Soren called while Delia was looking for her work shoes. One was under the bed, where she must have kicked it yesterday. The other was exactly where she had left both of them by the door, which seemed like an accusation.
“Morning,” she said, sitting down to put them on.
“Morning. Have you got a minute?”
His voice made her stop with the heel of one shoe caught beneath her foot.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking about Sunday.”
She waited. She had thought about it too, through yesterday’s shift, while buying groceries, in bed when she ought to have been sleeping. None of the thoughts had acquired a useful order.
“I don’t think I should come this weekend,” he said.
She pulled the shoe off again. “What?”
“You have the proposal due. And all this other stuff to think about. I thought it might help to have some space.”
“Help who?”
“You.”
She looked at the doorway. Her bag was ready on the chair. In twenty minutes she needed to leave for work, carrying the ordinary things required for a day that had been ordinary until he called.
“I haven’t asked for space.”
“I know. But after Sunday—”
“After Sunday I wanted us to talk. You said you were coming.”
“I was. I just don’t want to make this harder while you’re deciding what you want.”
“I want you to come on Saturday.”
There was a pause. She could hear a faint sound from his end, something being set down. When he spoke again, his voice was more careful.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”
Delia stood, then sat again because moving had nowhere useful to take her.
“Then you’re deciding for both of us.”
“I’m trying to do the decent thing.”
“Don’t call it that.”
“Delia—”
“You can say you don’t want to come. You can say you’re worried. But don’t tell me this is something you’re doing for me after I’ve told you I don’t want it.”
He exhaled sharply. She imagined him rubbing his forehead, then resented how easily she could picture him. Two days ago she had been in his room, close enough to touch the mark at his wrist. Now he was a voice explaining why distance would help.
“I do want to come,” he said.
“Then come.”
“I think we need to slow down.”
She went still. “All right. That’s different. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know. I’m saying I don’t want you changing your life because we’ve had a few good weeks.”
“I haven’t changed it. I looked at a job. I told you why. I haven’t applied.”
“I heard you.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
The silence stretched. She could see the time on the clock beside the bed. Eight minutes had gone. She had not put on her shoes.
“I swapped a shift,” she said. “For Saturday.”
“I told you not to do that if it was difficult.”
“It wasn’t difficult. It was something I chose to do because we made a plan.”
He said nothing. She had not intended the shift as a debt he must repay. Now it sounded like one, and she was angry that she had been pushed into explaining the value of her own time.
“I’m not going to do this before work,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I can talk properly on Sunday. June tenth. If you want to talk, rather than announce what will be best for me.”
“I do want to talk.”
“Then Sunday.”
He said her name once more, softly. She waited.
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you.”
She looked at the shoe in her hand. “I’m upset about what you decided. That’s the part we need to talk about.”
She ended the call before either of them could make another attempt at a better last sentence. The screen returned to the photograph she used as its background. She turned it facedown on the bed beside her shoe.
For a minute she remained on the bed. Then she put on both shoes, took her bag, and left. She was almost at the bus stop before she realized she had forgotten the folder containing her printed proposal. The digital copy was at work. She kept walking.
At the museum, a family was waiting outside the education room before her scheduled session. A small boy wanted to know whether he could touch the objects on the table. Delia answered too quickly that they weren’t objects from the collection, only copies, and saw his face lose interest.
“But yes,” she added. “You can touch them. That’s why they’re here.”
He picked up a heavy replica token and turned it over. She made herself watch his hands instead of checking the phone in her pocket.
“Can I keep it?” he asked.
“It has to stay here for the next person.”
He closed his fingers around it, considering an appeal. Delia put a sheet of paper beside him and offered to show him how to make a rubbing. He looked doubtful until the raised pattern began to appear. Then he pulled the paper closer and told her he could do the rest himself. She gave him room. By the time he finished, he had decided to make another for the person who’d come with him.
Delia found a second sheet. The token was returned to the tray without further negotiation, and she put the supplies back where the next group could reach them.
The morning was busy enough that she did not have time to be miserable in a continuous way. Instead the hurt arrived in brief, sharp intervals: between groups, while carrying a box, when someone asked what she had planned for the weekend. She said she wasn’t sure yet. It was an accurate answer she disliked giving.
Just before noon, her colleague came into the room with a sheet of colored paper and asked whether Delia still wanted the Saturday swap.
“Yes,” Delia said at once.
“Good. I was worried because I saw a note on the rota and thought I’d misunderstood.”
“It’s fine.”
The woman thanked her again and left. Delia stood holding the paper, which was a supply request she had been meant to sign. The swap had already given her colleague last Saturday off. Delia had earned this free day, even if she no longer knew what to do with it.
She signed the form and carried it to the office. On the way, a visitor asked her where to find the photograph of an old cinema. She knew exactly which one he meant and took him to it. He told her he’d gone there as a boy, that the seats used to fold up so sharply they could catch a child between them. Delia listened, asked a question, and felt the morning tilt unexpectedly beneath her. She had no wish to hear about a cinema. She also had no right to make that his problem.
