Lorna was on the platform with a bag Anna had seen repaired twice.
“You kept that.”
“It keeps me. The zip's given up, so we're both dependent on the safety pin.”
Anna hugged her before answering. Lorna smelled of rain, though the afternoon was dry. Something about the train, wet coats passing through it, other people's journeys arriving before her own.
“It's good to see you.”
“I'd hope so. I've travelled.”
They went through the station and stood where the street widened.
“Sea?” Lorna asked.
“I've got to go somewhere first. If you don't mind.”
“Who am I about to meet?”
“My daughter.”
Lorna looked at her.
“You've told her I'm a terrible person?”
“She hasn't asked.”
“Lucky me.”
Anna laughed. She'd worked Sunday lunch, moved glasses while people told her what else they wanted, checked the clock because her friend had arranged a day off to see her. Then Tess asked if she could come to the rooms later. Anna wanted both things without knowing how to give either the whole afternoon.
“She's having a bad time,” she said.
“I gathered.”
“I can leave you somewhere.”
“No. I'd rather not be treated like a bag. Come on.”
On the walk, Anna told her more than she'd said Friday. Rachel's new invention, the complete old lie, Martin's pages still being prepared for police. Lorna listened without interrupting until Anna ran out of words.
“She helped me choose a shirt,” Anna said.
“I can see it.”
“I liked her.”
Lorna looked at the blouse.
“You liked the shirt as well.”
“It wasn't just that.”
“I know.”
They stopped at the crossing. Anna had to look at Lorna because the answer sounded too easy.
“Do you?”
“Yes. We like people who hurt us. It's inconvenient.”
Anna laughed, then almost began crying. She hated having an old friend meet her in the street and find somebody ready to fall apart before reaching the sea.
Lorna touched her elbow.
“I didn't come for you to be entertaining.”
“You used to insist.”
“That was because you weren't. I was encouraging effort.”
The laugh returned. They crossed.
At the rooms, Tess was waiting beside the low drum and a wide brass-coloured cymbal. The two objects sat apart from the rest. Ruby had put her notebook away. Eli was wiping a mark from a case.
Anna introduced Lorna. Tess shook her hand, a formal little movement which made Anna want to laugh and miss things simultaneously.
“Your mum says you make a noise,” Lorna said.
“Yes.”
“Good. So do I.”
Tess smiled.
Jo came in carrying a cymbal with a duller surface, a little green bag beneath one arm.
“My friend Dan's lent us it for the first stretch. After that we have to find something.”
Ruby nodded.
“Does it work?”
“It makes a sound.”
“Encouraging.”
Tess lifted it and held it by the edge. Anna recognized the care, the quick test before accepting something nobody had chosen for her.
A man arrived with a trolley folded under his arm. He nodded to Ruby, then asked which were Tess's.
She pointed.
He crouched beside the drum, looked inside the rim and ran a finger lightly around the cymbal's edge.
“No cracks?”
“No.”
“Any repairs?”
“No.”
“Could I hear it?”
Tess put it on the stand herself. The man waited. She took a stick, struck once, then touched the metal to stop it.
The sound remained a moment after it ought to have stopped. Anna remembered hearing it at Ashcombe without knowing which part of the room made it.
The man nodded.
“That's fine.”
He tried the drum. A low note, then a little adjustment Tess watched without moving. Anna could see how hard Tess was working at letting a person do something to an object which was still hers.
They agreed the price already discussed. The man said he'd pay by transfer. Tess looked at Ruby, who nodded and remained beside her while the payment happened.
When the money arrived, Tess looked at the screen, then lowered it.
“All right.”
The man packed the things. He didn't talk about what they would become in his hands, perhaps because he didn't know, perhaps because he could see Tess wanted the exchange finished.
Anna helped him get the door open. He thanked her. The trolley made a rattle down the passage.
When she returned, the places on the floor were empty.
Lorna stood near the chair with her hands in her pockets. She hadn't offered an opinion. Anna loved her for that.
Tess rubbed the drum key between her fingers.
“Do you want to stop?” Ruby asked.
“No.”
“Good. Because the borrowed one's slightly disgusting.”
Jo pulled a cloth from the green bag.
“Dan cleaned it.”
“With what, a bacon sandwich?”
They laughed. Tess held the borrowed cymbal beneath the strip light. It looked heavier than the one sold, though Anna couldn't tell if it was.
“How does it sound?” she asked.
“We're about to find out.”
