The cupboard held the clean light bulbs, the spare washing-up brushes and a packet of dusters Mara had bought before Christmas. To reach it she had to turn sideways between the workbench and the wall, then raise one arm above a shelf while keeping the other against her ribs. That afternoon her cardigan caught on a clamp. She stood attached to it for a moment, holding an exhausted bulb, before she understood that she could move the clamp.
She unscrewed it and laid it on the bench.
Underneath was a pale rectangle in the dust. Her husband had fitted the clamp there so long ago that she had come to regard the narrow passage as a feature of the house. Six months after his death, she was still arranging herself around his convenience.
She fetched a rubbish bag from the kitchen and opened the first tin.
Screws, mostly. Some had white paint in their slots; others were bent. She tipped them onto a newspaper and separated them with the handle of a teaspoon. The straight screws went back into the tin. The bent ones made hardly any sound when she dropped them into the bag, which disappointed her. She wanted the work to register.
The room had once been called the breakfast room. No one had eaten breakfast in it for years. Its window faced the short back yard, where a wet sheet of newspaper had fastened itself to the drain. Beyond the wall, gulls were calling over Low Fen’s estuary. The afternoon light showed the scratches on the bench and the greasy place where her husband had rested his wrist.
During the condolence visits people had stood in the doorway and said she must take her time. She had taken it. They had gone back to their own rooms.
She kept the spirit level, two hammers and the screwdriver with interchangeable bits. A box of hardened filler went into the bag, followed by a broken plug and three lengths of cable too short to be useful. Beneath them lay the wooden seat of a kitchen chair, stripped to a yellowish grain. One leg had been removed. Her husband had intended to repair the joint.
Mara touched the hollow where the leg should fit. She could remember asking him to finish it, but not the last time anyone had sat on it.
She put the seat on the windowsill.
The bottom drawer resisted. She pulled with both hands, felt it move an inch, then stop. Something inside had tipped across the runners. Kneeling might allow her to see underneath, but she would need to plan how to get up. At seventy-one she could still kneel; it was the planning she resented.
She tried again. The drawer came forward abruptly and struck her thigh.
“Enough,” she said.
She left it projecting and went into the hall. On the third stair she sat down, one hand on the banister, and waited for the small hot pain in her leg to settle.
From there she could see the route she took with the washing basket: round the projecting newel post, past the radiator, up the turn where the treads narrowed. Lately she had carried half-loads. She had begun leaving shoes upstairs and downstairs so that she would not have to fetch them. A bottle of water lived beside her bed because wanting a drink at night had become a calculation.
None of these arrangements was serious enough to announce. Together they occupied her day.
Above her, a floorboard creaked. Anika was in her room. Mara listened to the familiar opening and closing of a drawer, then stood, using the banister without pretending she did not need it.
At the kitchen table she opened the local paper to the property advertisements. She had folded the page back on Saturday and kept it beneath the fruit bowl, where the edge had absorbed juice from a soft pear. She chose the firm whose office stood opposite the library. She knew the window, the small square photographs, the woman who sometimes watered the plants before opening.
The telephone rang four times.
“Good afternoon. Wren and Cole.”
“I’d like someone to come and value my house.”
The woman asked for her name and address. Mara gave them, then pulled the shopping pencil towards her.
“Is this with a view to selling, Mrs Bell, or are you curious about the current value?”
“I intend to move.”
Saying it required less breath than she had expected. She looked through the open doorway at the drawer sticking out from the bench.
“Of course. And is there somewhere you’ve seen?”
“No.”
“An area you’re hoping to move to?”
“Somewhere I can manage.”
There was a pause, not unfriendly, in which Mara heard how little that described. She could list what she no longer wanted: the stairs, the narrow yard, the cupboard she approached sideways. She had no corresponding picture ready to offer.
“Locally, perhaps?” the woman suggested.
“Yes. I think locally.”
They settled on the following Monday at eleven. Someone called Paul would come. He would look round, discuss the market and explain the firm’s service.
“Will he take photographs?” Mara asked.
“Only reference pictures with your permission. Marketing photographs would be arranged separately if you instructed us.”
“I’m not instructing anyone yet. I want to know what’s involved. The fees and so on.”
“Certainly. There’s no obligation from the valuation.”
Mara wrote MONDAY 11 on the back of an old appointment card. She asked how long a visit usually took, whether she should find the house papers, whether there was anything she ought to do beforehand.
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