Nell: Promotional Materials

The library's social post used the correct words and still caused trouble.

Twelve low-cost ways to spend time in Marden, tested by local teenagers Nell Bishop and Kit Malik.

Accurate. Sensible. Entirely free of invented romance.

Beneath it was the photograph Henry took outside the tourist office. Kit and I stood close together, laughing at his instruction to appear less kidnapped. Someone had cropped the crab from the background, removing an important explanation for the mood.

Taz sent it to me with no words, only a sequence of eyes.

Ollie saw it on Mum's phone and asked why I had not mentioned that Kit was my girlfriend.

“She isn't.”

“Then why are you standing like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like the people on yoghurt adverts.”

I looked at the photograph again. I did not know which yoghurt advertisements he had been watching, but I disliked the possibility that he had identified something I had not.

“We're working,” I said.

“Fine. Your work girlfriend.”

Mum told him to stop being irritating, which was a broad instruction unlikely to produce lasting change.

At the library that afternoon, Jo apologised for the attention the post had attracted. There were a few comments from people who knew us, mostly pleasant, some asking whether the guide included actual dates. She had answered those with the agreed description. She offered to use a different photograph next time.

“The picture's fine,” I said. “People are allowed to have imaginations.”

Kit looked at me across the table. I could not tell whether she was relieved or disappointed by how lightly I said it. The uncertainty made me want to talk faster.

“It's not as though we've accidentally announced an engagement.”

“No,” she said.

“It's just a picture.”

“Right.”

Jo found an urgent reason to check the printer.

I looked down at the draft pages. We had work to do. The second-hand-shop outing needed a strict limit, and the rainy-day plan was still mostly a collection of places we hoped would tolerate damp teenagers. I began talking about page order. Kit answered, but something had shifted into a more formal register.

It took me twenty minutes to realise I had been so busy proving I was not embarrassed by the photograph that I had made the possibility of us sound faintly absurd.

“Kit,” I said.

She looked up from the contact sheet.

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“Like what?”

There was a reasonable question. I wished she had asked an unreasonable one so I could object.

“The girlfriend thing. I'm not saying it would be ridiculous. I'm saying people shouldn't decide it from a photograph.”

She held my gaze for a moment.

“I agree.”

“Good.”

We both returned to the work. The conversation had not become less awkward. It had become more accurate, which I was beginning to suspect was sometimes the best available improvement.

At four, we went to the second-hand shops on Market Lane. The challenge was to find an object under the agreed small budget that could tell a story about the town. Buying was optional. Photographing needed permission. Trying on hats was apparently compulsory according to Kit, who placed a purple one on my head before I could defend myself.

“You look like you're about to complain about a village fete,” she said.

“I could do that without the hat.”

“Natural range.”

I put a narrow tie over her shoulder. She examined it in the mirror with surprising seriousness.

“This could work.”

“For what?”

“An occasion requiring a tie.”

“Very specific.”

She put it on over the open collar of her shirt, loosely, and looked at me in the mirror. I forgot the next joke. She noticed that too.

The woman behind the counter asked whether we were buying the hat. I said no too quickly. Kit bought the tie with her own money, not the project budget, explaining that she could use it for a portfolio visit. I wrote that distinction down because it mattered to the costs and because writing gave me somewhere to put my hands.

In the next shop, we found a postcard of Marden from decades earlier. The promenade looked almost the same, except the arcade had another name and the building now selling candles really was a public toilet.

“Historical vindication,” I said.

Kit laughed. We bought the postcard together for the project, agreeing where the original would be kept. On the back, someone had written a short message about rain and a disappointing lunch. We did not use the personal message in the guide. The photograph of the front was enough to make our point: places changed, and information needed to notice.

At the end of the lane, Kit took off the tie and folded it into her bag. I was absurdly disappointed.

“Good outing?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good company?”

I looked at her. She was smiling, but there was something careful beneath it.

“Yes,” I said. “Good company.”

For once, I did not add a disclaimer.