Mina had already wrapped the yellow bowl when Nora arrived.
It was on the counter in its towel. The cabinet stood empty beneath the lights, doors open, the tray pulled out. Nora knew from the arrangement what her friend intended. Knowing did not stop her wanting to ask.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking it before it goes back.”
“Back where?”
Mina looked at her.
“The workshop.”
“You haven't let me explain.”
“Then explain.”
Nora took her coat off. There was nowhere comfortable to put it now; she left it on the green folding chair. Mina waited, not helping with the sleeve this time. Nora didn't blame her. She wanted the help anyway.
“The money isn't what I said.”
“There isn't an investor?”
“Not like that.”
“What like?”
Nora set her bag on the counter. It tipped, and she caught it with her good hand before the phone fell out.
“I've been speaking to the police.”
“About Iris.”
“And other things.”
Mina put the tray back in. It went silently, the beautiful little movement Nora had wanted customers to notice.
“Is this about where the money came from?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know when you told me?”
“Yes.”
Mina nodded, a short movement, as if that had answered something separate from the amount.
“I can't do the walnut piece,” Nora said. “Not now.”
“You've already asked me to.”
“I know.”
“I've ordered timber. I've moved another job. I told someone who pays on time that I couldn't do theirs until next month.”
“I'll make it right.”
“With what?”
Nora looked at the wrapped bowl. She could take it out, put it back on the cabinet and return the room to how it had been when a stranger came in from the street. Except Mina would still be standing beside it waiting for an answer.
“I have some money.”
“You've just said there's a problem with it.”
“I don't mean I want you to take something you shouldn't.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Nora couldn't make the payment clean by wanting to pay a person who deserved it. She could hear the interview, the point at which ordinary spending became another piece of the account she had not supplied.
“I don't know yet,” she said.
Mina took a breath. She looked tired rather than furious, which made Nora feel she'd arrived after the argument instead of at its beginning.
“I'll keep the paperwork. I'll get advice about the deposit. I won't spend the rest until I know where I stand. But I'm not making more work for here.”
“The cabinet could stay.”
“No.”
“It's already made.”
“I know. I made it.”
Nora put a hand on its top. The wood was cooler now. She could remember lifting the bowl above it, choosing the exact place where it would make the surface seem wanted rather than empty.
“You brought it for the opening.”
“To show my work. You'd sell it, or I would. It wasn't yours to keep if the rest went wrong.”
“I could buy it.”
Mina's face hardened.
“Stop offering me money when you won't tell me what it is.”
Nora took her hand away. She had thought paying might keep friendship out of the dispute. It was impossible when the promise itself had been one of the ways she'd used friendship.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
“I believe that.”
“Then—”
“That doesn't give me the week back.”
They stood on either side of the cabinet. Mina's phone rang, and she answered, giving someone directions to the back entrance. Her workshop van was on its way. She'd arranged help before Nora came.
“You'd decided.”
“I decided I needed my work back. I've been asking questions for days.”
Nora wanted to say she'd been injured, been to the police, found out something appalling about her brother. Mina knew enough of those things that saying them now would become another demand to wait.
“Did the woman email?” Nora asked.
Mina looked up.
“The one who came in.”
“Yes.”
“Does she want it?”
“She wants to talk about her room.”
“I could still—”
“I've said I'll meet her. You can sort out your own arrangement when you know what you're offering.”
It hurt more than Nora expected. Their work had been good together. Mina knew the making, Nora saw the room, and a woman had put down her shopping because the two things had become one invitation.
“You shouldn't lose the job,” Nora said.
“I don't intend to.”
For the first time Nora heard something like her own ambition in Mina's voice. She had wanted a place for her friend's talent, but she had also liked that talent being available inside the place she wanted for herself.
The van came. Mina opened the rear door, and a man from her workshop appeared with a trolley and blankets. He greeted Nora, glanced at her arm and said she shouldn't try to help. She hadn't intended to. The fact that he expected her to try made her briefly grateful.
They protected the cabinet's corners, closed the doors and moved it. Mina gave short instructions which had nothing to do with the argument. Nora stood aside as her friend took charge of the beautiful thing she'd brought into the room.
When it passed the counter, Nora saw the card still lying there. Mina's name first, the description they'd written together. She picked it up.
“Do you want this?”
Mina took it, read it once and put it in her coat pocket.
“It's good,” she said.
Nora couldn't answer. The kindness was too exact; it gave her something without giving her the cabinet.
After they loaded it, Mina came back for the drawer bag. At the door she stopped.
“I came here because I wanted it to work,” she said.
“I know.”
“Not because I thought you couldn't do it without me.”
Nora nodded. She did know, though she had behaved as if Mina's belief were something she could spend when the money was uncertain.
“We'll talk,” Mina said. “But I need to go.”
She left. The showroom looked narrower without the cabinet, not larger. The empty place drew the eye toward the back wall, where the room became a corridor again.
Nora unwrapped the bowl and set it on the counter. It was too small to do anything alone.
She tried the green chair in the cabinet's place, disliked it and moved it back. She shifted the low sample table, then stopped because pushing it strained the injured arm even when she used the other hand. She stood in the room until she could see it without insisting it be the room she'd had that morning.
The elm bench would help. Not enough, but it was something she had chosen before the theft, worked on herself, wanted for a reason no one else had supplied. It was at Cal's storage unit. She still had the provisional booking, a way to get it here without waiting for him.
Nora opened the shallow tin. The green-ring key was there, beneath the front-door keys. She lifted it out and put it in her bag.
Then she found the delivery firm's message and left it open on the counter while she looked at the empty place.