Mary had come back to Merehaven with a van full of furniture and a firm intention to stop saying yes to things she didn't want. Eleven days later, she was standing in the arts hall holding a sign that said WELCOME, while her oldest friend, June, explained why it also had to say something else.
“People keep going round the side.”
“Perhaps they feel unwelcome.”
“Mary.”
“Perhaps the enormous arrow pointing round the side is doing its job.”
June looked up at it. “That's from the builders.”
“The builders left in February.”
“Yes, well. You've been away.”
Mary put the sign on a table and took off her coat. She liked having this argument in person. For four years, June had sent photographs of assorted hall disasters for Mary to diagnose from another city. Now Mary could see that someone had hung her market-day poster behind a coat stand. Only the top of the map and her small printed name were visible.
She moved the stand.
“That man there is Adam,” June said. “He'll help with the signs. I have a delivery coming and no one knows which door it's coming to.”
“Side door?”
June pointed at her and went away.
The man at the far end of the table turned. He had dark hair, a broad mouth and a stripe of white paint on the side of one finger. He was holding a lid between his teeth while he stirred a tin.
Mary waited until he had put the lid down.
“Does she always introduce people like she's assigning them a table to carry?”
“Usually you get an actual table.”
“Lucky us.”
He wiped his hand on a cloth before offering it. “Adam.”
“Mary. Apparently we're a department.”
His hand was warm. She noticed, which was irritating when she had dressed for hauling boxes and hadn't washed her hair.
There were three boards to repaint: an entrance sign, one for the toilets, and one telling people that classes took place upstairs. Adam had already sketched the lettering in pencil. It was lovely. The capitals curved into each other in a way that made her want to follow the brush round the board.
It was also difficult to read.
“Can I be annoying straight away?” she asked.
“I'd appreciate knowing early.”
She pointed to the entrance board. “That looks like Wellcome with two Ls.”
“It isn't.”
“I know. But people need to know which building they're entering, and some of them will be arriving carrying a cello.”
He tipped the board towards him. “It's the join.”
“It's a beautiful join.”
“You say that like you're about to kill it.”
She found a pencil and drew a short gap in the air above his lettering. “Separate these two. Keep the rest.”
For a moment he studied it without answering. She had worked with people who took a small correction as an invitation to explain their whole career. She braced herself.
Instead, he rubbed out the join with his thumb.
“Better?”
She held it up and walked backwards until her legs met another table.
“Yes. Ow. Much better.”
“Do you usually test things by injuring yourself?”
“It gives the client confidence.”
He laughed, and she liked his face more when he did.
They moved the boards into the light from the high windows. Adam painted while Mary measured the upstairs sign and worked out where to put its arrow. She was accustomed to moving letters around a screen. Watching him make the right shape in one slow stroke was unexpectedly satisfying.
“You do this all the time?” she asked.
“Shopfronts, mostly. Window lettering. Whatever people decide needs their name on it.”
“So you get actual paint on your clothes for a living.”
“And you?”
“Graphic design. I get biscuits in my keyboard.”
He nodded towards the poster. “I liked your map.”
“Thank you.”
“The market one. I could find the car park without pretending I already knew where it was.”
That pleased her more than a compliment about its colours would have done. She had spent an entire afternoon moving that car-park marker because the organiser wanted it beneath a drawing of a flower stall.
“I fought for that car park.”
“You won.”
“An exhausting victory. There were emails.”
He asked what she used to start a design. She told him about the rough drawings her clients weren't supposed to see, and he showed her the paper tucked beneath the paint tins, full of quick lettering shapes. One margin held a phone number, another a shopping list.
“Your shopping has a stronger visual identity than my current client,” she said.
“The potatoes are very demanding.”
By half past eleven, she had blue paint on her wrist. Her upstairs arrow was too wide, and Adam told her so.
“People will go upstairs with considerable confidence,” she said.
“They'll go through the ceiling.”
She narrowed it. He had been right. It was annoying, because she had hoped to retain all the authority in this partnership.
June brought them water and a plate of broken biscuits. She leaned across Mary to check the paint was dry and almost put her sleeve in it.
Adam caught the plate. Mary caught June's elbow.
“Excellent,” June said. “You've become useful. Both of you are coming on the twenty-sixth, aren't you?”
Mary looked up. “To what?”
“Contributors and trustees. Sunday evening. We arranged it last month. Ruth's helping with it. There's food, and people who might actually pay you for a poster.”
“Those are my favourite people.”
“I sent you the invitation.”
Mary vaguely remembered an email she'd opened between unpacking her printer and discovering the flat's bedroom blind wouldn't shut.
“You sent me six invitations.”
“And you've come to this one.” June turned to Adam. “Yours went out in March. Don't tell me you lost it too.”
“I've got it.”
When June left, Mary brushed biscuit crumbs away from the wet edge of the board.
“My mother likes a gathering,” she said. “Especially if there's a list.”
“The trustees do like a list.”
“You know her through here?”
“Yes. I've done work for the hall.”
Mary fitted the lid onto a tin. “Then you know why I grew up unable to leave the house without establishing an arrival time.”
He smiled. She held out the tin, and he took it.
They hung the entrance sign just after twelve. At Adam's suggestion, Mary stood outside while he shifted it a little to the left. She called that he had gone too far. He shifted it back. An elderly woman came up the path, read it, and went directly through the front door.
Mary raised both hands in triumph.
Adam, still on the stepladder, bowed.
It was only a morning's work and some decent company. She didn't have to make anything more of it. She could put on her coat, go home and spend the afternoon dealing with the flat's last box, which she had optimistically labelled Miscellaneous.
He climbed down. “Thanks for the eyes.”
“You're welcome to borrow them again.”
There. Almost a normal thing to say.
She spoke before she could retreat into a discussion of arrows.
“Would you like to have coffee with me? Somewhere June can't give us a job.”
He looked at her. “I'd like that.”
“I mean coffee as a date. Just in case you were hoping for further notes on your lettering.”
“I understood.” His smile spread slowly. “Tuesday?”
Mary took out her phone to give him her number. Her sleeve slid back, showing the blue paint.
“I usually look more finished than this.”
“I like this.”
She looked down at the screen because she was smiling too much to enter the numbers properly.