## Chapter 470 — A Room in the City

By half past ten on Wednesday, 24 May, Kanno had folded the concert programme often enough that the paper had begun to give way at the corners.

On the screen, the new arrangement looked better. In her hands, it made the audience open two panels before discovering who was performing first. She flattened the sheet beside her keyboard and returned the running order to its earlier position. The names could stay larger. The broad strip of empty space she had liked on the cover would have to go.

The woman coordinating the printing sounded apologetic when Kanno called.

“I'm sorry. I showed it to someone who will actually have to read it in the hall. She said the names were too small.”

“She was right,” Kanno said. “I've enlarged them. I'm sending another version now, but please look at it at the printed size. The screen will let you make almost anything readable.”

The woman thanked her twice and asked whether the extra acknowledgements had caused trouble. Kanno looked at the panel they now occupied. Trouble was an unnecessarily emotional word for moving six lines and losing a pleasing margin.

“They fit. Check the spelling of the names as well.”

After the call, she printed the revised sheet. This time the first opening gave her the useful information, and the smaller heading on the cover still looked deliberate. She pressed the folds with the side of a ruler and set the sample where she could see it while working on the next job.

Her phone lit beside it.

Isha had answered last night's message with a simple expression of pleasure that the meeting had gone well. No question followed. Kanno read it, smiled briefly and returned to the screen, where a caption had somehow acquired two different forms of the same person's name.

The morning went quickly after that. She answered a production query, moved a block of text which had been sitting too close to the trim, and discovered that the awkward line she had been trying to shorten was a quotation. It would have to remain awkward. By lunch, her shoulders wanted her out of the chair.

She took her food outside and found a place where the building gave a narrow strip of shade. The air was mild, with traffic noise moving through it and a persistent smell of something frying farther along the street. Someone had spilled a little coffee on the bench. Kanno checked before sitting and shifted to the other end.

She had expected to remember the maps most clearly.

Instead, while separating the paper from her sandwich, she remembered the movement of Ian's hand across the café table. Forward, then stopped. The question about walking with her had followed, and she had answered that.

It was irritating how much room an unfinished gesture could occupy.

She could remember exactly where his hand had stopped. She could not know what he had meant to do with it, and supplying the rest herself would make a poor basis for anything. Even so, she found herself considering where her own hand had been at the time.

Kanno lowered the sandwich to its wrapper and looked across the road.

The hug was easier to remember. She had wanted it, had said so, and had stayed in it. Thinking about it now brought back a small warmth which she allowed to remain while a delivery driver struggled with a stack of empty crates outside the shop opposite.

She had also been glad to close her own door at the end. Now she found herself wondering whether she had talked too much about her work, which was absurd when he had asked about it. She had not spent Monday reviewing how much she had said over Sunday coffee with Thomas and Isha.

A drop of dressing escaped onto the wrapper. Kanno caught it before it reached her trousers and finished eating.

When she returned, the concert organiser had approved the new programme and corrected one name. Kanno made the change, prepared the files and passed the job onward. The rejected cover went into the paper recycling beneath two sheets of somebody else's calculations.

Later in the afternoon, an order arrived for one copy of *Until Replaced*.

There was no accompanying question about her next project. No request for an explanation of the photographs. Somebody wanted the book she had already made.

Kanno checked the details and left herself a reminder to pack it that evening.

---

Thomas had been looking at a coastal photograph for several minutes when Isha came out of the kitchen.

The dishes were draining behind her. She had changed out of her work clothes, and the loose sleeve of her shirt slipped back as she set two mugs on the table. Outside the balcony doors, evening still held enough light to show the green along the nearby streets. The holiday notes lay beside the laptop, their folded edge softened by almost a week of being moved out of the way.

“Still the coast?” she asked.

“Still wondering whether I want the coast, or this particular photograph.”

She sat beside him and looked. A path crossed a green slope above blue water. Almost nothing in the frame suggested the business of reaching it, finding somewhere to sleep or returning to the station afterward.

“I like the photograph too.”

Thomas opened the map again. The path was where it had been the previous time he checked. So were the connections which would take them towards it. He could imagine the walking day quite clearly; the rest of the two nights kept becoming travel around the walking day.

“I think I want to arrive somewhere and stay there,” he said. “Put the bags down. Go out again. Be able to come back for an hour without that becoming the end of the day.”

Isha drew her mug closer. “A city.”

“Yes. I think I actually want a city.” He looked at her. “Does that disappoint you?”

She considered before answering. Her attention moved from the narrow path in the photograph to the map beneath it, then towards the balcony, where the last light caught one of the folded papers in her hanging.

“A little. I like the idea of the sea. But I don't want to spend the whole weekend protecting one good walk from everything around it.”

She leaned forward and returned the browser to Morioka.

