Kit: After the Last Copy on the Table

We didn't sell out, because the guide was free and because we had deliberately kept copies for people who hadn't come to the launch.

This disappointed one person who asked whether we could describe the day as a sell-out event anyway. Jo said no with a smile so calm that the conversation ended immediately.

On Monday, Nell and I counted the remaining stock, checked the distribution list and took copies to the museum, the library desk, the community centre and the bicycle shop. There were also digital files to publish and a simple page for corrections. We made it clear that event details could change and that the guide reflected the tests we had actually done, not every possible experience of every reader.

Nell wrote the note. I checked the layout. Then she checked my check because we'd both learned something from the upside-down sea.

At the shop, Dad arranged the copies in a holder beside the till. He wanted to put one in the window, but sunlight would fade it and the window was already full of signs. We chose a place people could reach without moving a tyre display.

A customer took one while waiting for a repair. She opened the reader-chosen outing and said she might try it with her grandson.

Nell and I did not leap over the counter to explain the whole creative process. We let her read.

That afternoon, we visited the rain chain. The gutter was dry, so it made almost no sound. Nell looked offended on behalf of the previous version of the afternoon.

“Poor scheduling,” she said.

“Should have checked the weather.”

“Unprofessional.”

We sat on the low wall and ate sandwiches. This time, nobody was timing the route or calculating the cost for a page. I had brought food I liked. Nell had brought food she liked. We swapped halves because we'd both made too much of the wrong thing, which felt like a reasonably accurate model of dating.

“Are we celebrating?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Should there be a speech?”

“No.”

“A very short one?”

“Still no.”

She leaned against me. “All right.”

I kissed the side of her head.

For weeks, the guide had given us reasons to be together. Meetings, tests, drafts, arguments, corrections. Now the work was ending, and I could feel the open space beneath it. We would have to choose each other without a timetable pretending the choice was compulsory.

“What do you want to do on Friday?” I asked.

“Are we allowed to do nothing useful?”

“I was hoping.”

She considered. “We could watch an actual film. One with a functioning projector.”

“High expectations.”

“Or your house. Terrible snacks. No review afterwards.”

“That sounds good.”

We chose a film neither of us had seen and then failed to watch half of it because Nell kept asking questions about the plot before the film had a chance to answer them. Mum brought popcorn, looked at us curled up at opposite ends of the sofa with our feet tangled in the middle, and told us to pause if we were going to talk.

We did. We talked for twenty minutes. Then we forgot where the film had been.

It was a much better evening than the review would have suggested.

On Saturday, I started sorting my room. Not packing everything yet. Just deciding which objects had become invisible through familiarity. Old notebooks. Broken headphones I kept meaning to repair. A box of things from primary school. The map folder.

I took out the survival map and looked at the two names in the corner.

For years, that sheet had been proof of the day Nell let me disappear. It was still that. It was also proof that we had made things together before either of us knew how to protect the work or each other properly.

I did not frame it. I did not throw it away. I put it in a sleeve that wasn't split and wrote the year on the back of the folder so I would remember how young we'd been.

Then I packed the new guide beside the college papers.

Nell called while I was sorting the books. She had found the old flood photograph at her grandmother's, after her dad remembered the wrong box. The date on the back didn't match the marker in the passage, which meant there was more to investigate.

“You sound happy,” I said.

“I have a discrepancy.”

“Romantic.”

“Don't underestimate a discrepancy.”

I lay on the bed and listened while she described the photograph. There was no need for the conversation to become about us. I liked her mind at work. I liked that she wanted the answer more than a neat opening paragraph.

After we hung up, I looked around the room again. Leaving still frightened me. It also felt possible in a way it hadn't at the beginning of the summer.

I could take the guide. I could take the photograph. I could take what we'd learned without making Marden the only place where it was true.

The brick wall in Manchester waited without expressing an opinion.