Hugo remembered the tickets while he was saying yes to Neroli.
That was the part he would find hardest to explain later. He had not forgotten Lavinia’s plan. He saw the little exhibition leaflet on her table, remembered her asking for the late-August Saturday because the illustrator she liked was speaking, and still heard himself tell Neroli he could manage the training afternoon.
“You’re sure?” Neroli asked.
“Yes.”
He had agreed to help with the programme earlier in the summer, mostly weekday evenings. This was an additional session for new volunteers. It was worthwhile, awkward to arrange and entirely without the glamour of an emergency. There would be adults giving up their afternoon to learn how the centre ran. Someone needed to welcome them and make it useful.
He could have said he had plans. Instead he began calculating how to move the plans he already had.
“I’ll send you…
Keep reading.
Unlock this story and the entire library.
Or start another story free
Every story here is finished, and its first five chapters are free.
- Notes Toward a Second LanguageTwo translators, divorced, are left a dead friend's last novel on one condition: they finish it together, in one room, in six months.Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 59m
- Before We Call It LoveFor eleven years Felix has answered Nina's calls. Now he wants her to choose him before she leaves for Copenhagen.Completed · 18 chapters · 1h 51m
- The Frost LedgerA city debt-reader inherits a page that can end a border lord's endless winter, and the price only counts if nobody makes her pay it.Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 26m