Friday's first visitor wanted a zip repaired and seemed disappointed to discover the studio wasn't open yet.
Beth let her in anyway. The woman held out a skirt wrapped in a supermarket bag, explaining that she hadn't meant to come during the preparations but had seen the lights. Beth took the skirt, examined the fastening, and asked when she needed it.
“Tonight.”
“That's optimistic.”
“I thought you might say that.”
They agreed on next week. The woman left a deposit, wrote down her number, and took a card for Sunday's public opening. Beth watched her go with a smile she did not try to hide.
“First unplanned customer,” she said.
“Keep the receipt,” Maris replied. “You might need to remember why you did this.”
Evan was outside bringing down the hanging bags from the little storage room. Claire went to help with the trolley. He handed her one bag, then another. The third began to slip off its hanger, and she caught it before he could.
“Good hands,” he said.
“Professional equipment.”
He smiled. The bruise around his eye had faded to yellow at one edge. She could see the eyebrow's healing line without wanting to touch it. His face was becoming familiar through changes no single photograph had held.
They wheeled the bags inside, catching a wheel in the drainage channel as Beth always did. Evan lifted that end of the trolley while Claire pulled. The dresses swayed toward them, one hanging bag brushing her cheek. She laughed at the indignity of being hit by clothing.
“At least it's clean,” he said.
“You don't know that.”
Inside, Vivian had finished the last price cards. She was arranging the wraps on the rail, leaving the space Beth wanted for people to handle them. The blue mug remained. Maris had found a bowl for biscuits and a cloth that did not trail into the sewing machine. The whole room had begun to look as though guests might enjoy being there.
Claire wanted a photograph of it with people working. Beth had asked for one yesterday, a proper version of the phone picture. She had brought both bodies, and the used one lay near the top of the bag because she had put it there before leaving home.
She took it out.
The decision had been made in the workroom, before anyone could look at her and ask. She could use the ordinary body. She could leave tomorrow alone. Instead she had charged the used one and checked the lens, telling herself she wanted to photograph the beautiful thing they had made and hoping, beneath that, to see it survive.
Evan looked at the body in her hand.
“That one?”
She nodded.
“For what?”
“Beth's room. The rail. You finishing it.”
“It's finished.”
“You know what I mean.”
He looked toward Beth. She was talking to Maris about the fitting appointments for next week, not watching them. Vivian had moved out of the way to sort papers beside the window.
“I don't want a warning arranged around me,” Evan said.
“Neither do I.”
He heard the second meaning and held her gaze. Then he turned toward the rail, giving her a moment instead of a promise.
Claire photographed him checking the end support, the finished wraps beside his hand. She made a wider picture of the room after asking him to stand back, then a closer one of the wood. Vivian wasn't in any of them. Claire had promised not to use her again to direct a future, and she could hear how narrow she was making that promise now.
She put the camera away before Beth came over.
“Did you get it?” her sister asked.
“Yes.”
“Send me the one that looks like here.”
“I will.”
They worked until late afternoon. One hook had to move. A sleeve needed pressing. Claire made tea and forgot two of the cups until Beth asked why she was hoarding it. The laughter that followed was easy enough to make the earlier tension with Evan seem smaller, though he had not withdrawn what he said.
At three Ruth came to show them the blue dress on her way to a friend's lunch. She stood in the fitting corner and opened the yellow panels with two quick steps. The room applauded without anyone organizing it. Ruth bowed, delighted, and Maris told her not to knock the sewing machine with her enthusiasm.
“Tomorrow I'll be back,” Ruth said. “I promised my friend she'd see what you've done.”
Beth was still smiling when she went back to the dress she'd been steaming. She brought it forward on its hanger to show Ruth, who put down her bag and stayed another ten minutes.
When Ruth left, Vivian sat on the cutting table and said she needed five minutes of being horizontal. Maris said the table had survived forty years and ought not to be tested now. Evan offered to carry her to a chair and Vivian said she wasn't so exhausted she needed another man making a decision about where to put her.
Evan gave a small bow and fetched the chair. Vivian sat and closed her eyes, still smiling.
Claire and Evan planned to eat at Claire's house after closing. Evan would go to the yard first to put his tools away, then come over. Beth and Vivian were going to the flat, where a client dress still needed a little hand stitching. Maris would lock up after checking the lamps for the fifth time. There was nothing remarkable about the arrangement. Claire liked it so much she felt foolish.
At home she put water on for pasta and started the transfer. It was still evening, well before midnight. She opened the room picture first: the rail, the wraps, the blue mug, Evan's hand easing a fold into place. The image Beth wanted. The image she wanted too.
Then she saw the yard.
She knew the place before seeing the men. The short stair, the storage door above it, the pale mark on the paving where the bins had stood. She had been there a few hours earlier with a trolley and clothing swinging against her face.
Evan knelt below the stair.
There was blood on both his hands. One was near the head of a man lying on the paving; the other was braced beside him. The man wore a dark jacket and had fallen or been laid close to the bottom step. His face was turned enough for Claire to recognize Graham.
She stopped breathing properly.
Graham's eyes were shut. There was blood near his hair and a smear on the paving. Evan's expression was strained, his mouth slightly open, looking down rather than toward whoever might have stood at the image's vantage. The two men occupied the small yard with a closeness she had spent all afternoon helping other people avoid.
Tomorrow afternoon.
She checked the date twice, then the time. Saturday, during the preview. Not an unknown distant day she could postpone worrying about. The room would have people in it. Beth would be wearing something she made. Vivian would be there because she chose to come. Evan might be there because he wanted Graham to look at him.
Claire enlarged the picture but learned nothing that made it better. She could see blood, not what had caused it. Graham was motionless in an image; everyone was motionless in an image. Evan's hands might have hurt him. They might be helping him. She knew both possibilities and felt only one at first.
The water boiled in the kitchen. She let it go on boiling until the sound reached her as a problem that still belonged to ordinary life. Then she turned it off.
She took her phone to the workroom and called Evan.
“Have you left the yard?” she asked.
“Just now.”
“Come here.”
“I'm coming. What is it?”
Claire looked at his bloodied hands.
“There's another picture,” she said.