Until the Phone Rings

On Tuesday morning, the printer ate the last page of my statement.

It took the sheet in confidently, stopped halfway through and made a grinding noise that suggested it had reconsidered the value of education. Sam stood over it in his interview trousers with one sock on.

“Don't pull,” he said.

“I wasn't pulling.”

“You had a pulling expression.”

He opened the back panel, removed the paper in three pieces and looked at the ink on his fingers.

“Email it.”

“They asked for a paper copy as well.”

“Then print it at college.”

It was such an obvious solution that I resented needing to hear it.

His interview was for a kitchen job at a garden centre two buses away. He had told them he could work weekends, evenings and any shift that did not begin before the first bus. He had not asked me to improve the truth of that last part.

“Is the shirt all right?” he asked.

I looked properly. It was too tight across his shoulders when he moved his arms.

“Can you sit down in it?”

He sat. The second button strained.

“Different shirt,” I said.

He sighed and went upstairs.

Mum rang at nine to say her colleague was late and she would have to meet me at college rather than come home first. I could hear somebody asking where the insect-bite cream was while she spoke.

“Stay by reception,” she said. “Delaney knows you're coming. I'll be there before the appointment.”

“I can walk with you from work.”

“Bea, you don't need to collect your mother from her job.”

“No. Right.”

“And eat something that isn't the corner of toast.”

The corner of toast was already in my hand.

I made another piece.

The online portfolio workshop I had meant to join at ten began while I was still helping Sam find the details of the bus change. By the time I opened the link, the speaker was halfway through an explanation of observational work and the chat was full of questions I could not follow. I closed it and watched the recording later, telling myself that missing the live session was not the same as missing my future.

I had become very bad at believing that sort of distinction when it concerned me.

Imani sent a photograph from a train: her shoes under a small table, a folder on the opposite seat and a coffee balanced in a place that looked structurally unwise.

Interview day, she wrote. If I spill this on the prints, remember me kindly.

I had forgotten she was visiting the course in Manchester.

Good luck. Don't put the coffee there.

Too late. I've moved it somewhere worse.

I called her. She answered in a whisper because she was in the quiet carriage and considered this partly my fault.

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

“Violently.”

“You don't look nervous.”

“You can see my shoes.”

“They look composed.”

She laughed softly.

I wanted to tell her about Finn's voicemail again, about the fact that I had slept badly, about the knot beneath my ribs. Instead I asked what she was showing first.

“The bus photograph. The one with Dad checking under the seat.”

“Good.”

“Then the market series. Then probably my whole personality by accident.”

“They'll like that.”

“You don't know.”

“No. But I do.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“That's a good thing to say before an interview,” she told me.

I smiled at the kitchen wall.

When the call ended, a message from Finn was waiting.

I'll bring the bag. I can't keep doing this.

No time, no place. I forwarded it to the officer's contact address and replied with the instruction I had already given: take it to the police, or hand it directly to college reception if he was coming there. I would not meet him alone or take it somewhere for him.

He read the message. There was no answer.

At college, Mr Costa on reception checked my name and asked me to wait in the small seating area beside the office rather than outside the media rooms. He did not make it sound dramatic. He offered me a glass of water and asked whether I needed to charge my phone.

I sat beneath a poster about attendance and tried not to count how many days I had missed parts of.

Students came through in groups, complaining about heat, deadlines and the prices in the vending machine. A boy dropped a folder, scattering printed photographs across the floor. I helped him gather them. They showed his grandfather's allotment in winter, the same bare patch from six different angles.

“He says nothing happens there in January,” the boy told me. “That's what I'm trying to show isn't true.”

I handed him a photograph of frost on a netted cabbage.

“This one's good.”

“Thanks.”

He went upstairs without recognising me. I held on to the small relief of that.

Mum arrived with two sandwiches and a face that said she had dealt with enough people before lunch. She sat beside me and put her bag on the floor.

“Your brother got there,” she said.

“The interview?”

“Yes. He sent a picture of the garden centre sign as evidence.”

“Very thorough.”

“Don't start.”

We ate. Mine had too much mustard. Mum offered to swap, then admitted hers was the same.

Ms Delaney collected us at noon. The room she had booked had a round table, a screen and no intimidating rows of chairs. She asked to see the shoe-repair film first.

I watched Mum watch it. Mr Patel worked on a heel without looking up. The machine made its heavy, regular noise. When he finally answered my question, he said that people often brought him shoes they had already decided could not be mended, and seemed annoyed when he disagreed.

Mum smiled.

Delaney stopped the film at the end, not halfway through to explain it for me.

“This is strong,” she said. “It's patient. You trust the work enough to let us watch.”

“I cut a lot out.”

“Of course you did. Editing isn't the problem. Pretending a choice has no consequences is the problem.”

She said it once and moved on to the practical notes. The opening title was too long. One cut crossed an action awkwardly. The colour changed slightly between two shots. These were problems I understood how to address.

We looked at the bus-station exercise and the paper animation. Delaney asked me what I had learned making each one. When I began describing what other people had praised, she stopped me.

“What did you learn?”

I looked at the animation still on the screen: a paper house folding into a boat.

“That I should number the pieces before I lose one.”

Mum laughed.

“Useful,” Delaney said. “What else?”

I answered properly then. About movement, patience, how the smallest shift could make an object look as if it had decided something. For ten minutes I was not discussing my character or my errors. I was discussing a thing I could make.

My phone vibrated in my bag.

I froze.

Delaney noticed.

“We can pause.”

I looked at Mum. She nodded.

The message was from Imani.

They liked the wrapper photograph too. Dad will be unbearable.

I let out a breath so suddenly that Mum put her hand over mine.

“What?”

“Good news.”

“Then have that,” she said.

I sent Imani three exclamation marks, disliked how unlike me they looked, and left them there.

We were discussing the local foundation course when Mr Costa knocked on the door.

His expression was careful, not frightened.

“Could I have a word, Ruth?” he asked.

Mum stood. I stood too before anyone had told me to.

“Stay here a moment, Bea,” Delaney said.

Through the glass panel, I saw Mr Costa speak to Mum. Then I saw her look towards reception.

A black bag rested on the counter.

Finn was standing beside it.