Not on the Schedule

The screen said the box should contain thirty-six inner tubes. Fenna counted thirty-five. She counted again, running her forefinger along the ends. Still thirty-five. The colleague who had called her over stared at the empty cardboard insert as though something else might emerge if he waited long enough.

'Great,' he said. 'So the computer can't count either.'

'The computer didn't tape the box shut.'

She took another tube from the bin, checked the size and lowered it beside the others. One small adjustment. The problem was actually gone. She pulled tape across the opening and passed the box on. Something fell over on the other side of the aisle, followed by a swear word and then laughter. She had heard that sound for years without imagining she would miss it.

She had one more week at work after this. She had told so many people that the news had become part of her name. Fenna was going to Denmark. Fenna just needed to check this label. Fenna would know where the extra mailing bags were. Leaving was no longer a vague story she told at break time; someone was taking over her regular hours.

At her locker she found a sheet showing the warehouse layout. The new colleague had circled the bin numbers for the odd sizes. Two were wrong. Fenna took a pen and corrected them. Then she crossed out her own name at the top. She could simply leave it for whoever needed it.

In the canteen Madelon was eating yoghurt from a tub big enough to hold a small house plant. She had training that afternoon too, but had started work earlier. One of her sleeves was wet.

'Leaking bottle?' Fenna asked.

'No. I've washed my arm. For a change.'

Fenna sat down. Her phone slipped from the coat she threw on the empty chair beside her. She picked it up with the screen towards her. No new message. She put it beneath her sandwiches.

'You'll get grease on it,' Madelon said.

'It'll slip out of my life more easily, then.'

'You really are unbearable when you try to be funny.'

That was a relief. Fenna did not want another careful question requiring a careful answer. She took a bite. The cheese had dried out at the edge. She had meant to eat this sandwich yesterday. She pulled off the hard bit, then felt absurdly sorry for herself over a sandwich.

Madelon said she had put up a shelf at home. Fenna asked whether it was still up. It was, Madelon said. She hadn't put anything on it yet, though, because that would make it all rather final.

'You could start with something soft.'

'A helmet, for instance?'

'I'm not coming to rescue you if it falls down.'

'You don't have to. Just do what Gita says this afternoon.'

On the way back to her station, Fenna thought about the message she had wanted to send the night before. She had taken a photograph of a potato with a growth that looked like a thumbs-up. She hadn't sent it. That was the worst thing about splitting up: the most trivial things she noticed had nowhere to go. She didn't only want to know how he was. She wanted to show him something and hear his reply.

She put her phone in her locker and went back to work. Until the end of her shift she checked quantities, stuck on labels and directed a driver to the right door. She made a mistake with a postcode and spotted it herself before the parcel went out. At least that had been in time.

Later, at the velodrome, she was putting on her shoes while Madelon held her bottle upside down beside her. Nothing came out. She shook it, glared at it and put it down.

'It's empty,' Fenna said.

'Thanks. I'd never have worked that out without you.'

Gita came over with the programme for their final preparations. She asked how Fenna's legs felt. Fenna began telling her about that morning's shift.

'Your legs,' Gita repeated.

'Good. A bit heavy when I got up. Good now.'

That proved a useful answer. They got to work. During the first part Fenna was still thinking about her phone, the message she hadn't sent, the room she would soon leave empty. Then there was less room for any of it. She had to look, ride, feel when she was asking too much before she had really built up speed. Gita kept it brief when she came back. One thing at a time. Fenna was unusually grateful for that today.

After an effort Fenna had been less pleased with, Gita let her talk for longer. Fenna pointed at the track and said she'd had to correct it towards the end. She had felt it in her hips, as though she had pulled herself out of the movement a fraction too early. Gita consulted her notes and asked her to describe where it had begun. That needed words Fenna couldn't quite find. She made an impatient gesture.

'That,' she said.

'That doesn't help me.'

Fenna wanted to say she must have seen it. Instead she walked a little way with her to the edge of their kit area and pointed again, more precisely this time. Gita nodded. Her reply was shorter than the explanation Fenna had struggled to give her. It was useful too. The next task went better. The relief surprised her; she hadn't come to the track to show everyone what a difficult time she was having.

Madelon came and stood beside her later and asked whether she'd seen how her own effort had gone. Fenna had to say no. She'd been thinking about herself, and then about the fact that she was thinking about herself. Madelon didn't step in to smooth that over. She enthusiastically explained what had gone better, demonstrating with her hands so clumsily that Fenna had to step aside.

'I'm better at it on a bike,' Madelon said.

'I hope so.'

