Chapter 5 · 7 minute read
What Noor Had Said
The library door was ajar. Farah had wedged a rolled-up doormat against it so she could carry a stack of chairs outside. Noor held the door for her and was immediately handed a chair.
‘That can go over there. The seat's still a bit wet.’
Noor put it under the canopy. Two more stood on the pavement, each with a different cushion. She tucked the map under her arm as she took the next chair.
Wim stayed outside to clean the litter picker. Bente set the crate beside him and pulled the bin bag away from its rim. Sami took the book bag inside. The books could come off his back at last.
‘Well?’ Farah asked.
Noor shook her head. ‘Just a plastic lid.’
‘At least that's out of the water, then.’
They went to the counter. A row of things lay on it: a glove, two pens, a pair of glasses and a very small sock. Farah picked up the glove to look for a name inside.
‘People have left these behind,’ she said. ‘I'll put them on top of the cupboard tomorrow. Perhaps someone will finally take them home.’
Noor set her map in the space beside the sock. ‘The boat can't just have vanished, can it?’
‘You haven't looked everywhere yet.’
‘The water goes towards the lock. We've been there.’
Farah smoothed the label inside the glove. It only had a size on it.
‘Do you know how it came loose?’
‘Bente didn't tie the string properly,’ Noor said. ‘That's why it drifted away.’
The words came much more easily than explaining the yellow light. She understood this. A string coming loose and a boat floating off. She could show Farah her map in a minute, with all the places they had searched.
Bente came in with the empty crate. Sami had pulled a chair up to the reading table. He pointed to a space for the crate.
Farah turned to Bente. ‘I've heard about the string. Of course, you don't have to put all that on your label tomorrow.’
Bente stopped, holding the crate in front of her stomach.
‘What about the string?’
‘Noor said you didn't tie it properly. But it's what you've built that matters.’
Noor watched Bente shift her hands. First she held the crate beneath its rim, then by its sides. She put it down beside her feet.
‘Did you tell her that?’
‘She asked why it had gone.’
Bente looked from her to Farah. ‘I don't even know exactly what happened.’
Farah put the glove beside the pens. ‘Then we don't know exactly what happened yet. I wasn't there myself.’
She said it calmly, but Noor's cheeks grew hot. She had never said Bente had done it on purpose. It was a knot. Anyone could get a knot wrong.
‘You said you hadn't tested it, didn't you?’
‘I said that to you.’
Sami was half sitting on the chair he had pulled out. He lowered the bag to the floor.
‘We haven't passed our knot-tying test yet,’ he said.
Bente turned towards him. She did not laugh. Sami looked at the bag's buckle and threaded the loose strap through it.
‘I was only—’ he began.
‘Yes,’ Bente said.
Wim came in, holding the litter picker away from his trousers. He stood it by the door and looked at the crate.
‘At least the towel's stayed dry.’
Nobody answered. Noor thought he would ask about their search. He looked at his granddaughter.
‘What's wrong?’
Bente did not point at Noor. She just pushed the crate's handle down until it lay flat against the side.
‘I didn't tie it properly. Everyone knows that now.’
‘Everyone?’
Farah explained what she had asked. Noor could almost hear her own answer before Farah said it. She had sounded so much more certain than Bente had beside the map.
Wim stood by the table. ‘I didn't check the string either. I was busy with the hook and thought it was all right. We were there together.’
‘But I should have—’
‘So should I,’ he said. ‘I could have checked it myself. This isn't something you did all on your own.’
He pulled up a chair and sat down.
Noor still had the map in her hand. She did not remember picking it up.
‘I was trying to help find it,’ she said.
Bente looked at the thick arrow. ‘That's different.’
She took the sign saying THE FERRY from the table. The paint on the Y was dry. She set it beside the blue river and nudged it until it was straight.
Farah asked whether they would help cut out the photograph labels. Bente nodded and asked where the good scissors were.
‘In that tray,’ Noor said quickly.
Bente took them without looking up. First she cut a whole strip from the sheet. Then she put her sign on it to measure how wide the labels needed to be. Noor still had the ruler. She laid it beside Bente's hand.
‘Thank you,’ Bente said.
It sounded exactly the same as when she thanked Farah for handing her the paper. Noor had hoped it would sound different.
Sami picked up the crate and put it under the table where nobody could catch a foot in it. He did not ask whether they needed a permit for that crate now.
Noor checked the clock. Dad would be here soon. A man wearing a coat like his crossed the little square outside the window. He turned round. He had a much longer beard than Dad.
‘We could look again after lunch,’ she said to Bente.
Bente kept cutting. ‘I don't know if I'm coming.’
‘But you know the most about the boat.’
‘I can do things here too.’
A little rectangle of paper fell to the floor. Noor bent to pick it up. It stuck to her finger. She peeled it off and put it with the other scraps.
She had drawn a map, walked a route and looked at every white thing. When Bente needed more paper, Noor slid it across. Bente put her sign on it and carried on.