A Good Reason Isn't Proof

On Tuesday morning, Sam came downstairs carrying a sheet of paper covered in crossed-out sentences.

“Can you read something?” he asked.

I was making toast. The first slice had burned at one edge because the toaster had two settings: bread and archaeological sample.

“What is it?”

“A letter to Judith.”

He put it on the table and stood beside the fridge, not sitting, as if he wanted to preserve the option of taking it back.

I read the first paragraph. It began I would like to apologise for the incident and got worse from there.

“Did you write this?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“I looked up how to start.”

“I can tell.”

He folded his arms.

“If you're just going to take the piss—”

“I'm not. It's just you don't say incident. You say the camera.”

He looked at the page.

I read the rest. Under the formal beginning, he had written that he knew he had damaged trust, that he would repay what he owed and cooperate with getting the camera returned. He had also written that he had been desperate, then crossed it out so hard the paper had nearly torn.

“Why did you take that out?” I asked.

“Sounds like an excuse.”

“It can be true and still not be enough.”

Sam looked at me with tired amusement.

“Have you been living in a room full of sensible adults?”

“Against my will.”

He sat down.

I slid the letter back to him.

“Write what you did. Write what you'll do next. Don't make her tell you you're a good person.”

He nodded slowly.

“That last bit's the hard part.”

“I know.”

The toast sprang up behind me. I scraped the black edge over the sink and put two slices on a plate between us.

Sam picked up the less burned one, saw me looking and exchanged it for the other.

“Growth,” he said.

“Tiny growth.”

He smiled, then grew serious again.

“They've got the camera back.”

I stopped buttering my toast.

“The backup?”

“Yes. Dex told them where he took it. The shop kept the record. I don't know all the details.”

“Is it damaged?”

“I don't think so.”

“That's something.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the letter. “They also checked the petrol station. There's a camera outside. It shows us there.”

“When?”

“During the time I said. I don't know exactly what they can see. The officer didn't show me.”

I felt a rush of relief so strong it made me angry.

“Why didn't you tell me last night?”

“They only rang this morning.”

“Oh.”

“And it doesn't make the stealing go away.”

“No.”

He looked at me carefully.

“Don't put it online.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

I had been. Not a long post, just one satisfying sentence. Something that would make the people in the group chat feel stupid for having enjoyed suspicion so much.

“They've checked part of what I said,” Sam continued. “That's what I know. I don't want you turning it into more.”

I put the knife down.

“All right.”

He took a bite of toast, winced at the burned part and kept chewing.

“Have you told them about the argument you heard?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“I wrote down the bits I remembered. They asked questions. That's all I'm telling you, before we do the thing again.”

I nodded.

We ate without speaking for a few minutes. Then Sam asked whether he should mention in the letter that he understood he couldn't keep working at the centre.

“Have they told you that?”

“Judith said there won't be any shifts while it's closed. And after, she can't promise anything.”

“Then say you understand there are consequences. Don't fire yourself for her.”

He looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You're good at this when it's somebody else's life.”

I almost made a joke. Instead I said, “So are most people.”

At college, the photograph was still in reception, but there were more flowers now. Somebody had left a small drawing of a pigeon in a crown. Not Alice's. A copy made by someone who knew enough of Rowan to know what it meant.

I found myself less angry with it than I expected.

The first lesson was English. Our teacher had abandoned the planned exercise about credibility and brought a short story nobody had to discuss unless they wanted to. We read in silence. A boy at the back fell asleep with his forehead against his hand. The teacher let him.

Afterwards, Finn caught up with me in the corridor.

“Can we talk?”

I stopped beside the lockers.

“About yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

He looked over my shoulder at a group coming through the doors, then moved towards the quieter end of the corridor. I followed him as far as the noticeboard.

“I shouldn't have said you acted like nobody else knew Rowan,” he said.

“You weren't entirely wrong.”

“Still.”

I waited.

“I keep saying the wrong thing. Mum keeps asking me to help with arrangements, and everyone wants to know what happened, and I don't know. I don't know anything.”

He looked exhausted. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and he had bitten the skin beside one thumbnail raw. I noticed because he kept hiding that hand in his pocket.

“I don't either,” I said.

“I know.”

For a moment we stood in the ordinary closeness of two people who had shared too many childhood afternoons to need a formal reconciliation.

Then Finn said, “Did they find anything on the camera Sam took?”

I looked at him.

“How do you know they got it back?”

“Judith told Mum.”

“Oh.”

It was a reasonable answer. His mother did seem to exist at the meeting point of every piece of information in town.

“It wasn't recording,” I said. “It was the backup.”

“Right. Of course.”

“You knew that.”

“I know. I'm not thinking.”

He leaned against the wall beneath a poster advertising revision workshops that now seemed to belong to a much less complicated universe.

“I keep wishing we'd just had a normal Friday,” he said.

“We did. For most of it.”

“That makes it worse.”

I understood what he meant. A whole night could contain a terrible thing without changing the way the rest of it looked. People still bought drinks. Someone still complained about the raffle prizes. I had been annoyed with a keyboard player while Rowan was somewhere beyond the camera's narrow view.

Finn rubbed his face.

“Anyway. I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

He nodded and pushed away from the wall.

“See you later, Bee.”

I watched him go, then turned towards the art room.

Delaney had fifteen minutes free. I showed her the three remaining pieces in my portfolio and explained that I wasn't using the Rowan documentary.

She didn't congratulate me. She asked which piece I liked best.

“The bus station,” I said after a moment.

“Why?”

“I waited for things. I didn't make anyone do anything.”

“That's about your method. What do you like in the work?”

I looked at the thumbnail: a row of empty shelters, wet pavement reflecting the departures board.

“The bit where the last bus leaves and the cleaner starts moving the chairs. You think the place is finished for the night, but for her it's the beginning of a shift.”

Delaney nodded.

“Show me.”

We watched the forty-second section. The cleaner, a woman who had agreed to be filmed after I explained the project, moved each chair onto the next one before sweeping beneath it. There was no music. You could hear the wheels of her trolley and a distant engine idling.

“I'd forgotten this,” Delaney said.

“It wasn't shortlisted for anything.”

“That isn't what I asked it to do.”

I looked at her.

She stopped the video.

“Bea, you keep treating outside approval as proof that you were right. Sometimes it means somebody liked one thing you made. That's all.”

“I know.”

“Good. Then we can work.”

She took a piece of paper and drew three boxes on it. One for moving image, one for observation, one for experimentation. We went through what I had and what was missing. The application would need work. There was no way to turn the next few days into the uncomplicated future I'd imagined before Friday.

But there was something to do that wasn't searching for a hidden answer in somebody else's life.

When I left, I found a message from Denise asking whether I could come round after college. She had found some papers related to the fundraiser and didn't know which names belonged to which students. The police were collecting material, but she wanted to understand what her son had been working on.

I stared at the message for a moment, then replied that I could come, but I might not be the best person to interpret everything.

She wrote back almost at once.

I know. I don't need you to solve it. I just need you to know who people are.

That was a smaller request. I thought I might be able to meet it.

Before putting my phone away, I sent Mum a message saying where I would be and why.

Then I went to my next lesson, late enough that the teacher gave me a look and not so late that she asked for an explanation.