The trousers were too short because Mara had cut them too short.
She looked at the chalk line, then at the offcut on the table, and found no helpful alternative explanation.
Her customer was due in forty minutes.
For a moment she considered pretending the original trousers hadn't arrived. That was the sort of thing other people did, people she despised while understanding exactly how they had got there. She put the offcut down and rang the customer.
“I've made a mistake,” she said. “I can repair it, but not before this afternoon.”
There was a silence at the other end. The customer worked in the chemist and needed the trousers for a new uniform. She'd brought two pairs because the shop had supplied three and she was wearing the third.
“Will it show?”
“I can use the original hem as a facing. It won't show from outside. I'd rather you saw before you decided.”
“I can't afford another pair.”
“You won't have to.”
Mara unpicked the mistaken hem carefully. She needed concentration now, not anger. The fabric had a nap that changed colour when turned the wrong way; she marked the facing, joined it and pressed through a cloth. When the customer arrived at two, the trousers were the right length.
The woman tried them on and stood on the block with one sock falling down. Mara knelt to check the fall over the shoes.
“That's all right,” the woman said.
“Walk in them first.”
She walked. Sat. Bent to pull up the sock.
“It's fine. Honestly.”
“No charge for that pair.”
“Well. Thank you.”
Mara accepted the thanks without explaining how much she'd needed the fee. She had made a mistake; it didn't require the customer to make her feel better about it.
After the woman left, she wrote the lost amount in the little book she used because the accounts programme made her feel worse. The bell rang. A regular customer, Ruth, brought a coat that needed relining, then lingered with a photograph of a dress she'd been considering for her daughter's civil wedding. Nothing bridal, nothing enormous, just something with sleeves that would let her carry the cake if necessary.
“Could you make something instead?” she asked.
Mara looked at the photograph. She could see how to improve it. A different shoulder, the waist brought half an inch lower. She felt the old pleasure before the old fear arrived.
“Perhaps. When's the wedding?”
January. There was time. Mara took measurements and promised to sketch an idea, without promising yet to make it. Ruth said she would look forward to seeing it.
At six Mara shut the door and went upstairs to the tiny flat in the same building, above the former insurance office at the front. She put a potato in the microwave and forgot to pierce it. It split with a thump. She ate it anyway, standing at the counter with grated cheese falling onto the plate.
In the marriage, Tuesday had been fish. She had once wanted fish on Wednesday and her husband had said there was no need to make everything difficult. He hadn't shouted. That was why she'd found it so hard to explain, later, why she had begun doing small unnecessary things alone. A different route home. Red nail varnish he said made her hands look damaged. A Saturday morning in her workroom after he had asked whether she still needed to work so much.
She had wanted him to be wrong about her and had obligingly stopped offering proof. No new collection. No window display. No expensive use of time that couldn't be justified by an invoice. The final argument had been over a day she spent designing a coat nobody had ordered. She could still remember his bewilderment: But who is it for?
Mara put the potato plate in the sink. She went back downstairs and found a sheet of paper.
The January dress began with a sleeve. She went upstairs for the black case and brought down an old roll of drawing paper. Under it lay her independent range: dated drawings, the annotated pattern marked M2—inner lift, and a folded calico sleeve attached to its side panel. She opened the fold, remembered making it, and put it safely back. She wanted a different shoulder for Ruth.
She drew six bad versions, then one she liked. Her phone lit up twice. The first message was from Elias: Your apron is safe here. I can have it sent wherever you choose. The second was the independent adviser returning her enquiry with an appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
She answered the adviser first.
The following day the appointment took place over a scratchy video call. The woman on the screen wore ordinary reading glasses and asked for dates, copies and the actual words of the offer. She did not promise Mara a triumphant settlement. Old documents and old apologies made a complicated claim. Physical ownership, design credit and permission to use patterns were different matters. There might be useful ways to establish the history without agreeing every part of the past in public, but silence ought to be priced and chosen, not smuggled into “routine” wording.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Mara began to give her the careful answer about what was realistic.
“I didn't ask what you think they'll accept.”
Mara looked at the sketch on the table. “My name on my work. Money for what was used. Permission to make things again without somebody deciding I'm stealing them.”
“Those can be separate questions. Don't trade all three for the first number you're offered.”
They agreed a limited initial fee. Mara could afford it if she postponed replacing the machine motor. She also forwarded the administrator's proposed transfer of the wedding dress. By closing time the adviser had checked it. Mara asked the administrator to have it ready for Thursday and turned the phone facedown.
At nine she tried the January sleeve in cheap calico. It was wrong in a way she understood. That was almost a pleasure. She took it apart and made it again.
Before bed she answered Elias. I'll collect my things Thursday. Please arrange access through Inez. She read the message twice before sending it, then added: The dress needs checking for dust. Cover it without pressing the open seam.
She was angry, not willing to let a beautiful thing deteriorate in order to demonstrate it.