Rachel put the blue dress back on the rail.
She had been holding it for Anna. Now she smoothed the skirt, turned the hanger the right way and left the tag facing out. It could be sold. Anna had said so.
At closing time she took the event folder upstairs with her tea. Mae's list needed checking. Rachel wrote beside the greeting table, then crossed out what she'd written because it was a time Mae already knew.
The flat was still hot. Downstairs the shop had cooled when she opened the back door. She thought of moving her chair down there, working beside the fitting room where people's problems had edges she could mark.
Instead she looked at the photograph Tess sent yesterday.
Anna with a plate of food, hair across her mouth, some part of her face already expecting the person behind the camera to laugh. Rachel could tell it was Tess taking the picture. The woman was looking at her.
There were photographs of Rachel taken by Tess. One at the sewing machine, grimacing because she'd lost something beneath it. Another standing in the doorway in the rain, holding shoes she didn't want wet. Tess said that one ought to go on the website, the owner of an occasionwear shop attending a flood in bare feet.
Rachel wanted to find it. She searched the messages, then stopped because searching backward made the present look like something she might fail to recover.
Anna had liked the day. She wanted more.
So did Rachel.
At eight fifty-three Rachel opened another photograph Tess had sent while she was with a customer. This one showed the train table, Anna opposite her, both their hands in the reflection on the glass. Under it: Mum wants to hear London. I might ask her to the first show.
Rachel began an answer about the journey home afterwards, then read the next message beneath the photograph: Don't arrange anything. I'll ask her myself.
Rachel deleted her answer. She could see the tour opening around an invitation which needed nothing from her. There would be more photographs, sent less often as Tess found people who were already in them.
At nine she rang Leonard.
He answered quietly.
“All right?”
“Yes. Is Tess there?”
“Asleep. She's been asleep most of the evening.”
“Good.”
“Did you want her?”
“No.”
Rachel sat at the kitchen table. The event folder was beneath one elbow. She drew it clear so she wouldn't mark the page.
“Anna came in this afternoon.”
“I know. Tess said she'd probably ask you things.”
“She did.”
“How was she?”
“Upset.”
He sighed. Rachel could hear the old kitchen at the other end, though she couldn't hear anything happening in it.
“About going?”
“Yes.”
“She only just got back.”
“She knows how much the band matters.”
“I hope she does.”
Rachel looked toward the sitting-room desk. From here she could see the drawer handle, a little brass curve above the place where the wood didn't quite meet.
“She said she couldn't bear another separation,” Rachel said.
“I can imagine.”
“She wanted more of the trip. More dates.”
“Tess hasn't invited her.”
“No.”
Leonard waited. Rachel had already given him all the true things she came to the table to say. She could stop, ask him to let Anna talk badly for a while without deciding who she was, tell him his daughter was working and trying. She could let Tess keep the van.
She put two fingers against the folder's corner.
“There's something I'm worried about.”
“What?”
“The van.”
He didn't speak.
Anna had mentioned it as one of the things other people could give Tess. Rachel remembered the hurt in her voice, the hands pressed against her knees. No threat. No intention to break anything.
Leonard said, “What about it?”
Rachel lifted the corner of the page.
“She said she'd damage it if Tess went without her.”
The words left her mouth evenly. She heard how calm they sounded.
“What?”
“She said she'd put a window through it. Stop them leaving in it.”
Rachel looked at the hand holding the phone. It didn't shake.
Leonard was silent long enough for her to hear him breathe.
“She said that?”
Rachel could still change it. A frightened exaggeration, an impression, something she shouldn't have called a statement. He had given her another place to put the truth.
“Yes.”
“She actually said she'd do it.”
“Yes.”
Anna had said she wanted August to last longer. They had laughed about a machine which could manage it. Rachel kept the memory in front of her while saying the opposite sort of thing happened.
“Jesus,” Leonard said.
“I don't think she was making a plan.”
“That's not much comfort.”
“I know. I didn't want to make it worse.”
“Has she said anything to Tess?”
“Not that I know.”
“Does Tess know she said this?”
“No.”
“I'll have to tell her.”
Rachel put the folder down.
“I thought you should know first.”
“You were right.”
The trust arrived as it had fourteen years ago, somebody accepting the steadiness of her voice as a reason to believe what she saw.
“It might be better to give them a bit more time,” Rachel said. “Before everything moves so fast.”
“The tour's booked.”
“Yes.”
“And the van's mine.”
“I know.”
“I've kept it for years because it was still useful. I've lent it without people threatening to smash it because they couldn't get something they wanted.”
Rachel didn't defend Anna. Defending her would make the report seem a balanced thing, careful help for all the people it harmed. She wanted to. She left the silence instead.
Leonard said, “I'm not giving it to them with this hanging over it.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“Talk to Tess.”
“I will. In the morning.”
“She'll be upset.”
“I understand that. They can make another arrangement.”
It would take time. Other arrangements would take money, people, an effort none of them expected to need. Rachel imagined missing the first London date, then the next, the route losing its shape. She had made a lie large enough to threaten the whole trip because she wanted some of its days back. She knew Anna could deny it in one call. Leonard had believed the worse thing before; Rachel was spending that belief again.
“They've put work into it,” she said.
“So have I. This hasn't been easy to agree to.”
“I know.”
“Anna doesn't see the rest. It's always the bit she's missing.”
Rachel thought of the cardigan on Anna's lap in the shop, the woman describing half a sandwich which had been left alone on a kitchen table. She did see the rest. She found it painful to have missed it.
Rachel said, “Perhaps wait until you've spoken to her.”
“About the van?”
“Yes.”
“What will she say? That she didn't mean it?”
Rachel looked at the drawer again. It was possible to tell a lie and then have every ordinary objection to it offered by someone else.
“I don't know.”
Leonard breathed out.
“I'll speak to Tess tomorrow. I'm not waking her for another row tonight.”
“All right.”
“You should get some rest as well.”
“Yes.”
“And thank you.”
Rachel held the phone a little tighter.
They ended the call.
For a while she remained at the table. The window was open above the sink. Someone below was laughing, the sound rising from the alley with the last warmth of the day.
She took the event folder and stacked the papers. The date remained the twenty-second. A concert, then a departure. Both could happen. The van was only one vehicle. The band could find another if they needed it enough.
Tess would be angry with Leonard first.
Then she would ask Anna. Rachel knew that. They had one another's numbers. She pictured Anna reading the question on her phone, sitting up straighter, saying no with the same directness she'd used when discussing the murder.
Rachel could ring Leonard again.
She opened his name. Her thumb hovered above the call symbol. She could explain that Anna said nothing about a window. A word, then more words, each one making the next possible.
Instead she closed the screen.
At the desk she lifted the drawer, opened it and touched the marriage papers without taking them out. The letter was beneath them. There were three pages in which Martin described what he had done to Celia. Rachel had kept them for eight years because every next day seemed safer than the day on which she might surrender them.
Now there was another account to keep straight.
She shut the drawer and went downstairs. In the dark shop the blue dress was barely a shape among the others. She took it off the rail, carried it to the back and hung it where she had been holding it for Anna.
There was still something she could do for the woman.
Rachel stood beneath the small lamp, looking at the dress. Then she switched the lamp off.