When Madelon walked away again, at least Fenna knew what to watch for next time. Things were happening here that weren't about her.

On her next effort she wanted to repeat something that hadn't gone badly. She almost heard herself asking for more, and already knew what Gita would say. It annoyed her that she was so predictable even while everything else was changing.

'Anything else worth mentioning?' Gita asked.

'No.'

'Then hang on to that.'

Beside the kit, Saskia van Dam stood with a man Fenna didn't know. Saskia pulled her jacket over her shoulders and asked what time she was due to start the following Saturday. Fenna didn't know off the top of her head. They checked the organiser's message together. The invitational track meeting suited them both, Saskia said. You weren't being summoned somewhere all weekend.

Fenna watched Saskia picking a dried piece of tape off a bag with her thumb. She wanted to beat her next week. That desire was entirely undiminished. It briefly seemed unreasonable to want so badly to beat a woman who was simply standing beside her.

'What?' Saskia asked.

'Nothing. I'm trying to work out how I'm going to annoy you next week.'

'Good to get an early start.'

Saskia closed the bag. Her companion asked whether they still needed to go to the supermarket. She looked at him as though he might have raised this when she wasn't talking to someone else. Then she said there was no bread. Fenna laughed. Saskia looked back at her.

'He's just had forty-five minutes to think of that,' she said.

After training Fenna found Madelon by the bench. She started taking off her shirt, got her head halfway into the fabric and could get no further. Madelon tugged the hem. Fenna's hair followed it out in a stiff tuft.

'You look excellent.'

'It's the sweat. Adds volume.'

'Shame to shower, then.'

Fenna sat down and let her arms hang between her knees. She had worked well. Not everything had gone right, but her body felt used in the way she wanted to use it. She knew exactly whom she wanted to tell now. Not because he would improve the session. Because he could imagine her sitting here, red-faced, with hair that had ideas of its own.

'I miss him,' she said.

Madelon dropped her bottle cap. She picked it up and wiped it on her trousers. 'Yes.'

'Not exactly news, is it?'

'Not to me.'

Fenna waited. Madelon slid a foot beneath the bench to pull her bag towards her. She didn't start telling Fenna what she ought to do. She looked for a sock and found an apple.

'Have you ever said something to someone and only heard how it sounded afterwards?' Fenna asked.

'I work with you.'

Fenna laughed despite herself. 'I mean something you can't undo by explaining it better.'

Madelon pulled on her sock. 'I think that happens to everyone. I'm going to shower now. If you're still here when I get back, I'm making you come outside with me.'

She left Fenna with the apple on the bench. It wasn't a message; Madelon simply hadn't needed it any more. Fenna put it in her own bag and went to shower too.

At home an empty box stood beside two that were already full. Her mother had brought her a stack on Sunday. Fenna wrote kitchen on the side, then crossed it out when she decided to put books in it. She took them from the bookcase, wiped the shelf and sat holding an old paperback with a loose spine. She couldn't even remember how it ended. She put it on top.

To get the second box she had to pass the place where Marten usually took off his shoes. Her own slippers were there now. She had once asked him not to put his shoes so neatly side by side. It looked as though they were both waiting for inspection. He had turned one shoe halfway round and asked whether he was allowed through now. She missed the way he'd watched her face to see if she laughed.

She put the box by the door. In the kitchen she washed a knife and made two open sandwiches. Not wanting to cook didn't mean she didn't need to eat. She ate standing up, found that dreary and sat at the table. The chair opposite her was simply there. She didn't need to say anything about it to notice it.

She picked up her phone. She wrote that she hoped his preparations were going well. It was true, and also a very convenient way of not saying what she really wanted to speak to him about. She deleted the sentence.

Then she wrote: I wanted to show you something stupid today. Then I missed you so much it made me angry. I still don't know how we'd make it work once I leave. But I miss you, not just what we had. I wanted to tell you.

She read it twice. The second time she wanted to remove the third sentence because it didn't sound nearly as good as the rest. She left it in. Then she sent the message and put her phone on the table, close to her plate.

She could spend the whole evening watching the screen now. She got up, fetched the next stack of books and knelt beside the box. A slim photograph album slipped between two others. It fell open on the floor at a picture of herself with a bike much too big for her. She put a hand on it before the spine could split further.

In the photograph she was smiling at someone outside the frame. She didn't remember that afternoon. She did know how long she had wanted to be on a bike. She put the album in the box and pushed the flaps down. To seal it she needed tape. That was on the kitchen table.

She went back. Her phone was still dark. She picked up the roll of tape, turned it round her fingers and searched for the end with her nail.