Cal came back while Nora was moving the sample table into the place Mina's cabinet had occupied. She had pushed it from the good side, using her hip, and stopped when the foot caught on the floor.
He didn't ask. He took the other end, lifted enough to release it and waited for her direction.
“Back,” she said. “No, the other way.”
He moved it. She stepped away.
It was wrong. They could both see it.
“They searched the flat,” Cal said. “The van too. I spent half the afternoon waiting while they went through it.”
Nora stood still. The unit was not in the paperwork she had given them. She had left it out twice.
“What did you tell them?”
“What I told them before. My solicitor's dealing with it.”
He looked at the empty display space. “She took it.”
“Yes.”
“After you'd paid her.”
“The deposit was for the walnut one.”
He looked at the empty place, then the little table. “I could have spoken to her.”
“I've spoken to her.”
“I mean helped.”
“She wanted her work back.”
Cal picked up the yellow bowl and put it on the table. Nora took it off again. It looked like an apology there.
“The bench would help,” he said.
“I know.”
“The firm's still coming?”
“It's provisional.”
He nodded and stayed by the table.
Someone tried the front door. Hannah stood outside, carrying her laptop bag and a folder. Nora opened it.
“I hoped you'd still be here,” Hannah said. “I need your brother's number. He hasn't rung.”
“He's here.”
Hannah looked past her. Cal stood by the empty display space, his hands loose at his sides. He smiled, a little uncertainly, and came forward.
“Hannah. I'm sorry. It's been a week.”
“I know. Mine, too.”
He accepted the correction with a nod. Nora had expected him to make a joke or an excuse. His care with the reply pleased her before she could decide whether she should be pleased.
“You asked about a folio,” he said.
“Yes.”
“What sort?”
Hannah put the folder on the counter. “Black leather. Not new. About that big.”
She showed the dimensions with her hands. Cal looked carefully, then asked whether it closed with a zip.
“No. A flap. I bought it because Dad said he couldn't hand my work over to this man in a printer's envelope.”
“What work?”
Hannah opened the folder. The prints were replacements, smaller than the originals, corners held with little paper tabs. Nora recognized the graphic work she'd seen briefly outside the print shop: warm colours, clear shapes, letters arranged so that something plain appeared confident without becoming loud.
Cal leaned over without touching.
“That's yours?”
“Yes.”
“The drawing as well?”
“Yes.”
He looked at one of the sheets for longer than politeness required.
“That would look good on a van.”
Hannah glanced at him. “It's for a food business.”
“I mean people would know what it was before they read it. That's good.”
“It is,” Nora said.
Hannah's mouth softened. Nora felt a little ashamed of how much easier it was to like the work when someone else had made admiring it useful.
Cal pointed near the edge. “Would that print stay the same colour outside?”
“Depending on what it's printed on.”
He asked another question, then another. Hannah answered as a person accustomed to explaining a thing she'd thought through. She had opinions about material, light and people wanting a design smaller once they saw how much it cost. Cal laughed at the last one.
“They all want it smaller till you give them the price for smaller.”
“Then they want the original for that price.”
“Exactly.”
Nora stood beside the counter. They were enjoying the same sort of grievance she shared with Mina. Hannah had come for information about a missing father and found someone who wanted to know about the work he had taken with him.
She closed the folder, carefully.
“Have you seen it?” she asked.
Cal straightened. “Not that I remember.”
“At the house?”
“I wasn't looking for it.”
“Were you there?”
He glanced at Nora. The glance was brief, but Hannah saw it.
“Your sister said you knew him through work. The police asked about people coming and going. I'm not trying to catch you out. I just want to know if someone has something of his.”
“I went there,” Cal said.
“When?”
“When Nora got hurt.”
Hannah turned toward her. “There?”
Nora nodded.
“You said an accident.”
“It was an argument. With Iris.”
Hannah looked down at the folder. She rubbed one corner with her thumb, then looked up again.
“Was Dad there?”
“No,” Nora said.
Cal said, “He was away.”
“You saw he wasn't there?”
“I didn't see him.”
Hannah held his gaze. Nora recognized the exact patience she had used outside the print shop, refusing to be given a possibility when she asked for something known.
“Then what can you tell me?”
Cal looked at the folder again.
“I moved things back with our materials. There's stuff I've still got to sort. If anything of his got mixed in, I can check.”
“Where?”
“Among the things I brought.”
Nora watched him. He'd told her he went back for money. She did not know what else he'd brought, how much was left in the unit or what he had put somewhere else. She could ask him now. It would require a fuller answer in front of Hannah than she'd been able to get alone.
“Does that mean you have something?” Hannah asked.
