What Sam Keeps

The garden centre gave the job to somebody else.

Sam read the email on Monday morning, put the phone down and said, “Fair enough,” in a tone that meant it was not.

Mum was making sandwiches for a late shift. She looked up from the bread.

“Did they say why?”

“Someone with more experience.”

“Right.”

“They've got a point. I've mostly got experience of washing things badly under pressure.”

“That is a considerable part of kitchen work,” she said.

He smiled without much conviction and went upstairs.

I found him half an hour later sitting on the edge of his bed with the repayment sheet beside him. The spreadsheet existed now, but he still liked writing the numbers on paper. He said a screen made it too easy to move things into another column and feel as though something had happened.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“You're already halfway.”

“I can reverse.”

“Don't make the noise.”

I made the noise anyway, a single quiet beep, and he threw a sock at me.

His room was tidier than it had been at the beginning of the month, though not in a way that suggested a new personality. There were still mugs on the windowsill. The laundry pile had simply become two piles, one clean and one requiring an explanation.

I sat on the floor and handed back the sock.

“There's a kitchen job at the pub by the station,” I said. “Lou saw the notice.”

“I've rung them. Trial on Wednesday.”

“Good.”

“Maybe.”

He folded the repayment sheet along a line it had already learned.

“I wanted to go on one of the sites after the email came,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I didn't,” he added. “I'm telling you because I didn't, not because I need you to inspect my phone.”

“What did you do instead?”

“Walked to the end of the road. Came back. Rang the person from the appointment. Left a message.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It was incredibly boring.”

We sat with that for a moment.

“I keep thinking there should be a part where I stop wanting to do stupid things,” he said.

“I'd like that part too.”

He looked at me and laughed once.

“Yeah.”

On his desk was the letter from the centre about the camera. They had acknowledged his apology and set out the costs they knew so far, with the rest still being established. It was not a friendly letter, but it was not a cruel one. There would be a proper repayment arrangement. The police matter was separate. Sam had put both pieces of correspondence in a folder instead of behind the radiator, which Mum regarded as meaningful progress and he regarded as being given too much credit for stationery.

“I don't want you doing all this with me,” he said suddenly.

“All what?”

“Keeping track. Waiting for me to get a job. Checking whether I'm acting weird. You're my little sister.”

“I'm not very little.”

“You still do the reversing noise.”

“That's a skill.”

He rubbed his face.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

We could help each other without turning help into surveillance. I was still learning what that looked like. So was he. Sometimes it meant making a spreadsheet. Sometimes it meant leaving the room when he wanted to make a phone call without an audience.

I stood.

“I'm going downstairs. There's bread if you want to become a person who's had breakfast.”

“Ambitious.”

“Start small.”

He followed me ten minutes later.

At noon, Caroline sent back the short correction I had drafted. She had removed a sentence that speculated about what other witnesses knew and asked me not to discuss the call or the contents of recovered material. The part about my own footage could stay. So could the acknowledgement that I had deliberately given wrong information about Sam and later corrected it through the proper process. It was not a running commentary on the case. It was a correction of what I had done and what my files contained.

Mum read it with me before I posted it.

“Are you ready for people to answer?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then decide what you'll do with the answers.”

I turned off replies where I could. I saved the statement as a plain page that could be read without a dramatic photograph. I sent it to the college media office and the local site that had carried Finn's interview. Then I put my phone in a drawer for an hour.

When I took it out, some people had thanked me. Some had told me I was still a liar. One had asked why I was making Rowan's death about myself. Another said I had never needed to apologise because family came first.

I did not agree with any of them completely.

The statement remained where I had put it. I did not add a second one explaining how the first should be understood.

Later, Ms Delaney called about the foundation applications. Northbridge was still an option to explore, but not an offer she could promise. The local course had invited me to an admissions conversation with the revised portfolio. It would mean living at home for another year and taking a bus across town rather than moving somewhere nobody knew me.

For months, living at home had felt like the opposite of progress.

Now it still frightened me, but for more complicated reasons. I did not want to stay because Mum needed somebody responsible in the house. I did not want to leave just to avoid people who knew what I had done. I wanted to make work and learn more than I currently knew. The practical route to that did not have to be a verdict on my courage.

Mum sat with me while I wrote down the travel costs.

“You're not staying for me,” she said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I looked up.

“You can be sad about leaving and still leave,” she said. “You can be disappointed about staying and still do something good with the year. I don't want either choice turned into a duty you can blame me for later.”

“That was very specific.”

“I've met families.”

I smiled and went back to the numbers.

That evening, Imani and I went to the cinema.

It was our first outing that did not involve helping with a photograph, delivering something to somebody or waiting for news. We chose a cheap screening because neither of us had enough money to make a grand statement with tickets. The film involved a damaged spacecraft and several people who should not have been allowed to supervise an airlock.

Before it began, Imani bought a bag of sweets and told me I could share them if I did not complain about the ratio of colours.

“I wasn't going to.”

“You were looking at the green ones with prejudice.”

“They know what they did.”

She took my hand in the dark.

For the first twenty minutes, I watched the edits. I could not help it. A cut would arrive a fraction earlier than I expected, and I would feel the decision in my own hands. Then the story caught me, and I forgot to count. When the ship lost power, I leaned forward with everybody else.

It felt almost like being allowed back into a room.

Afterwards, we walked through the shopping precinct while the last shops pulled down their shutters. Imani thought the ending had been too neat. I thought one of the quieter scenes near the middle had been better than the large explosion everyone would remember.

“You're allowed to like an explosion,” she said.

“I do like an explosion.”

“You sound as if you're applying for permission.”

“Fine. It was an excellent explosion. Very emotional debris.”

She laughed and leaned against me for two steps before straightening.

At the bus stop, we sat on the bench with the empty sweet packet between us. I was suddenly nervous in a way I had not been when a fictional spaceship was breaking apart.

“Are we doing this?” I asked.

“Waiting for a bus?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I'd like you to say it anyway.”

I looked at her.

“Seeing each other. As more than people who sometimes kiss beside public transport.”

“That is a fairly specific category.”

“Imani.”

She smiled, then became serious enough that I could hear the answer.

“Yes. I'd like that.”

“What about Manchester?”

“What about it?”

“You might go.”

“I might. You might go somewhere too.”

“So—”

“So we don't have to decide every future version of this at a bus stop tonight.”

I let out a breath.

“Good.”

“But you do have to tell me when you're not all right, instead of deciding what information makes you easiest to like.”

I looked at the pavement.

“I'll get that wrong sometimes.”

“Probably. So will I.”

The bus appeared at the end of the road. She stood, folded the empty packet and put it in a bin that was close enough to make the gesture unnecessary but satisfying.

“Text me when you're home,” she said.

“You sound like your dad.”

“He's got one or two useful ideas.”

I kissed her before she got on. It was less awkward than the first time and more public, which made my face warm long after the bus had gone.

At home, Sam was ironing the shirt he had chosen for his trial. Mum had left him instructions that began with filling the iron and ended with unplugging it. He had ticked the first step and looked offended by the rest.

“How was the film?” he asked.

“Excellent emotional debris.”

He considered that.

“I'll wait for the trailer.”

On the kitchen table was a message from Denise with the arrangements for Rowan's funeral. I read it while Sam moved the iron slowly across a sleeve. The date was real now. A place, a time, something we would have to get dressed for and attend without finding a way around it.

I put the phone down.

Sam looked at me, then switched the iron off.

We sat at the table for a while. Upstairs, the landing light shone onto the top step. Nobody had borrowed it for somewhere else.