Borrowed Things

On Saturday morning, Sam asked whether I knew how to make a spreadsheet.

I looked up from the toast I was burning.

“A basic one.”

“How basic?”

“What do you need?”

He put a sheet of lined paper on the table. Across the top he had written PEOPLE I OWE. Underneath were four names, three amounts and a question mark.

The question mark was beside Mum.

“That's optimistic,” I said.

“It means I don't know the total.”

“I know.”

He sat opposite me, pulling the paper back towards him.

“Forget it.”

“No. Sorry. Show me.”

The toast popped up black at one edge. I scraped it over the sink and brought it to the table anyway.

Sam had written down the money he owed Dex, the amount he had taken from his own savings account before that, a smaller sum borrowed from a friend at work and the cost of the recovered camera's damage. He did not know yet what the centre or hire company would formally ask him to repay. There were things the police were still dealing with. The list was not a settlement. It was an attempt to stop keeping the numbers in different places in his head.

“I've put the wrong things together,” he said.

“We can make separate columns.”

“For what?”

“Amount known. Amount still to check. What you've paid. Date.”

He nodded as though I had described a machine he might be able to use.

Mum came in with laundry against her hip and looked at the page. She did not say anything until she had put the basket down.

“Put me last,” she said.

“That doesn't make it disappear.”

“I didn't say it did.”

“I don't want you paying Dex.”

“Good. Because I haven't offered.”

They looked at each other. There was more affection in the exchange than either of them would have admitted.

I opened a blank file on the old family laptop. Its fan began making a noise like somebody thinking hard about take-off.

“Can you call it something normal?” Sam asked.

“What is normal?”

“Not Sam's Financial Catastrophe.”

“I hadn't typed that.”

“You thought it.”

I named it Repayments.

He had an appointment the following week with a support service he had contacted after speaking to our GP's receptionist about where to start. He had also asked the betting sites to close his accounts and was working through what else he needed to block. None of it came with the confidence of a finished transformation. He kept checking his phone, then turning it face down when he noticed himself doing it.

“What happens when you want to do it again?” I asked.

He looked at Mum.

“You can answer her,” she said. “I'm not waiting to catch you out.”

“I don't know yet,” he said. “That's partly why I'm going.”

It was the first answer about money he had given me all week that did not try to make me less worried.

After breakfast, Mum drove us to the library annex. A few centre volunteers were using a meeting room there to sort invoices, return borrowed equipment and answer messages that could not wait until the building reopened. Judith was not running it. A temporary board contact named Mrs Pemberton sat at the desk with a laptop and a face that suggested she had not volunteered for this particular sort of volunteering.

Sam carried a socket set and a box of extension leads. He had borrowed them for setting up the event and kept forgetting to bring them back.

“Samuel Carter,” he said at the desk.

Mrs Pemberton looked up. Recognition crossed her face before politeness covered it.

“These belong to the centre,” he said. “I should have returned them sooner.”

She took the box, checked a list and asked him to sign beside two entries.

“I've written to the board about the camera,” he added. “I don't know who's reading things now.”

“I'll make sure the letter reaches the right person.”

“Thank you.”

That was all. No public absolution, no speech about how everyone made mistakes. Sam signed the sheet with a pen attached to the desk by string and moved aside for a woman returning three cake stands.

I was looking at a pile of event paperwork when I saw the equipment return list.

BLUE HARD CASE — CAMERA HIRE.

SOFT AUDIO/CARD BAG — TEMP STORAGE.

DISPLAY BOARDS — TEMP STORAGE.

The second entry had a line through it and a new note in different handwriting: F. SAYER — COLLECTED.

I leaned closer, then stopped myself touching the page.

“Is that from Friday?” I asked.

Mrs Pemberton followed my gaze.

“The collection list? Yes. It was in the office folder. Some items were going back to suppliers, some into storage while the leak repairs were finished.”

“Who wrote this?”

“Which part?”

I pointed to the soft bag.

“The original list was Judith's, I think. The later notes are from people checking things off. I can't tell you whose that is without asking.”

“Have the police seen it?”

She looked at me more carefully.

“They've taken copies of the centre records. I don't know whether this page was included.”

Mum came to stand beside me.

“What have you found?”

I explained about the black wallet in the blue-latch case, the hire shop receiving the case without it, and the separate soft bag. I kept my voice low, but Sam heard enough to turn back.

“So it could have been moved,” he said.

“It could,” Mum said. “That isn't the same as knowing by whom.”

Mrs Pemberton picked up the whole folder, closed it and put it beside her laptop.

“I'll contact the officer handling our records,” she said. “You can tell them what you recognise. I won't start handing out copies of everybody's details.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

She seemed relieved that I had not argued.

A woman behind us cleared her throat. She was holding a cake stand shaped like a small staircase.

“Does anyone know whether I'm supposed to take the icing flowers off this?”

Sam moved to help her, and the moment became ordinary again so abruptly that I had to follow it.

Outside, he waited until we were in the car before asking, “What temporary storage?”

“I don't know yet,” I said.

“Could ask Finn.”

“I have asked him about the cards. He said the case went back to the hire shop.”

“The case did.”

“Yes.”

Sam looked through the windscreen at the library doors.

“You think he took them out.”

“I think he had the case after the photograph I took. I think there's a bag nobody's mentioned. That's what I know.”

He nodded, but I could see the impatience in him. He wanted an address, a door, a person to confront. A way of being useful that involved his hands instead of a repayment column.

Mum started the engine.

“We're going home,” she said.

Neither of us argued.

At the house, Sam carried the laundry upstairs without being asked, then came back down and opened the spreadsheet. He stared at the question mark beside Mum's name.

“How far back?” he asked her.

She sat down.

“Let's start with the things you've actually borrowed.”

I left them at the table. In my room, I sent Adebayo the wording I had seen on the list and the name of the person holding it. Then I put the phone down and worked on my own application for twenty minutes before checking it again.