Nora put her coat in the bathroom and shut the door on it. She washed her hands, then washed them again, though she had not touched Dominic.
The water was warm. Her good hand looked like the same hand she'd held out for a cash bundle, the same hand she'd put on Cal's cheek when he switched on the light. She watched it beneath the tap until it began to hurt.
She turned the water off and leaned against the sink.
Cal would know it was her. Whoever opened that door, he would know whose key had made it possible.
She dried her hand on the towel.
She went to the kitchen, opened the laptop and began with the date of the theft. The first sentence was easy to make vague. We went to the property. She looked at it, then replaced it.
I agreed to go with Cal and Iris to steal Dominic Rusk's cash.
The sentence sat above an empty page. Nora read it aloud, quietly, making herself hear her own agreement rather than the things which followed.
She typed another sentence: I wanted the showroom finished. It looked small beneath the first one. She left it there.
Her phone rang. Cal again.
Nora let it end. She couldn't hear his voice now without wanting him to become the person who could fix the thing she had found. A message came.
At least tell me you're home.
She wrote Home. I'm tired.
She waited, looking from the screen to the apartment door. The coat was shut in the bathroom. She could still smell the unit.
He sent back Sleep. We'll sort it tomorrow.
Nora put the phone face down.
She worked from the first sentence through the journey and the bag, writing what she remembered them saying. Don't be stupid. She could hear her own impatience in it.
The glass, Cal's hands, the hospital: she stopped often, then went on. Where memory ended, she wrote what he had told her.
She put in the money she'd received and spent. Then the accident story and her denials. Writing I lied took less time than all the sentences she'd used to do it.
Nora stopped. The room was quiet except for the laptop fan. She was cold now, despite the heating, and her arm ached from being held against the table. She rose, found a cushion and put it beneath the elbow so she could continue with her good hand.
The invitation and the eight thousand pounds took longer. She opened the messages, copied what she'd sent and described the offer Iris refused. Then she came to Hannah.
I'm glad someone's looking. Nora had let her leave with that. She wrote the promise she'd endorsed and the warning she'd tried to give afterwards. In the next paragraph she copied Cal's death message as Iris showed it and described his answers to her.
The storage address came next. She wrote it twice, with the unit number and how the key worked, then added that Mercer had asked about other premises and she had denied this one. Then the cupboard, the boards, the coat and face she recognized. She typed that she had left everything inside as she found it, then described the padlock she had added outside and put both its keys beside the laptop.
She put in the time she'd gone and the time she left without calling. Her right hand had begun to ache. She stretched the fingers against the tabletop.
When she finished, it was late. The screen had dimmed twice while she sat staring at the final paragraph.
She saved it. Then she made copies of the payments she could actually access, attached Cal's receipts and listed the work which belonged to other people. Mina's cabinet was gone. There was the walnut deposit, the bowl, some borrowed samples, pieces clients had entrusted to her. She would not let those become the remains of a launch she could no longer pretend was happening.
Nora opened the photographs of the showroom. The customer had been standing by the cabinet; Mina had her hand on the door edge. Cal was at the back, smiling at something Nora said. The picture was good. Anyone could look at it and see three people making a room worth entering.
She moved the photograph aside and looked at the account. She could send it now. The address was there, checked, enough for them to go.
Instead she opened Cal's photograph on her phone: the painted room, the white mark on his cheek. He had been laughing when she took it. She touched the edge of the screen, then put the phone down before the call button became an answer.
After a while she opened Mina's contact.
She messaged Mina, asking her to meet briefly at the showroom first thing. I'm closing the launch. I need to tell you about the money and return anything else of yours. I won't ask you to stay.
Mina replied after a few minutes: I'll come before my job.
Nora thanked her and wrote the time on a piece of paper beside the laptop.
At the kitchen drawer she found the spare furniture keys and sorted them, one-handed, into an envelope. The green-ring key stayed outside it. She would give that to the police with the address. For a moment she imagined Cal taking it from her, saying she should have told him before she went, standing between her and the room as he had stood between her and every practical difficulty she couldn't manage.
She put the key beside the laptop.
Then she went to bed. She didn't take her clothes off entirely. Changing was too much work, and she didn't want to make the night comfortable enough to stay in.
The lamp showed the mismatched paint on the wall. Nora lay looking at the patch until the brightness began to hurt her eyes.
She switched the lamp off. In the dark she saw Dominic's coat, the shoes, the part of the face she had not wanted to recognize. She turned the light back on and left it that way until morning.