There was no handle on the outside of Jonah's workshop door. Ruby tried the edge, found it locked and stood looking through the glass at a wall of frames.
She could leave the bag on the step. She could send a message saying she had left it. She could stop feeling as if she had brought him something much larger than a scrap of wood.
Then he appeared from the back, carrying a frame so big it hid most of his body. He set it down, came to the door and turned the key.
‘Hello.’
‘I've brought this back.’
He looked at the bag. ‘You could have kept it.’
‘It didn't feel right.’
‘All right.’
He took it and stepped aside. Ruby came in. The workshop was deeper than it looked from the street, with a long bench under the window and lengths of wood stacked upright against one wall. She could smell cut timber and glue. A faded shirt hung from a hook beside a small electric heater.
‘I won't keep you,’ she said.
‘I've got ten minutes.’
It was less inviting than the way he'd asked her to the workshop yesterday. Ruby deserved that. She stood on the wrong side of the door while he put the support on a shelf.
‘Why did you say she'd sold it?’ she asked.
Jonah rested both hands on the bench. ‘Because I was angry and I wanted people to be angry with her.’
She hadn't expected him to answer so quickly. ‘You knew she hadn't?’
‘I hadn't asked. It didn't occur to me to ask. I saw my sister crying and then I saw the post. I had no reason to say she'd been paid.’
‘That's what you do when you're angry?’
He turned towards her. ‘It's what I did then.’
‘Mae lost her work.’
‘I know.’
‘You don't really sound like you know.’
He drew in a breath through his nose. Ruby watched him hold it, then let it go.
‘I'm trying not to start defending myself. If I tell you what it did to Tessa, it sounds like I'm asking you to let me off.’
Ruby moved away from the door. A broken frame corner lay on the bench. ‘You can tell me what you did.’
He pulled out a stool for her. She sat. He stayed standing, about an arm's length away.
‘Mae had already taken hers down when I posted,’ he said. ‘Tessa had asked her to. I still had a screenshot.’
Ruby looked up at him.
‘Afterwards?’
‘Yes. I didn't think that made it all right.’
‘And Tessa was pleased you did it?’
‘No. She rang me and shouted at me. Asked what the hell I thought selling meant. Asked why I was making more people curious about her.’
He picked up the damaged frame corner and set it down again.
‘So I took it down. But I'd put Mae's name on it. People could contact her. Some did. I said I was sorry about the allegation. I can't tell you it sorted anything out.’
Ruby remembered Mae saying her phone wouldn't stop. She had thought of it as a stranger doing something cruel. The man in front of her was the stranger.
He looked tired now. She couldn't tell whether it was from work or from her being there.
‘Why didn't you say any of this yesterday?’
‘I said I'd posted it and it was wrong. Mae was crying. You wanted a minute. I didn't think staying would help.’
She nodded. She had asked him for a minute. He had given it to her.
Her phone felt heavy in her pocket, with the message she'd sent him still on it. She wasn't ready to take it back. His explanation didn't make the screenshot kinder.
‘I wish I hadn't liked you first,’ she said.
Jonah looked at her, and she was sorry she had said it.
‘I liked you first too,’ he said. ‘Before I knew where your front door was.’
She looked down at her hands. There was red clay in the crease beneath one nail. She rubbed it with her thumb, making it worse.
‘Would Tessa talk to me?’
He was quiet for a moment.
‘I'll ask. She might not want to. She's had enough of the whole thing.’
‘I don't need to know anything about what happened to her. I just want to know what she asked Mae to keep private, and what she saw.’
‘Then I'll tell her that.’
He reached for his phone and typed. Ruby watched his thumb stop halfway through, while he changed a word. He wasn't hurrying to produce his sister as proof.
She stood. ‘I've taken your ten minutes.’
‘It was nearer five.’
‘You can have the other five back.’
He didn't smile. She wished she'd stayed quiet.
At the door she looked back at the big frame he'd been carrying. It was empty. The glass leaned against the wall, reflecting part of the bench and his hand.
‘I did use the support,’ she said. ‘Before bringing it back. It worked.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’
She went outside. The street was busy, people passing her as if it were an ordinary day. She stood until someone needed the space and she had to move.
By the time she reached the corner, her phone vibrated.
Tessa says tomorrow after work. She'd rather arrange it with you. Is it all right to give her your number?
Ruby answered yes. A minute later a different number appeared.
Hi Ruby. I can see you at five tomorrow. At mine, please. I don't want to talk about this in a café.
Ruby wrote that she understood, then stopped beside a shop window and sent Jonah one more message.
Thank you for asking her.
She waited long enough to feel foolish about waiting. Then she put the phone away and walked home.