The community hall held a drop-in session on Tuesday morning. Vivienne had described it as an opportunity to discover local activities. Priya called it a recruitment exercise with biscuits.
I went because the library might run a reading session there, and because Marianne had asked me to look at the room rather than volunteer her entire staff on instinct.
George met me at the entrance with a booking diary under one arm.
“You’ll want the smaller room. Less echo.”
He led me past the main hall, where Saturday’s fair had left behind a faint smell of coffee and one deflated balloon.
The smaller room held a table, a cupboard and a noticeboard crowded with leaflets. A kettle stood beside the sink.
“Who locks up?” I asked.
“Usually me on Thursdays. Depends who’s using it. Committee keeps the rota.”
“Vivienne?”
“Among others. She doesn’t actually live in the cupboard, whatever people think.”
I measured the table with my eyes and took photographs for Marianne, careful not to include a sign-in sheet lying nearby.
George noticed.
“Useful habit.”
“Libraries. You learn how much people reveal by leaving things flat.”
We returned to the main room. An older couple were examining the programme for a gardening talk. Celia was arranging leaflets. Helen’s foliage remained in two jars, greener than anything in my kitchen.
On a shelf beside the office door stood a brass award shaped like a small rising sun. The office opened directly into the main room, opposite the door from the entrance passage. George pointed out the rear exit beyond the stacked chairs and the first-aid box on the wall beside it. A dated stock sheet hung below the box; he checked it, then returned to the booking diary.
“Community partnership,” George said when he saw me reading the engraving. “Awarded to the hall. We mostly use it to stop that shelf looking bare.”
It appeared in a photograph above the shelf, being held between Vivienne and a man in a council lanyard. The photograph was several years old. The room behind them had different curtains.
I moved on to the noticeboard.
Martin arrived carrying a folder and a cardboard cup. He greeted George by name, then paused when he saw me.
“Nora.”
“Morning.”
“How did the book stall do?”
“You’d have to ask whoever counted it.”
“Always passing me on to someone else.”
He smiled as if we had developed a private joke.
I looked back at the booking form.
Martin joined Celia near the leaflets. I was close enough to hear ordinary speech, not close enough to read the papers he put on the table.
“A few queries from the sponsors,” he said.
“Can you send them?”
“I have. Just wanted to check you’d seen them.”
“It’s been a busy weekend.”
“Of course.”
He opened the folder.
“This supplier, for example. We use them at work. I thought I’d check the reference.”
Celia glanced at the page.
“Some things are passed through other people. Vivienne will know.”
“I’m asking whoever dealt with the payment.”
The gardening couple moved between us. When they passed, Celia had gathered the papers into a single pile.
“Email me the questions together. I’ll look properly.”
“That’s all I need.”
His voice remained friendly. So did hers. I had no reason, then, to decide which of them deserved my sympathy.
At the far end of the hall, Vivienne called for help moving chairs. Martin went over immediately. He lifted two at once, laughing at something she said.
Celia watched him for a moment, then returned to the leaflets.
“Did you find what you needed?” she asked me.
“Mostly. Marianne will want to know about access and numbers.”
“Ask George. He remembers everything about this place except where he’s left his glasses.”
George touched the pair resting on his head and accepted defeat.
We went through the booking form together. I wrote down the hire rate and room capacity. When I reached the line for the organiser’s name, George offered me a pen.
“Thursday evenings are generally free after the early class,” he said. “But we close at nine.”
“Strictly?”
“Officially.”
He smiled. “Somebody always remembers a chair or a lost umbrella. I come back to check. Otherwise we’d have the heating on all night.”
The small office had a separate door off the main room. George pointed it out as the place to return equipment forms. Through the opening I saw a desk, a telephone and shelves of files. It looked like every community office I had ever entered: essential work being done in a room nobody had thought to decorate.
“Just enquiries today,” I said.
“Wise.”
Outside, the church clock struck eleven. I took my phone out to send Marianne the room photographs and found a message from Beth.
Guesthouse is possible. Speaking to the support worker tomorrow before I book anything.
I replied with a thumbs-up, then worried it looked insufficient, then decided friendship ought to survive punctuation.
Behind me, the hall door opened. Celia came out without her coat.
“Nora, if Beth asks about Tuesday, tell her I’ll call tonight.”
“Which Tuesday?”
“Sorry. Today. My head’s full.”
She pressed her fingers to her forehead.
“Is everything all right?”
“Just forms.”
From inside, Martin called her name.
Celia turned back before I could say anything else.