The Wrong Arrows

Noor had sand between her teeth. She had turned her sandwich over twice already. The sand kept crunching in the same place.

‘Perhaps you should have another one,’ Dad said.

Noor looked at the crust in her hand. At the lock she had tied her shoelaces, then wiped her hands on her trousers. In her head she was still there. She could see the white patch among the stems and Grandad Wim lifting out the piece of plastic. So much white. So little boat.

Daan pushed the cheese towards her. ‘Have you got a plan for this afternoon?’

‘We need to go the other way.’

‘Who’s we?’

Noor flattened the crust. Sami would come, surely. She wasn’t sure about Bente. When they said goodbye, Bente had only looked at her grandad.

‘Sami and me. Perhaps Bente.’

‘I can come after lunch. First I need to find my shopping list.’

He was leaning against the fridge now, one arm resting on it. The list hung just below his elbow. Noor pointed. She had expected him to ask why the other direction would be better. Now she had to work that out herself.

She took the map from her bag. The blue line of water curved neatly past the bridge. The library even had a little mark for its front door. Near the lock was a thick arrow. She had used a ruler that morning to make its edges exactly parallel.

Dad peered at it. ‘That windmill’s bigger than the library.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘Thought not.’

He cleared his plate away. Noor put a finger on the bridge. Yesterday she had stood there facing the far bank. The light had disappeared behind the reeds to her left. She turned the map until left on the paper was left for her too. Now the thick arrow pointed the other way.

She had copied that arrow because Wim had mentioned the lock. Then she had made it even thicker.

She tried to rub out the point. The blue water turned grey. She rubbed harder. A little tuft of paper came loose.

‘Need a fresh sheet?’ Daan asked.

Noor wanted to say yes. On a new sheet everything would be right again. The bridge, the front door, the arrow that didn’t go through anything else.

‘Just a pencil.’

She drew a thin line from the bridge towards the left. There wasn’t much room beside the windmill. She wrote: saw it going this way. Beside the thick arrow she put a question mark.

Daan looked at the new line. ‘You saw it all the way to here?’

‘No. Just in that direction.’

She stopped the line halfway. After that the boat might have gone anywhere. It made the map messier. She left it.

At quarter past one Sami appeared at the front door. He had finished his lunch and put his coat on, but he hadn’t brought a crate.

‘We carried that all round the village for nothing,’ he said.

‘We’ll need it if we find the boat, won’t we?’

Sami spun a house key round his finger. ‘Then we can fetch it.’

Noor picked up her bag of books from yesterday. She wanted to find a thin book about knots at the library. She added the receipt from her coat pocket so it wouldn’t get lost among her gloves. At the door she stopped.

‘Do you think Bente will come?’

‘Ask Bente.’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘Yes. I noticed.’

He pocketed the key. Noor closed her bag. They walked to the library, Daan following with an empty shopping bag over his shoulder.

Bente sat beside the blue river, cutting little rectangles from grey cardboard. Farah had a stack of books on a trolley and was trying to stop a loose screw with her foot. Wim was looking under the reading table for a felt-tip lid.

‘We’re going to look towards the windmill,’ Noor said.

Bente kept cutting. A grey scrap dropped into her lap.

‘Would you like to come?’ Noor asked.

‘Where will you look?’

Noor laid the map on a clear patch of table. She hadn’t folded it again at home. The rubbed-out patch lay between them.

‘The light disappeared here. Roughly. I didn’t see exactly where.’

Bente put her scissors down and traced the bank with a finger.

‘It doesn’t go like that.’

Noor picked up the pencil. ‘What doesn’t?’

‘You’ve drawn one big bend. There’s an island by the pumping station. The water goes round both sides.’

‘Will that fit on the map?’ Sami asked.

‘If she makes the windmill smaller.’

Noor looked at the sails she had drawn so carefully. She gave herself one more second, then rubbed them out. Bente took the pencil and drew a long island, adding short strokes for reeds.

‘You can look from the path here,’ she said. ‘Further on there’s an old landing stage. Grandad showed me where the full-sized ferry used to come in.’

She pushed the pencil back. The cardboard rectangles suddenly looked like paving stones.

‘Are those for the exhibition?’ Noor asked.

‘The quay. Beside the river.’

‘Shall I help?’

Bente drew the remaining cardboard towards herself. ‘I’m making these. They’re not all meant to be the same length.’

Noor withdrew her hand. She had almost said she could cut very neatly.

Wim emerged from under the table with the felt-tip lid. Daan asked him about the public path past the pumping station. They looked at the map together. Wim said he still had to sort through the old photographs with Farah. He would be at the library later that afternoon.

‘I want to come to the island,’ Bente said. ‘But I’m coming back for my quay afterwards.’

Noor nodded too quickly. ‘All right.’

Bente swept the loose cardboard into a lid and laid the scissors on top. Her grandad did up her coat because the zip was stuck at the bottom. Sami waited by the door. This time he didn’t pull a face when it took a while.

Noor put the map in her bag. Bente hadn’t signed it, or said everything was all right again. But she was coming. Noor held the door beside the window open for her.