The group set up. Lorna sat beside Anna, the two women trying to leave enough room for equipment to come past. Eli offered them earplugs. Lorna asked if the band were trying to keep all the good noise for themselves.
“You can have some,” he said.
“You keep the deafness, then. I need to hear the woman at work telling me I've used the wrong label.”
Tess laughed and began the count.
The borrowed cymbal sounded less bright. Anna heard that immediately. She waited for the part of 'Harbour Mouth' where the low drum had mattered and heard the revised pattern instead. Tess struck higher, the rhythm less heavy and more quick-footed. Jo held a sound beneath it which made the absence seem deliberate for a moment.
Ruby stopped after the verse.
“Better.”
Tess frowned.
“I'm not used to it.”
“We're not claiming used to. We're claiming better.”
Eli played the little line again. Tess tried another movement. Something changed.
Anna watched them build the version which would leave with them. The trolley's rattle had faded down the passage. Tess looked once toward the place where the low drum had stood, then tried the higher one again.
After half an hour Lorna checked the time. Anna saw and wanted to apologize.
“Do you need—”
“Not yet.”
“You came for the sea.”
“I came for you. The sea was an inducement.”
Tess looked up from the kit.
“You can go. We have to work on boring things.”
“I like boring things,” Lorna said. “I've survived a lot of them.”
Tess smiled, then looked at Anna.
“Thank you for coming.”
Anna nodded.
“Did it help?”
The question escaped before she remembered it wasn't Tess's job to make the afternoon worthwhile.
Tess considered.
“It was nice you were here.”
Anna accepted that. She stood, put the chair back against the wall and left Tess with the others.
At the seafront, she and Lorna bought tea in cardboard cups. There was a bench with enough space for two women who didn't mind sitting close.
“She is beautiful,” Lorna said.
“I know.”
“You could disagree for modesty.”
“She's not my handiwork. You saw.”
“She looks a bit like you.”
Anna looked toward the water. Lorna let the sentence rest where it was.
For a while they discussed the job with bins. Lorna's supervisor had decided the desk pens were being moved by cleaning staff, which let everybody else continue moving them freely.
“Why do you do it?”
“Because we have very little entertainment.”
Anna laughed.
“Can you manage the job?”
“Yes. Can you manage yours?”
“I know what to do. The people make it strange.”
“The people make most things strange.”
Anna drank the tea. It had been sitting too long in the cup and tasted of cardboard.
“I want them to hear it.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. People who looked at me before saying hello. Dad. The pub man. The people who came to the concert after I'd been put away and felt sorry for my child.”
Lorna kept her eyes on the water.
“It's a lot of people.”
“I know.”
“What would you say?”
Anna thought of the notebooks in the little room.
“That I didn't do it. That she did. Not the murder. The thing she chose. That she sat there knowing my daughter wasn't coming to see me because she let me stay.”
“You should say it.”
“I want Tess there.”
The sentence arrived before Anna had decided to give it a shape.
Lorna turned.
“To hear?”
“To be seen.”
Anna could feel the heat in her face.
“They keep saying fourteen years. It's like a number of years of bad weather. Look at her. There's what it was.”
Lorna looked back at the water. The cup in her hands had begun to soften at the rim.
Anna expected a warning. Instead her friend said, “What does Tess want?”
“Music.”
“That's what we saw.”
“I know.”
They remained on the bench, both cups cooling. Anna resented the question, then resented that she couldn't answer it without making the day harder.
“I didn't ask you to judge me,” she said.
“I didn't.”
“It sounded like it.”
“I asked because I don't know her.”
Anna looked at her. Lorna's face was tired from travel, open and stubborn, the face she'd seen across a table when both women wanted the other to stop talking.
“Sorry.”
“You always get cross just before you let me be right. I remember the system.”
They laughed a little, the familiar irritation giving them something to share.
Anna showed her the guesthouse before they went to the station. Lorna sat on the bed. The spring sounded.
“Possessed,” she said.
“I told you.”
“You should charge it half the rent.”
Anna liked having somebody inspect the room without needing to decide whether it was suitable for a daughter. Lorna admired the lipstick, disliked the view and said the window was still a window.
At the station they hugged again.
“Ring me about something which isn't Rachel as well,” Lorna said.
“I will.”
“I mean it. I have complaints ready.”
Anna smiled.
“So have I.”
She watched until Lorna found a seat through the carriage window. Then she went back through the station and took out her phone.
Tess had sent a short recording. The changed ending, not perfect yet, somebody laughing at the wrong note.
Anna listened once without plugs.
Then she listened again, hearing where her daughter's hands found the new version.