Nell: A Town with One Person Missing

The school corridor had been painted during the holidays in a colour officially described as warm stone and unofficially described by Taz as porridge with institutional ambitions.

I stood beneath the new noticeboard on the first morning back and tried to work out why everything looked smaller. The lockers were the same. The radiator still made the same noise. Somebody had already put a crisp packet behind the fire-door sign, suggesting continuity remained a powerful force.

Kit wasn't there.

She hadn't been in all my classes before. Some days we'd barely crossed paths. Her absence was still specific. I knew she would not appear at the far end of the corridor with a camera bag knocking against her hip. I could not save something funny to tell her at lunch and assume the opportunity would exist.

Taz arrived carrying a folder large enough to qualify as furniture.

“Don't look at the walls too long,” she said. “They win.”

I hugged her before she could put the folder down. She made a surprised noise, then hugged me back.

“Hello to you too.”

“I missed you.”

“I was away for a week.”

“An eventful week.”

She looked at my face. “Ah.”

We went to registration. She told me about the residential course, the late-night rehearsals and the argument over whether a prop suitcase needed to contain actual objects to feel convincing. I told her about the Beacon placement. For a while, being back was simply being with my friend again, not standing in the outline Kit had left.

The school-paper meeting happened on Thursday. Rafi came with a sketchbook, as promised. So did two students who wanted to write about sport, a girl interested in music reviews and somebody who appeared to have come because the room had biscuits. I respected the clarity of that ambition.

I had made an agenda. I had also written a note at the top that said ASK FIRST, which I kept covered with my hand because displaying your personal development in capital letters was not a normal editorial practice.

We talked about the next issue. Rafi showed us three drawings of the school entrance, each with a different exaggeration of the new paint. They were funny and sharper than my proposed opening joke.

“Could this be the cover?” the music writer asked.

I looked at my layout plan. It had a large headline I'd already spent an hour choosing.

“Yes,” I said. “Provided Rafi wants it used that way.”

He looked startled, then pleased. We discussed size, credit and whether the joke would still work if the image was cropped. He wanted to adjust it himself. I sent him the dimensions rather than doing it for him.

Afterwards, Taz leaned against the doorframe.

“You survived another person having the best idea.”

“Barely. Send flowers.”

She smiled. “Film tonight?”

I checked my phone. Kit and I had said we might call around nine.

“I said I'd talk to Kit.”

“What time's the film?”

“Seven, isn't it?”

“So you could do both.”

“Maybe. I don't want to rush the call.”

Taz nodded. She didn't argue. “Another night, then.”

I watched her leave and felt virtuous for choosing my relationship. That feeling should have made me suspicious. It usually meant I'd arranged the situation so nobody could tell me I'd made a choice.

At home, I did homework, helped Ollie find a missing worksheet and checked the guide's correction inbox. A reader had reported that the garden gate hours had changed for autumn. I forwarded the information to Jo, who confirmed the change before the digital page was updated. The printed guide already told readers to check seasonal hours. That did not make the change irrelevant, but it made it manageable.

At half past eight, I made tea and took it upstairs.

At nine, Kit sent a message saying she was still out with people from the course and might be later.

No problem, I wrote.

I meant no problem in the sense that I knew she was allowed to be out. I did not mean that I had arranged my entire evening around an approximate plan and was now handling the disappointment elegantly.

At ten, I checked my phone.

At half past ten, I checked it again.

By eleven, I had invented several stories in which I was being unreasonable, several in which Kit was, and one in which nobody was but I still felt awful.

The last one was probably closest to the truth. It was also the least satisfying to be angry at.