Seven People

Delilah took the sentence about her unaffected judgment out of her notes before she sat down with the seven people entitled to doubt it.

She had removed it from her message to Leonie yesterday. Apparently she needed to learn some things twice.

Oona Vey pulled out a chair at the meeting-room table. “Here. We can all hear you from this one.”

Delilah sat in the middle of the long side, with neither the door nor the empty chair at the head to distinguish her. Someone had brought biscuits in a tin that still held the paper cups from the last meeting. The man by the window moved the tin within her reach. She thanked him and left it closed.

Leonie had hired the room for Sunday afternoon. She put Delilah’s account face down beside her own notebook.

“Tell them first,” she said. “They can read it afterwards.”

Delilah had wanted…