Under Her Own Name

By a quarter past eight, the kitchen was full of washing-up again. They had cooked nothing special, yet Jip had needed four bowls for three wraps. She had kept the tomato, lettuce, beans and cheese separate because, she said, things looked sad sooner when you mixed them up. Lena left the empty bowls where they were. She sat with her laptop at the dry end of the table, working on her correction.

The first sentence said her name was being unlawfully used to support false records. She read it aloud, very quietly. Jip looked up from the sofa.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I'm trying to find a better sentence.’

‘Don't mumble, then. It's really annoying when you can't hear the rest.’

Lena deleted it and began again: I inspected the property on 6 May in the tenant's presence. Then she described her instructions and the version she had sent on 7 May. Nothing more. The words were simpler. They did nothing to lessen her fear.

She had the original email open beside the document. Sent at 9.12 a.m., with the three attachments she had chosen herself and a short note to Eva saying the report was ready. An insignificant remark about a separate appointment the following week came at the end. It was strange to examine so carefully an email she had once sent without a thought.

In the next section she set out the differences. She had not established that the tenant left on 31 March. She had not concluded that long-term occupation was impossible. Two sets of keys had been discussed during her inspection; she had not checked any later total. Her kitchen photograph had subsequently been cropped. She could not say by whom, or why. The altered version had been exported on 8 May, but the time in the file properties did not establish who had changed the contents.

Then the initials. She had not authorised their use to endorse altered observations or conclusions. She chose endorse, not falsify. That last word belonged to a judgement she could not make on her own. What the initials endorsed in the document, she could explain.

She opened a second sheet for Monday. There she wrote that she had not completed the final inspection because the information supplied as its basis could not be adequately confirmed on site. The incomplete inspection must not be recorded as a handover. She had seen that the living room had been cleared. That did not establish an agreed departure date, a waiver of rights or permission for what happened to the house afterwards.

She had borrowed waiver of rights from Mieke. She put a question mark beside the sentence so it would not slip unnoticed into the final text. Her expertise covered the defects in a wall well enough. The rights of somebody who had lived within it needed care.

‘Is that the wrong report?’ Jip asked.

Lena nodded.

‘Can't you just say it isn't yours?’

‘Some of it is.’

Jip turned down her laptop. ‘Then say which bit isn't.’

‘That's what I'm trying to do.’

‘Then what?’

Lena looked at the recipients. Niels, Pieter, Eva and the records team's general address. Somebody at RietWonen also needed to see that the matter was not closed simply because Niels said they had spoken. When she rang that afternoon, she had been given an address for complaints about files. She had added that too.

‘Then they'll know I formally dispute it. I'll ask them to keep the old version but stop using it as my approved opinion.’

‘Why do they have to keep it?’

‘Otherwise nobody can check what happened.’

‘So you want it gone and you want to keep it.’

‘More or less.’

Jip considered this, then took the empty bowl beside her to the worktop. Lena got up too. In five minutes they cleared most of it together. One pan remained on the hob with a crusted edge that needed soaking. It was not a message about their lives, just a pan you could not clean with a quick rinse.

Back at the table, Lena read the text again. She wanted to write that the false departure date had had consequences for Sofie. She did not yet know which consequences. Instead she asked what actions had been taken on the basis of that date and the report, and by whom. Beside it she requested a record of the versions, the changes supplied and the approvals. She was not asking to see every tenant's details. She wanted answers about the document that bore her own name.

She wrote separately that Sofie had been present on 6 May. That was the fact she kept having to protect from all the words around it. She had spoken to the woman. She did not depend on a box, a code or somebody else's memory.

A message from Eva arrived. Still waiting for the extra information from the project team. More tomorrow.

Lena checked the time. Their meeting had been that morning. She had needed the afternoon to avoid leaping straight from disappointment to accusation. Now the delay was small enough to sound reasonable again.

