Kit: A Useful Amount of Distance

My father can tell what is wrong with a bicycle by listening to it, which would be more impressive if he did not also diagnose television characters from the way they close doors.

“He's lying,” he said when I came into the workshop. A detective programme was playing on the small screen above the till. “Nobody innocent handles a cupboard like that.”

“The meeting was fine, thanks.”

He looked away from the screen. “You got the project?”

“Part of it.”

“What does part of it mean?”

I hung my bag on the hook behind the counter and reached for a rag. There was still grease on my hand from fixing the chain outside the library. Nell had looked at it during the meeting. I knew because I had spent an unreasonable amount of the meeting noticing where Nell looked.

“It means I'm doing it with Nell Bishop.”

Dad's eyebrows moved. He had excellent eyebrows for a man who claimed not to be dramatic.

“Ah.”

“Yes. Ah.”

“Could be good.”

“Could also involve a small fire.”

“Keep it away from the tyres.”

He went back to the bicycle on the stand. That was one of the useful things about working in the shop: a conversation could pause without becoming a referendum on whether anyone cared. There was always a cable to adjust, a receipt to find, a customer attempting to describe a noise by becoming the noise.

I washed my hands at the sink in the back room. The grease came off slowly. On the wall above the tap, Mum had pinned a photograph of me at nine, wearing a bicycle helmet that sat too low over my eyebrows. Nell stood beside me holding a homemade map. We had mapped the streets between our houses, including places to hide from imaginary pursuers, the best wall for sitting and a garden containing a dog we regarded as politically unreliable.

I had drawn the map. Nell had written the legend. Together, we had made a town more interesting than the one adults insisted was already there.

I turned away before the photograph could become a whole afternoon.

The project fee mattered. Not because my family would fall apart without it, but because I wanted money that was not a negotiation with my parents. I had been offered a place on a technical arts course in Manchester for September. There were arrangements still to confirm: accommodation, travel, the final funding details. A paid visual project would help with the costs and give me work for my portfolio that was not another careful photograph of a bicycle wheel.

It would also require spending six weeks near a girl who could still make me feel fourteen with one raised eyebrow.

Nell's email arrived before I had finished cleaning my hands. The subject line was GUIDE — PRELIMINARY MATERIAL — NOT FINAL. There were three attachments and a paragraph explaining the naming system.

I opened the first file on my phone. Eight pages. Of course.

Her complaint was funny. That annoyed me. It was also accurate, which annoyed me more because it removed the possibility of dismissing her as someone who had simply become very good at sounding clever.

She had included the candle-shop toilet, the closed route behind the pier, the café that required a purchase before letting anyone sit down and the lack of places where you could be alone without appearing lost. That last section was only two paragraphs. I read it twice.

Dad came into the back room carrying an inner tube.

“Are you smiling at the possibility of a fire?”

“No.”

“Good. Your mother worries about your sense of humour.”

“She gave it to me.”

“I have said that in my defence.”

I put the phone away and helped him close the shop. Outside, the evening traffic moved towards the seafront. The town always looked slightly different after the shops shut: less interested in selling itself, more like the place people actually came back to. A woman carried two bags of groceries past a display of inflatable dolphins. Three boys sat on the wall behind the arcade sharing a packet of crisps. The official guide had photographed that wall empty, which missed its main purpose.

At home, Mum was marking something at the kitchen table while eating toast over a plate she had forgotten to use. She worked in administration at the college, which meant people regularly assumed she could solve any problem involving a timetable. Sometimes she could. She disliked being treated as magic either way.

“Manchester emailed,” she said. “The accommodation details are in. Have a look when you're ready.”

“I will.”

“Not while eating. You get sauce on the screen and then blame the screen.”

We ate dinner together. Dad told us about a customer who had tried to repair a puncture with tape intended for wrapping presents. Mum said optimism should sometimes require a licence. I told them about the guide, the twelve outings and the argument over the steps.

“Forty-three,” Dad said.

“Thank you.”

“The two at the top count.”

Mum looked between us. “I'm delighted the family has a position.”

Later, in my room, I opened Nell's second attachment. It was a suggested schedule, colour-coded but not yet unreasonable. She had left spaces for my shifts at the shop and any dates I could not do. There was also a note at the bottom.

I don't know your summer timetable. These are suggestions, not instructions.

I read that sentence longer than necessary.

The last time we made something together, Nell had sent a version of our school survival map to a competition. The version that appeared in the newsletter carried her name, not mine. She said the credit had been cut in the layout. That might have explained the newsletter. It did not explain why she stood in assembly holding the certificate while I sat in the third row, waiting for her to mention me.

At fourteen, I did not have a useful vocabulary for being hurt by someone who also made me want to hold her hand. I had the word fine, which I used badly, and the ability to stop answering messages, which I used worse.

At seventeen, I had more words. I was not yet convinced I would use them well around Nell.

I opened a reply and attached my photographs of the route. The steps. The locked gate. The bench where someone had painted over a phone number but left the words CALL FOR A GOOD TIME, turning it into a general philosophical instruction.

Then I wrote: I can do Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Saturday mornings sometimes. Please don't change or crop the photographs without checking with me.

I stared at the last sentence. It sounded formal. It also said something I needed said.

I sent it before I could replace it with a joke.

Nell replied eleven minutes later.

Of course. Same for substantial edits to text? We can use comments first.

I wrote Yes.

That should have been the end of it. Instead I opened the first attachment again and reread the two paragraphs about places where you could be alone without appearing lost.