He showed her the building in the photograph and explained where the ticket booth had been. She found herself interested despite everything. The conversation lasted only a few minutes. When he left, she wrote down the question he had asked about the original entrance so she could look it up later.
At noon she opened the proposal and found a comment from Devon asking whether she could offer two dates for the pilot. She stared at the request with unreasonable hostility. Everybody wanted her to make a plan. Apparently a plan was useful until another person decided it wasn’t.
She began typing a reply, read it, and deleted the entire paragraph. Devon had asked a sensible question about a room booking. He had not canceled Saturday.
She went to find him instead.
He was in his office, eating from a container while looking at a spreadsheet. When she knocked, he put the container aside.
“I’ve got the room on two possible dates,” he said. “July fourteenth is better for staffing. The other date is awkward.”
“Then why offer the other one?”
He looked at her. “Because you might be unavailable.”
She felt the heat rise in her face. “Sorry. July fourteenth works.”
“Good. Put it in the proposal as preferred, pending approval.”
She nodded. He asked whether something was wrong, and she said she was having a bad morning. He accepted that without requiring an account. It was a kindness she had not expected to need from him.
“There’s another question,” he said. “The invitation. Is this for people who’ve lived here a long time?”
“No. Anyone.”
“It reads as though they need memories of the street.”
Delia pulled up the wording on her phone. He was right. She had been so excited by the stories people might bring that she had made the evening sound like a club with an entry requirement.
“I’ll change it,” she said.
“We want new residents too. People who don’t know the place yet.”
“I know.”
The automatic answer came too fast. She made herself add, “I haven’t made that clear.”
Back in the education room, she sat at the table and rewrote the invitation. What did a newcomer notice that a longtime resident no longer saw? What could a photograph offer someone with no personal memory attached to it? She found a pair of images taken from nearly the same position years apart and placed them side by side. There were enough differences to start a conversation without anyone having to prove they belonged.
A colleague stopped in to collect supplies. Delia asked her to read the new wording. The woman did, then said it sounded welcoming but a little long. Delia crossed out a sentence before she could defend it.
When she finally looked at her phone, there was a message from Soren.
Sunday. Yes. Tell me what would work.
She read it twice. He had not withdrawn the cancellation. She did not want to spend the afternoon trying to persuade him to want Saturday in the right way. She replied that she would send a place and time later in the week, then put the phone in her bag instead of her pocket.
For the rest of the shift, it stayed there.
At the end of the afternoon, she had to put the education room back into its usual arrangement. She moved the chairs one at a time, checking the floor for scraps of paper. A child had left a drawing beneath a table. It showed a house with six windows, a bus larger than the house, and a person standing on top of the bus. Delia set it on the shelf where lost work waited for collection.
The room looked ordinary again. She switched off the lights, then switched one back on because she had left her bag by the far wall. The day’s small mistakes were beginning to annoy her more than the large hurt. She wanted her attention back.
In the staff room, she sat for a minute before leaving. Soren’s message was still the last one. She read the words without opening the conversation, then checked the time of the bus. There was one in six minutes. If she left now, she could catch it without running.
She nearly called him from the pavement. The urge was sudden and strong: ask whether he really meant it, make him hear how much the visit had mattered, find the version of the morning in which he changed his mind. She took the phone out, opened his name, and stopped with her thumb above the call button.
He had heard her say she wanted him to come. She had said it clearly. Calling again tonight would not make the sentence clearer.
She put the phone away and walked to the stop. The bus arrived as she reached it. Inside, she found a seat by the window and leaned her head against the warm glass until the driver pulled away.
On the way home she went into a shop to buy a replacement bulb for the lamp on her desk. The old one had been flickering for days. She had kept moving her work toward the window instead of dealing with it. Now she found the correct size, asked a plain question about the fitting, and bought one. The exchange took less than five minutes and contained no interpretation of her motives.
At home she changed the bulb. The steady light made the room look cleaner than it was. She sat beneath it and added the preferred July date to the proposal, then worked through the list of materials. She could make the photographs on ordinary paper, use supplies already in the museum, and keep the costs low enough that the plan would not collapse under its own request.
She stopped after forty minutes. There was no prize for finishing while angry. The document had improved; she could leave it there.
Yasmin had sent a message earlier about the June school event. Delia opened it now, read the date, and put it on her calendar. She almost replied with an account of the call, then saw the photograph Yasmin had attached: half a display board, several unfinished pieces of student work, a caption about being buried until the end of term.
Delia asked whether she still needed the spare clips. Yasmin sent back an emphatic yes and a request not to demand their return before the event. Delia said she could keep them. The small conversation steadied her more than an immediate analysis of Soren might have done.
Later, she took the calendar from the fridge and looked at Saturday. His name sat in the square in her own handwriting. She did not cross it out. She moved the calendar to the table, found a pen, and wrote Sunday beside the phone call she had proposed. Then she put it back.
She had an empty day she hadn’t chosen and a conversation she didn’t yet know how to begin. She washed her face, opened the bedroom window, and set the alarm for work.