The Spare Ticket

Fenna returned my programme corrections with three ticks, two crosses and a note asking me not to move the interval.

I read the note twice. The first time I thought about the interval. The second time I thought about how seldom she had needed to write such a thing before.

She had come to the print shop again, at lunchtime this time. I had slept at Gethin’s, caught my bus, finished a run of folded cards and spent half the morning touching my unadorned ear. Now I was holding a sheet of paper as though it were the only interesting thing that had happened to me.

“The later break leaves a long stretch at the beginning,” I said.

“The hall kitchen needs it there.”

“I could speak to—“

I stopped.

Fenna waited.

“All right,” I said. “That stays.”

She took the sheet back, then seemed to reconsider and left it…