The electrician wanted the balance before he came back.
He was polite about it. That made Nora's anger less useful. She had asked him to change the lights after they were fitted, and he had changed them. The work was good. The invoice was due.
“I'll do it now,” she said.
He thanked her. She sat at the showroom counter with the bank screen open and the room lit exactly as she'd wanted. Money which had been a bag in a stranger's house was now a number she could move with her thumb.
Cal had made it available in portions, paying for some things himself, giving her enough for the rest. He said the amount she'd asked for was the amount she needed; he didn't want her carrying cash while her arm was like that. She'd been grateful for the practical arrangements because they had allowed her to get on with work.
She transferred the balance. The confirmation appeared. For a moment she saw the other money, stacked in the drawer Iris had opened, so ordinary in appearance that Nora had wondered whether she'd misunderstood its value.
They had gone after dusk. Cal drove. Nora sat beside him; Iris was in the back, leaning forward between them when she gave directions. She had not seemed frightened. She had seemed impatient with every other vehicle, every bend which delayed them.
“Don't go through the village,” she said.
“I'm not.”
“You're in the wrong lane.”
“I've driven before.”
Nora turned to look at her. Iris wore a dark jacket Nora had not seen during the stay. Her hair was tied back. She looked like someone who had remembered where she was going and dressed for it.
“He's away?” Nora asked.
“Yes.”
“You're sure?”
Iris looked from her to Cal.
“I wouldn't take you if I wasn't.”
Nora accepted it. She could have asked where he had gone, when he'd last checked in, how Iris knew. Questions would have made the evening more difficult to begin. She had already told Cal which outstanding bills stopped the opening. He knew what she wanted, and she disliked letting him know she'd become afraid of the thing she'd agreed to.
Cal turned onto a narrow road. The headlights showed wet leaves at the edges, then a gate. Iris got out to open it. Nora watched her pull hard at the metal until it gave.
“Bit stiff,” Cal said.
“Don't say that to her,” Nora said.
He laughed. She laughed too, grateful for a joke, ashamed later of how little it had taken to make the trip feel like the three of them were doing something together which they might remember fondly.
Wren House was bigger than she expected. Dominic's London rooms had been carefully restrained, space he could make expensive by keeping things out of it. Here the building spread behind an old front wall, one addition after another. Iris went to the side door, took a key out of her pocket and opened it without hesitation.
Inside, there was no alarm sound. Nora had expected one without admitting it. She followed Iris through a dim kitchen and a passage to the garden room.
“Don't turn the main light on,” Iris said.
Cal put his phone light on instead. Its thin beam made the furniture ugly: the edge of a chair, a cupboard door, a bust on a stand which suddenly looked like a man waiting in the corner. Nora wanted daylight. In daylight she would have been a designer looking at things, a woman who belonged in a client's house.
Iris knew where the money was. There was no long search, no clever examination of a lock. She opened a cupboard, moved a box and slid a drawer out farther than it seemed meant to go. Then she crouched and lifted what lay behind it.
Nora looked away toward the garden. Her face reflected in the dark glass. She watched herself watching until Cal said her name.
“Give her a hand.”
It was an ordinary instruction. Nora crouched beside Iris and took a bundle from her.
The notes had their own smell, warm paper and other people's hands. Nora had expected excitement. Instead there was a little blankness, the mind refusing for a moment to fit this familiar object to the thing they had come to do.
“How much?” she asked.
“Enough,” Iris said.
It was more than enough. Nora understood that as they filled the bag. She could have stopped at the amount she'd named. She could have said they'd take less. The absurdity of imagining a modest theft struck her even then. She passed the next bundle and liked the weight leaving her hand because it would now be theirs.
Cal went back toward the kitchen. He said he wanted to check the gate, where they'd left the van. Iris pulled the zip on the bag and stood.
“Let's go,” Nora said.
“I am.”
There was something in the answer. Nora reached toward the bag.
“I'll carry that.”
Iris moved it away.
“I have it.”
“It's heavy.”
“I know.”
She went toward the garden-room door, the one which opened onto the side path. Nora had come through the house; she didn't know where this other exit led except into the dark beside the van.
“Cal's that way,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen.
“Then he'll see me outside.”
“Wait.”
Iris stopped. Nora saw her hand tighten on the handles.
“What?”
“We said we'd split it.”
“And now you've got a reason I should give it to you.”
“I haven't.”
“You just asked.”
“To carry it.”
Iris looked at the hand Nora still held out.
“You two will take what you need. Then you'll tell me what I need.”
“That's not fair.”
“It would be easy.”
Nora stepped closer. She wanted the bag put down, wanted Cal back in the room making this practical. She wanted Iris to remember the kitchen and the kiss, but she was ashamed of wanting to use either.
“I wouldn't do that to you.”
“You let him answer for you.”
“No, I don't.”
“You've done it all evening.”
Iris moved toward the door. Nora took a handle. She remembered the rough seam against her fingers, the sudden intimate tug of holding the same thing as someone who wanted it more.
“Stop,” Nora said.
“Let go.”
“Put it down and we'll talk.”
“We can talk when I've got my share.”
“You have all of it.”
Iris pulled. Nora held on, not because she wanted to hurt her but because she could feel the showroom leaving. There it was: the room, the window, Mina's cabinet, a version of herself she hadn't yet been allowed to be.
“Don't be stupid,” she said.
Iris's face changed. Nora wished afterwards she could place the exact moment when they might still have stopped. There were several, too many to make one useful. She had followed. She had reached. She had tightened her hand.
“Get off me.”
Iris shoved her hard, with her free arm, and Nora fell back.
She hadn't known the old door was so near. She struck it with her shoulder and arm. The glass broke with a noise larger than the room, then smaller noises followed, sharp little arrivals on the tiles.
At first she thought she'd been cut somewhere else because she could see the blood before she understood the pain. Her left arm looked wrong. She tried to hold it, fingers sliding, and said Iris's name.
Iris stood by the door with the bag. Her mouth was open. Nora wanted her to come closer.
“Iris.”
The room tilted. Nora reached for the door frame with the wrong hand. Pain went through her, and she dropped to her knees, then onto her side. She remembered the tiles being cool under her face and wanting them to stay cool. She remembered footsteps leaving.
She did not remember choosing to close her eyes.
Cal's voice came back before the room did. He was angry, telling her to stay still, then telling her to answer him. Cloth pressed against her arm. She tried to get away from the pressure. He wouldn't let her.
“Look at me. Nor, come on.”
She did. She could see his face and the dark garden beyond him. He said she was going to hospital. She believed him because he had already begun making it happen.
Nora sat at the counter with the completed transfer on her phone. She had been willing to keep the bag. She had not been willing to let Iris walk away holding it. Whatever Iris had done afterwards, that part of the room belonged to her.
The electrician rang back to say thank you and ask when he should return.
“Tomorrow,” Nora said.
“Morning all right?”
She looked down at her dressing. There was a loose edge near the wrist which she had worried with her fingers while remembering.
“Yes.”
She told him the door would be open. Then she put the phone away and sat for a while without turning on the lights she'd paid him to finish.