Kit: The Name Below the Picture

I found the feature because Dad showed it to me.

He had opened the newsletter on the shop computer while checking a supplier's message. Our photograph was on the front page. Nell was smiling at something outside the frame. I was turned towards her, a little blurred at the edge.

“You're in the news,” he said.

I leaned over the counter.

The headline had Nell's name in it. That wasn't automatically a problem. The feature was in her voice. I knew that. I read the opening paragraph, then the next one.

The story began with her complaint. It moved through her research, her determination to create something different, her discovery that the town had more to offer than she'd thought. My name appeared beside the word photographs. The design work was mentioned in a clause that made me sound like somebody she'd hired after the interesting part was over.

There was no independent complaint. No shared planning. No sense that I had argued for the routes, tested the details or written the visual instructions. I existed in the story as evidence that Nell was good at bringing people along.

Dad stopped smiling.

“That's not quite—”

“No,” I said.

I read it again because I wanted to find a sentence that made the first reading unfair.

At the end, Jo was quoted calling it a valuable joint project. I was grateful for that and angry that gratitude was necessary.

I sent Nell a message.

Did you approve this version?

She replied almost immediately.

Yes. I'm sorry. I should have sent it first. I'm asking them to change the headline.

I put the phone down.

For a minute, I couldn't think past the word yes. I had expected an explanation involving a wrong attachment, an overenthusiastic editor, a draft that had escaped. Those things would still have needed fixing, but they would have belonged to a different kind of problem.

She had seen it. She had approved it. She knew exactly why it would matter.

Dad asked whether I wanted him to say anything.

“No.”

“Want tea?”

“No, thank you.”

He nodded and went to the workbench, leaving me the front of the shop. I appreciated that more than a speech.

Nell called. I let it ring while I decided whether I could hear her voice without agreeing to be fine before I was.

Then I answered.

“Kit.”

“Why?”

“I thought the piece could be about my experience without making the whole project mine. I tried to keep your role in it.”

“But it is yours in it.”

“I know how it reads.”

“No. It's not just how it reads. It's what you said happened.”

Silence.

Outside, somebody wheeled a bicycle past the window. The front tyre was almost flat. I noticed that because ordinary observation continued even when I wanted the world to stop presenting me with details.

“I've asked Celia to change the title and the credit,” Nell said.

“That needs doing.”

“I'll write a correction.”

“That needs doing too.”

“Can I come over?”

I looked at the photograph on the computer. She had asked to use that one. We had agreed. Now it sat above a story I had not agreed to, making the whole thing look affectionate and mutual.

“Not right now.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you.”

I closed my eyes.

“I know you didn't want me to be hurt. But you wanted the story more than you wanted to ask.”

She didn't answer immediately. When she did, her voice had changed.

“Yes.”

There it was again. This time, at least, it wasn't trying to hide inside another sentence.

“We still have the guide to finish,” I said. “I'll be at the library tomorrow. We can talk about the work then.”

“And us?”

“I don't know yet.”

It hurt to say it. I wanted her to be the person I could call because somebody had made me feel small. Instead she was the person on the other end of this call, asking how quickly I could help her stop feeling like she'd done something wrong.

I ended the conversation before I said that last part aloud.

At lunch, I went to the arts centre. Luca was there helping organise a youth event, and I sat with him in the courtyard while he ate a sandwich that appeared to be mostly mustard.

He read the feature. He did not immediately tell me to dump her or give her another chance. He asked what I wanted to do about the work.

“Finish it properly.”

“Then start there.”

“And the rest?”

He wrapped the remaining sandwich. “You don't have to decide before lunch.”

My phone buzzed. Nell had sent the revised wording she was asking the newsletter to publish, with a note that I should not feel obliged to edit it for her. The new version named the actual roles. It was accurate. It should have been the first version.

I read it, put the phone away and stayed in the courtyard until the shadow of the building reached my shoes.