write it?’

Eva looked at the text. ‘I put the documents together. That doesn't mean I decided all the content.’

An answer to a question Lena had not asked. She could still feel the warmth through the mug's handle as she set it down.

‘My name's under that content.’

‘Your initials are under the whole file because your inspection forms part of it.’

‘Not under a conclusion I didn't reach.’

‘I understand.’

The understanding stopped somewhere short of an answer. Lena knew how good Eva was at closing a conversation without slamming a door. It had often helped her: with clients angling for an extra visit, contractors sending photographs late. Eva turned a refusal into something somebody else had to do first. Now that task belonged to a project Lena was being kept out of.

She pointed at the second file. ‘I want to know when this was made and what was changed before that.’

Eva opened the file properties. The creation date was 8 May, 4.40 p.m. The author field gave the name of the software. Lena wrote down the date and time.

‘I wouldn't read too much into that,’ Eva said. ‘Saving a PDF again can change it. And this is the export's version code, not the one for your source document.’

Lena looked up. She had not asked about the version code yet.

‘How does that work?’

‘Each file gets a sequence. Photographs, report, status. There's more in it than just your report.’

‘Can we see the sequence?’

Eva closed the properties window. ‘Not in this PDF.’

‘In the system where you made it?’

‘Part of it. Some of the material came separately.’

She picked up a printout: a diagram of what went into an export. Job details, photograph references, status fields, approval. She had added an arrow in pencil. Lena could see how easily the system placed genuine information beside somebody else's assertion, then let one name at the bottom vouch for both.

‘Who approved it?’

‘The project information? Niels.’

‘And my text?’

‘There wasn't another approval round scheduled for that.’

The answer came more quietly. Lena put down her pen.

‘So you used my initials without sending me the altered text.’

‘You had other things on your mind that week.’

‘That's not permission.’

Eva set both hands on the table, fingers slightly spread. She had brought food after Jip's accident. Not a casserole and a card, just a carton of nasi from the place on the corner. She had sat in the kitchen while Jip slept upstairs and told Lena not to worry about the jobs piling up. There had been reasons to trust her. Those reasons did not vanish because something was wrong now. They made it harder to insist on an answer.

‘I'm trying to work out what happened,’ Eva said. ‘I haven't got everything here.’

‘What have you got?’

‘Your email. The photographs. The export request.’

‘Can I see the request?’

Eva nodded, though it took her a moment to open her inbox. She searched for the address. More messages appeared than Lena expected: subject lines mentioning additions, key records and schedules. Eva opened a message sent on 8 May. Niels was the sender. Lena read his address on the screen, but Eva scrolled down to the attachments before she could read the whole email.

‘This is the extra information for the project fields.’

There were two attachments. Lena asked to see the email itself. Eva scrolled back up.

Niels asked her to include the occupancy status from the new schedule and have the file ready that afternoon. It needed to fit the next tranche. The additional compilation work fell outside the original fee and could be invoiced separately.

‘What's the tranche?’ Lena asked.

‘A group of properties. For settling the project accounts.’

‘Empty properties?’

‘Properties handed over, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘Lena, I don't do their accounts. I supply documents.’

She pressed a hand to her forehead and held it there. Lena did not see a helpless victim of complicated software. She saw her colleague, who had made decisions and was now trying to blur their edges.

‘How much did you get for the extra compilation work?’

Eva looked at her. ‘That's not really your business.’

‘It's a file with my name on it.’

‘A fee for extra work. You charge for extra work too.’

Lena let the comparison pass. An extra fee could be normal. A hurried email could be normal. A schedule of departures could be normal. She could not get past their combination with the false text.

‘Send me this email and its attachments exactly as you received them,’ she said. ‘And the changes you made. Not another PDF with the wording tidied up.’

Eva ran her hand along the edge of the laptop. ‘I need to check whether there's project information in it that I'm allowed to share.’

‘You can't use the project to keep my own report and the changes to it from me, can you?’

‘That's not what I'm saying.’

‘Then I'd like it today.’

Eva had stopped nodding. ‘I'll try today. I've got two more appointments.’

They looked at each other across the mugs. The coffee was cold. Lena remembered the queue for that train, how easily Eva had persuaded four strangers to join their game. It would have been easier if she had never liked her.

‘Nobody can reach Sofie,’ Lena said.

Eva's hand stopped on the mouse. ‘You mentioned that.’

‘And a neighbour who helped her with letters died last week. Behind those houses.’

‘I read about it.’

‘I don't know if there's a connection. But I'm not waiting for you lot to finish your project accounts before I report what's been changed in my name.’

‘Who do you mean, you lot?’

It was Eva's first sharp question. Lena kept her eyes on the screen.

‘I don't know yet.’

Eva did not close the laptop, but drew it back to her side of the table. Lena gathered her papers. She had no proof Eva knew about the disappearance, no proof the payment was for anything other than work. What she had was a conversation in which questions about her own text had been answered with explanations of everything else.

At the door, Eva said she would ask Niels about the occupancy status.

‘Don't just ask about the status,’ Lena said. ‘Ask who established the departure date, and on what grounds.’

‘Yes.’

‘And keep what you've already got. The intermediate files too, and the original emails.’

Eva took the toothpick from the table and threw it away. ‘I always do.’

The stairs still smelt of nail polish. Lena did not go straight outside. On her phone she made a brief record of what she had seen: email from Niels, 8 May; extra compilation work, separately billable; no separate check of her altered text. Beside the file date she noted that it proved nothing on its own.

She saved it before she could decide again that writing about Eva was disloyal.