Nell asked for her money before breakfast. She had put on her grey dress and the small hat without flowers which she wore to the shop. The furniture bill lay on the table beside the sugar bowl, folded to show the date. I had seen it there the night before and left it where it …
On Monday morning the sitting room stood bare enough to make me doubt the size of everything we had taken out. The sofa filled the hall. The table leaned on its side in the dining room. Our piano, wrapped in an old sheet, resembled an animal I had persuaded to sleep in a corner. The …
Ada’s small meeting took place on a Thursday which ought to have belonged to no one. We had agreed the room a fortnight before; she had sent the particulars in writing, and I had put them in the book. Yet by the time she arrived I felt as if the house had been taken from …
The painter said the room would look larger in a lighter colour. I had asked him about a patch above the window where the paper was peeling. He had come down from the ladder, stood in the middle of the floor and described a different room. “You could have it all done while I’m here.” …
Arthur’s mother brought the wedding cake in a tin which had to be carried level. She gave the instruction twice before crossing the threshold and once afterwards, when Mr Leach offered to put it on the sideboard. “There is fruit in it,” she said. Mr Leach looked at the tin as if it might begin …
Minnie Larcombe recognised me by the back of my head. I was standing outside a shop comparing the prices of two lamps, and she came up behind me and said that if I was still taking half an hour to choose between things I must be Eleanor Marsh. No one had called me that for …
The first stranger who came to buy a subscription asked whether I was Mrs Bellamy’s housekeeper. I had flour on my sleeve and a cloth in my hand. There was nothing unreasonable in the mistake, and I might once have corrected it with a joke about doing all the work. Instead I said I was …
Joan Hesketh lived above a dentist. I saw the brass plate before I saw her name on the bell and had time, climbing the stairs, to regret not having my teeth attended to when Thomas was alive. It was an unhelpful beginning to an appointment at which I wished to appear competent. She opened the …
Mrs Norridge sent the balance on Saturday morning and a note asking whether I would let the room for a series of talks. Not political meetings, she said, though no one could promise that a roomful of women would keep from politics. Something about books. Something people could attend who did not wish to join …
Grace Benton took Mr Harcourt’s room on the last Thursday in April. She came without her brother, carrying a box of paints and a small case which made me think of all the things she had not been able to bring. “The rest will come on Saturday,” she said. “He has agreed to lend me …
