The Other Application

Jules Pritchard was making a monster out of a washing-up glove.

I found her in the animation corner of the art room on Wednesday, holding the glove upside down while Imani tried to attach a row of cardboard teeth to its cuff. On the table stood a miniature bus shelter, a plasticine woman with one shoe and a cardboard sign reading REPLACEMENT SERVICE.

“It's a metaphor,” Jules told me before I asked.

“For what?”

“Mostly the buses. Also late-stage despair, but Delaney said to keep the proposal manageable.”

Imani held up the teeth. “These are going to fall off.”

“Then it becomes a documentary about dental care.”

Jules was eighteen, short, broad-shouldered and usually dressed as if she expected to be called on to move furniture. She had applied to the same residential programme as Finn. I knew this because a month earlier she'd put a screenshot of her offer on the art-room wall, then taken it down two days later and refused to explain why.

Until now, I had assumed she'd simply changed her mind.

“Can you hold this?” Imani asked.

I took the glove. Its fingers drooped over my knuckles.

“It needs to look menacing,” Jules said.

“It looks like somebody's lost control of a Marigold.”

“Menace is subjective.”

We spent ten minutes making the teeth stay in place. Imani suggested sewing through the card. Jules objected on the grounds that she had not included needlework in her vision. I held the glove while they argued, then threaded the needle because it was quicker than waiting for the vision to develop.

The scene was ridiculous. I was grateful for every part of it.

When the monster could open and close its mouth without shedding a tooth, Jules set it behind the bus shelter and crouched to the level of the camera. On the screen, the glove became enormous. Its ordinary rubber folds looked like wet skin. The little plasticine woman stared ahead, waiting for transport while something impossible rose behind her.

“Oh,” I said.

Jules glanced up. “You sound surprised.”

“People keep telling me that.”

“Try having a less judgemental face.”

Imani laughed. I watched the screen rather than her, which required some effort.

Jules adjusted one finger of the glove by a few millimetres and took a frame. Then another. The work was slow and exact, nothing like the casual way she'd spoken about it. After twenty frames, the monster had moved less than the width of my thumb.

“Do you need help with the lighting?” I asked.

“I need the sun to stop existing intermittently.”

The clouds were changing the light through the window. We found a piece of black fabric, clipped it over the lower pane and set up a desk lamp. Imani checked that we weren't blocking a heater. Jules declared the results acceptable in the voice of a monarch granting a minor concession.

For almost half an hour, nobody mentioned Rowan.

Then Jules moved a pile of papers to make room for the lamp cable, and the Harcourt offer letter slid onto the floor.

I picked it up without reading beyond the heading.

“Sorry,” I said, handing it back.

“It's fine. The envelope's probably worth more than the offer at this point.”

“You're not going?”

“No.”

I looked at Imani. She kept working on the background, giving Jules the choice of whether to continue.

“They offered me a partial bursary,” Jules said. “Which was nice. Very flattering. Still left a number that made my mum laugh in the way people do when they're trying not to swear.”

“Could you appeal?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“They were sorry to hear about my circumstances. I was sorry to hear they had no additional funding. We were all extremely sorry. It was a touching exchange.”

I sat on the edge of a stool.

“Rowan knew?”

“Yeah. He helped me make the budget less of a disaster. Apparently 'food, some' wasn't specific enough.”

I smiled.

“That sounds right.”

“He found a bus route that might have made travelling cheaper at the beginning and end. Then we discovered it didn't run on the day I needed. He took it very personally.”

The smile stayed on my face a second longer than it belonged there.

Jules looked at the little bus shelter.

“He was going to voice the driver,” she said. “For this. He had a very good bored voice.”

None of us spoke.

Then Jules picked up the camera remote and took another frame.

“He'd hate me making it tasteful now,” she added. “So I'm not going to.”

Imani nodded. “Good.”

I wanted to ask about Finn. I could feel the question forming, arranging all this ordinary work into a route towards something else. For once I noticed before I said it.

Jules noticed too.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Your face is doing the thing.”

“I was wondering about the full bursaries. How the timing worked.”

She put down the remote.

“Why?”

“Rowan had some papers. About an application. The police have them.”

“Whose?”

“I don't think I should say.”

Jules leaned back on her hands and looked at me steadily.

“You can't come over, ask about my money and then become mysterious.”

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

Imani set the cardboard background upright, then stepped away from the table.

“Bea's trying not to spread something that might be wrong,” she said. “She's not always elegant about it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“That wasn't entirely a compliment.”

“I noticed.”

Jules looked between us, then sighed.

“The schedule's public. Provisional offers came out last month. Final financial checks were due Monday. I know because I was still hoping somebody might turn a place down and free up money. Nobody promised that would happen. It was just something to refresh my email about.”

“Did Rowan talk about that deadline?”

“He asked when I'd know for certain. I told him.”

“Did he say anything about another applicant?”

Jules shook her head.

“He said it was annoying when the people who already had options collected the ones meant for everybody else. Which could have been about half the town.”

I thought of the form in Denise's envelope.

“If someone gave the wrong financial information—”

“Then they should fix it,” Jules said. “But don't make me the girl whose life got stolen, okay? I don't know who got which money. I don't know whether I'd have got more if someone else hadn't. I don't want to be in a post with a sad face and a paragraph about how brave I am.”

“I wasn't going to do that.”

“You were thinking very hard about something.”

I looked down.

“Yes.”

She nodded, accepting the answer without making it comfortable.

“I'm still making the film,” she said. “I'm looking at other courses. I'm annoyed. Those are the facts. They don't need improving.”

Imani picked up the glove and made it nod solemnly.

Jules laughed before she could stop herself.

“Don't anthropomorphise my antagonist.”

“It's a glove,” Imani said.

“It contains multitudes.”

The room loosened around us.

We went back to work. I held the fabric clear of the lamp while Jules adjusted the camera. Imani rebuilt the bus shelter roof after one corner collapsed. The monster advanced by another half-inch.

When we stopped for lunch, Jules showed me the sequence at speed. The glove rose behind the shelter with a slow, horrible curiosity. The plasticine woman checked her watch. I laughed so hard that Jules looked pleased despite trying not to.

“You should put that in your portfolio,” I said.

“I am.”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Thank you.”

She packed the fragile pieces into a box, leaving the glove propped upright in a mug.

As we were putting on our bags, she said, “Have you looked at the applicant showcase?”

“The Harcourt one?”

“Yeah. They put some provisional profiles up, for the sponsored places. Finn's is there.”

My attention sharpened.

“What about it?”

Jules shrugged, though not casually enough to make the question disappear.

“Something he wrote sounded familiar. I couldn't place it until the other night, when someone reposted that clip from your documentary.”

I went still.

“What clip?”

“The bus-stop bit. Rowan drawing. It was in a tribute thing, I think. I didn't share it.”

Imani looked at me.

“Which words?” I asked.

“I don't remember exactly. Something about making waiting look deliberate. It might just be a coincidence. People steal each other's jokes all the time.”

“That doesn't make it okay.”

“No. But it doesn't make it a clue in a murder programme either.”

I nodded.

Jules picked up the box with both hands.

“Be careful,” she said, then rolled her eyes at herself. “God, now I sound like everybody's mum.”

“You can blame the glove,” I said.

“Good. It’s been a bad influence.”

She went out carrying the bus shelter, the little woman and the monster with its new teeth.

Imani and I stood beside the table.

“You're going to look,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then read the whole thing. Not just the line you want to find.”

“I will.”

She studied me for a moment, then picked up the needle we'd used and put it safely back in its case.

I went to find a computer.