She replied that she would formally record her original report and the discrepancies that evening. She repeated her request that all emails received, attachments and intermediate files be kept unchanged. Then she silenced the notifications.

At nine, Mieke replied about the covering text. Two brief comments. The incomplete inspection must still be described as incomplete. The sentence about waiving rights could go: Lena could simply say she had neither seen nor investigated an agreement to leave. That was what she knew.

Lena made the changes, shortening the correction by a few lines. She created a PDF headed Correction and explanation of report. No new final report replacing the old documents. In the covering email she explained which attachment was her original inspection report, which the comparison and which her account of Monday. The filenames were long and unattractive. They would still make sense later.

Before sending it, she rang Tom. He answered after a few rings, a satnav voice in the background.

‘Can you talk?’

‘Just dropping someone off. Hang on.’

She heard a car door, a thank you, the car pulling away. She waited for him to speak again.

‘How are things?’

‘Fine. I just wanted to confirm you're taking Jip tomorrow. I've put it in the calendar and told her.’

‘That was already arranged.’

‘I know. I still wanted to confirm it.’

‘Confirmed, then.’

She could hear him smiling. She wanted to tell him it was not only about the appointment. She needed someone who did not immediately want something from her file. Once he would have asked what was wrong after an opening like that. Or she would have thought he ought to ask, and resented him when he did not.

‘There's something at work,’ she said herself.

‘Jip mentioned it. Something about a report.’

‘It's been changed. I'm putting it right in writing now. It could cost me work.’

He did not say it probably would not be that bad. The satnav told him to take a turning. He let it finish and waited a second.

‘Are you sure?’

‘About the changes, yes. Not everything around them.’

‘Then you can't only put half of it right to hang on to the job, can you?’

She gave a short laugh. ‘Suddenly it sounds so simple.’

‘I'm not saying it's simple. I don't have to do it.’

That helped more than he probably intended. She asked if he could drop Jip at home after the check-up if Lena was not back. He could, but could not stay until the afternoon. He would be back on shift. They made no arrangements for days off they did not know about yet, no promises intended to soften some later problem.

After the call, Jip came for her phone charger. Lena told her she had spoken to Tom and the appointment was still arranged. Jip already knew.

‘He texts faster,’ she said.

‘I won't try to beat him.’

Jip glanced at the open document. ‘Are you going to be much longer?’

‘Just send it. Then I'll stop.’

‘Don't say that if you don't know.’

‘I do know this time.’

Once Jip was upstairs, Lena checked each address. Her police report and Ria's details were not attached to the professional correction. Someone assessing the report did not need to know who was trying to contact a tenant.

She read the beginning and the end. The small sentence I failed to check the released version in time remained. It was her mistake. She had almost changed it to circumstances made checking impossible, but that made something sound beyond her control when she had failed to make proper arrangements. There was no explanation about Jip's arm. That did not belong in this file.

At 9.46 p.m., she pressed send.

She sat for a moment. No instant phone call, no threatening reply. Only an acknowledgement from the general address and a message saying the complaints department would respond within its usual timescale. The world did not know she had done something she had dreaded all day.

She saved the sent email and attachments with her other original documents. On a blank sheet she wrote down the unanswered questions. Exactly what had changed on 8 May. When and why more keys had been needed. Where the departure date came from. Whether Sofie had received her messages. Beside the keys she noted that Cor still had to confirm what he could say about his own work. She put no name beside that question.

The sheet looked less tidy afterwards. She decided that did not matter.

As she closed the laptop, she checked her phone once more. She had returned three missed calls from the past fortnight: two clients and a delivery driver. She would not ask Ria to send another message simply to draw out a reply Sofie might not want, or safely be able, to give. Ria had passed on her details. Mieke could be reached. The police had her report.

She switched off the light over the table. In the living room Jip's closed laptop lay on the sofa, the final slide of the station somewhere behind its screen. Lena folded the blanket beside it, left it slightly crooked and put her phone in the kitchen.

For the first time that week, she went upstairs without a folder.