At ten past nine on Saturday, a woman in a purple hat asked Iris whether everything was really going. “Everything in the sale,” Iris said. “Including that?” She pointed at the brass service bell. “No. We still need that.” The woman rang it, apparently to confirm the judgment, and went upstairs in search of bed …
By nine o’clock Friday morning, Iris had discovered that the conference-room camera made her look like a woman being interviewed about a flood. “Higher,” Daniel said. She lifted the laptop onto a sample book of curtain fabrics. “Better?” “Now you look as if you have curtains.” She moved it again. On the screen, the small …
The man sent to count everything Iris was losing had brought his own pencil sharpener. It sat on the conference table the next morning, square and black and serious, beside two pencils lined up with the edge of Daniel’s notebook. Iris put her coffee down beside it. “Are those difficult to find in the wild?” …
“You can’t put adultery in the reason-for-return box,” Colin said. Iris looked from her husband to the silver bracelet resting on its little velvet cushion. He had given it to her nine weeks ago, across a restaurant table sticky with spilled prosecco, and said twenty-nine years was something to celebrate. On Tuesday he had told …
