Anna had to move the microphone down.
Someone helped her. She'd told herself she wouldn't mind speaking in front of people because she'd already done the hard things, but the little adjustment defeated her for a moment. The stand wouldn't stay where she put it.
“Here,” the man said.
He tightened something. She thanked him.
Mae stood at the side with her hands folded.
Anna looked at the room.
Some people had left. She saw the gap where two women had been sitting, the back door closing on a man putting his coat on. Plenty remained. They were looking at her now.
She unfolded the paper.
“I was four years into being a mother when I went to prison.”
That was different from the opening she'd written. She wasn't sure why she'd changed it until she heard herself.
“I don't mean I was a good one every minute. I wasn't. I shouted. I was tired. I borrowed money I couldn't easily pay back. I thought there'd be time to get things right.”
She could hear her own breath through the microphone.
“I didn't kill Celia. I hit her earlier that evening, and that was wrong. It isn't the thing I was sent away for.”
A chair creaked.
Anna looked at Mae.
“She was your sister. I'm sorry she died.”
Mae nodded once.
Anna went back to the page.
She spoke about prison without trying to give them every day of it. The noise, the waiting, a telephone call reduced to practical things because time was running out, the particular humiliation of wanting the person you loved most to tell you she missed you.
“I made one visit terrible for my daughter,” she said. “I wanted her to know I hadn't done it. I wanted her to say it mattered. She was eleven. I said things to her I wish I hadn't.”
She heard someone move near the door.
“That wasn't why I was in prison. It was something I did while I was there. I can be sorry for it without agreeing that anyone had a right to put me there.”
Her eyes were wet. She looked at the paper until she could see the next line.
“My daughter is eighteen now.”
Tess wasn't beside her.
Anna felt the empty place as she said it, sharper because she had given it up herself.
“She can do things I don't know how to do. Some of you have just heard her do one of them.”
A few faces softened.
Anna nearly stopped there. It would be easy to make the music the happy part, the thing which proved everything had come right.
Instead she said, “I wasn't there when she learned.”
At the back of the room someone lowered a phone.
“I want that to be understood. I don't want people telling me I'm out now as though that gives me the mornings back. I'm glad I'm out. I want every day I've got. But fourteen years happened.”
She let herself look at them.
“And when you talk about me, I'd like you to say that I didn't do it. I don't need you to call me a wonderful mother or a good woman or whatever you think would make up for it. Just don't keep the lie because it's easier than changing what you said.”
The last lines she'd written had thanked everybody for hearing her. She saw them on the page and didn't want them.
She folded it.
“That's what I wanted to say.”
The microphone remained in front of her face. For a second she didn't know how to finish physically.
Mae came forward.
“Thank you, Anna.”
People began clapping. Not all at once. Some stayed still. Anna didn't look for Rachel among them.
She moved away from the microphone and found the man who'd adjusted it waiting to take the stand back. He smiled without making her smile in return.
Mae touched her elbow.
“You all right?”
“No.”
Mae nodded.
Anna wanted to cry harder now nobody needed to hear her.
“Do you want somewhere quiet?”
“In a minute.”
There were people approaching. A woman Anna remembered from the old street said her name, then began saying she hadn't known. Anna listened. She said, “You know now,” and the woman nodded as if she'd been given something she could carry.
Another asked whether she could hug her.
Anna said no.
The woman stepped back without being offended, or without making Anna deal with the offence.
Then a man told her how sorry he was, and she looked at his face and realized he'd once served her at the newsagent. The memory was so ordinary she nearly laughed. She'd never expected to be glad to recall buying a magazine.
“Thanks,” she said.
She accepted a glass of water and drank most of it.
Beyond the open hall door, Ruby was counting money at the merchandise table with a volunteer. There were T-shirts laid out in uneven stacks, a box of badges and a handwritten sign. Jo was searching for her own coat beneath them.
Anna went over.
Ruby looked up.
“How did it go?”
Anna had thought everyone in the building was listening.
“All right.”
“I heard some. Sorry. They needed me here.”
“It's fine.”
Ruby's hands were busy separating notes. A person from the event brought an envelope, said something about the agreed fee and asked whether Ruby wanted to check it. She did. The work of leaving had already begun.
Anna leaned against the wall until she saw something to do.
“Shall I fold these?”
“Please. Not too beautifully. We'll only mess them up.”
She folded two shirts. On the third she put the front inside by mistake and had to start again.
Tess came through with a stand over her shoulder.
“Can you move that box?”
Anna shifted it clear.
Tess set the stand down and looked at her.
“You did it?”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
Anna wanted to say lonely. She wanted Tess to know exactly what the space had felt like.
“Hard,” she said.
Tess nodded.
“I heard the bit about being eighteen.”
“Oh.”
“From the corridor.”
Anna looked down at the shirt in her hands.
“That was true.”
“I know.”
Ruby called for the remaining cables. Tess glanced toward her.
“I need to do this. Wait?”
“Yes.”
Tess went away.
Anna stayed. She folded the last shirts, handed a woman the size she asked for and referred a question about payment to Ruby rather than guessing.
The room gradually became a place after an event: discarded programmes, half-empty cups, volunteers moving chairs with their ordinary faces back on. Mae took Celia's photograph from the table and put it in a padded bag.
Anna went to her.
“Thank you.”
Mae looked tired.
“For the time.”
“You should have had it.”
Anna nodded.
“Celia's picture,” she said. “It's a good one.”
Mae looked into the bag.
“She hated it.”
“I can see why you like it.”
For the first time, Mae smiled at her without uncertainty.
“Goodnight, Anna.”
Outside, the band were loading the equipment into the vehicle Ruby had arranged for the evening. It wasn't the tour hire yet. The Monday collection and departure were still things to do. Jo held the door while Eli argued with a case which wouldn't fit the angle.
“Turn it,” Tess said.
“I am turning it.”
“The other way.”
“There are several other ways.”
Tess put down what she was carrying and helped. Anna stood clear until Ruby handed her a little bag of leads.
“Top of that box?”
She placed it there.
When they were nearly done, Tess came to stand beside her.
“Monday,” she said.
Anna looked at her.
“The first show. In London. Do you want to come?”
The want hit so hard she almost answered too much.
“Yes.”
“Just the show. You could get the train. We're on early.”
“Yes.”
“I'll send you the place and time. There's a support slot, then the other band. We might need to stay afterwards.”
“I can get home.”
Tess watched her.
Anna wished Tess didn't have to check.
“I'd like that,” she said.
“Good.”
Behind them, Ruby shut the door and tested it.
Anna nearly asked where Tess was staying the second night. She nearly offered to bring breakfast to the van. Monday had suddenly acquired all the possibilities she'd been refusing to picture.
She said, “Were you pleased with the new song?”
Tess smiled.
“Mostly. Eli came in wrong.”
“He looked happy.”
“He always looks happy when he's done something bad.”
Eli, passing them, said, “I heard that.”
“Good,” Tess said.
Anna laughed.
They were leaving now. She embraced her daughter, briefly enough that Tess could step back when she wanted, and watched her climb in beside Jo.
The vehicle pulled away.
Anna walked toward her own room with the paper in her bag. She had been heard. Her throat hurt. On Monday she was going to a show.
At the corner she stopped to answer a message from Lorna.
Done?
Anna typed:
Done. Didn't say thank you at the end.
Lorna replied:
Excellent. Charge them next time.
Anna laughed aloud in the empty street, then went home.