“It means I can look.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. I'll ring you.”
“You said you'd ring before.”
“I know. I'll do it.”
Hannah opened her bag and found a card. She wrote her number on its back, though Cal already had it, then placed it beside his hand.
“If you can't find it, say that. I don't want to wait for good news you haven't got.”
“I'll say what I find.”
Nora put her hand on the counter. She could interrupt, make the promise smaller, say Cal hadn't yet shown her the things he handled. Instead she heard herself say, “He'll know what he's got. He keeps the pieces properly.”
Cal looked at her.
She meant the bench, the blankets. Hannah was already nodding.
“Good,” Hannah said. “Then I'll wait for tomorrow.”
Cal moved her card away from the edge so it wouldn't fall. The small care made his promise seem already in progress.
Nora looked at the gap where Mina's cabinet had been. She wanted Cal to fill it. She wanted the room to be a place she could continue doing something in after a day which had taken Iris back into custody and Mina out of their arrangement. He was here, looking at Hannah's work, ready to make another person's difficulty practical.
“The bench,” she said. “Would you bring it?”
He turned toward her. “Yes.”
“Not just move it to the front of the unit. Here. Placed.”
“Yes.”
“Protected underneath. The legs—”
“I know the legs.”
He smiled at Hannah. “She made them. She thinks I'm going to forget that and drag it through a puddle.”
“Are you?” Hannah asked.
“No.”
“I'd put that on the card.”
Nora laughed. It surprised her, the ease of three people in a room which had felt impossible a few minutes earlier. Hannah looked pleased to have said something which wasn't about the silence from her father.
Cal went to the right-hand wall.
“This bit,” he said to Nora. “For the samples. I can make it work with the bench.”
“The bench goes under the window.”
“I know. This can be narrower than the table.”
He picked up the folding chair and moved it into the corner, then took two lengths of offcut from the floor and held them apart to show the size. The ends of the offcuts framed the space she'd kept clear for Mina's cabinet.
Hannah watched, curious.
“What sort of samples?”
“Fittings,” Cal said. “Things people can try. The difference between something which looks right and something you like using.”
“He's good at that,” Nora said.
Hannah glanced at her. It was another endorsement. This one she knew was true.
Cal rested a piece against the wall. “You can put a small card here. Their names, what it does. It doesn't have to look like a builder's yard.”
“It won't,” Nora said.
“No, because you'll make me move everything four times.”
“Three if you're lucky.”
He grinned. Nora smiled back, still looking at the lengths of wood.
“Permanent?” he asked.
Nora looked at the shelf, at the corner, at the yellow bowl she hadn't been able to place.
“Yes.”
He didn't thank her immediately. He put the offcuts down, turned the chair toward the room and stood back as if he needed to see what she'd agreed before it was real.
Hannah looked between them. “Will you work here as well?”
“That's the plan,” Cal said.
Nora felt a small tightening at the plan. She'd said yes to a corner; he had given it a future.
“We'll sort the details,” she said.
“Of course.”
She took the phone out and opened the delivery firm's message.
“I'll cancel the slot.”
Cal nodded. Hannah gathered her folder. Nora's thumb hovered over the message; the slot was still hers if she kept it.
She wrote that she no longer needed the provisional collection. The firm replied with a brief acknowledgment.
It was gone. The bench remained where it was, but bringing it here had become Cal's job.
Hannah put her bag over her shoulder.
“Can I have your number as well?” she asked Cal. “Then I don't have to keep going through Nora.”
He gave it. She entered it and rang once so he would have hers in the current calls.
“I'll let the police know I'm asking about the things,” she said. “They want anything which helps with where he's been.”
Cal nodded. Nora watched his face, searching for a reaction large enough to make her interrupt. He looked tired, interested in the empty room, nothing she could put a name to.
At the door Hannah turned to Nora.
“I'm glad someone's looking.”
Nora said yes. She couldn't quite say she was glad, because some part of her wanted the promised search to remain small: a folio in a box, a useful phone call, something which let them all leave the room without asking why Nora had gone to the house.
After Hannah left, Cal put the sample table where his work surface would be. He knew how to steady the bad leg. A folded piece of card, a small adjustment, and it stopped rocking.
Nora set the yellow bowl on it. Cal looked pleased.
“Not there,” she said.
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were about to.”
She took the bowl away. They laughed, and then the laughter ended. His corner remained, visibly occupying the room.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“The bench. Yes.”
“And Hannah.”
“I said I'd look.”
Nora nodded. She switched off the front light while he gathered his tools, then waited at the doorway for him to finish locking the back. She could hear him testing the latch before he turned the key.