The page opened on the castle-site park. Green trees stood above courses of old stone; other photographs showed streets, bridges and the river cutting through the city. Isha passed over the broad scenic views and stopped on one taken closer to water level. It was easier to imagine walking there when the photographer had left the neighbouring buildings in the frame.

“I want to spend a day outside,” she said. “Properly outside. We leave after breakfast and keep going until the afternoon. Not just the park and then three shops because we've been walking for an hour.”

“I would like that too. Although I reserve the right to become interested in a shop.”

“One shop.”

Thomas gave her a look, and she smiled into her tea. The map had room for more than the little circuit around the park. They followed the river with the cursor, looking at crossings and the streets beyond, then stopped tracing before a possible day became a route they would feel obliged to complete.

There were things Thomas wanted to look at as well. He enlarged a street photograph containing an old shopfront and spent longer on it than on the next view of the park. Isha watched him checking what lay around it, no longer moving straight to the railway symbol. “You do want the city,” she said.

“I do. Coffee somewhere we haven't already decided is good. Walking until we find a place for lunch. Being able to change our minds about the afternoon.” He rested his hand beside hers on the table. “And going out with you in the evening.”

“We go out in the evening here.”

“I know. I would still like to do it there.”

Isha turned her hand beneath his. His thumb settled against the side of her finger, just below the rings. The laptop stood close enough that the edge of the screen partly blocked his face; she pushed it away a little.

“What sort of evening?”

“Dinner. A walk back. Perhaps wearing something I didn't spend the whole day sweating in.”

Her eyes moved over his shirt with a deliberateness which made him aware of the old, softened collar.

“I could bring a dress.”

Thomas smiled. “That would improve the evening considerably.”

She liked how quickly he said it. The attention was familiar, but the thought of getting ready in another room, with another street beyond the window, gave it a different pleasure. She imagined washing the day's dust from her feet, leaving her walking clothes over a chair and finding him waiting while she chose whether her hair should be up or down.

Then she glanced at the hotel tabs still open across the top of the screen.

“We should probably make sure the room has somewhere to put the clothes.”

“That rules out the smallest one.”

“Good. You were defending that one because it was near the station.”

He admitted that he had been. They went back to the city map and looked at where they might actually want to stay. A little farther from the station made more sense if they were going to keep returning through the centre. They needed a comfortable bed and enough floor to open a bag; the room did not have to supply the entire holiday.

Yamagata still sat beneath Morioka on the paper. Thomas touched the name with the end of his pen.

“Are we choosing this because we've looked at it most?”

“Partly.” Isha took a drink. “We've looked at it most because we keep finding things we want to do there.”

He thought about that, then nodded. There was nothing wrong with Yamagata which needed proving before they could leave it for another time. The coast could have a longer trip, or a different two nights when one walking route was what they wanted most.

“Morioka,” he said. “Shall we?”

“Yes. Two nights in Morioka.”

Isha reached across him and closed the coastal photograph.

The decisiveness pleased her more than she had expected. She had enjoyed looking, but by now she wanted to put on shoes and go somewhere. Thomas wrote the city name on a clear part of the page, then opened the calendar.

They settled on Friday, 2 June, to Sunday, 4 June as the dates to ask for. His calendar showed no obvious immovable commitment on the Friday. Isha would need to discuss the whole interval against her shifts; having a three-day working week did not mean that any particular three days were hers to take away.

“I'll speak to Ishikawa tomorrow,” she said. “If that weekend doesn't fit, we move the dates. We are not choosing the city again.”

“Agreed.”

Thomas opened the leave system and submitted an annual-leave request for Friday. He checked the date once and sent it. Isha put the proposed interval into her own notes, where she would see it before work.

No approval arrived while they sat there. They had not booked a room or paid for trains. Thomas nevertheless found that the next tasks had become considerably easier to think about. He needed accommodation in one city for two people, once they knew the dates. Most of the windows currently open were no longer useful.

He began closing them.

“Keep that one,” Isha said.

The remaining page showed the river beside the city. Thomas saved it and closed the laptop.

For a moment they sat with their hands still joined. Isha had been thinking about the walking day, then about the dress. Now another part of the trip occurred to her with unexpected force.

“We could have a very slow breakfast.”

Thomas turned towards her. “On the walking day?”

“On whichever day I wake up and want a slow breakfast.”

She moved her chair closer until their knees touched beneath the table. The early start she had imagined ten minutes ago lost much of its urgency. She could still walk all day. She could also stay in bed with her husband while other people's mornings began outside.

Thomas kissed her, tasting tea, and she kept him close for a second kiss before letting him reach for his mug.

---

At home, Kanno checked the copy of *Until Replaced* before wrapping it.

The corners were clean. The staples sat properly. She turned through the pages, catching herself making the old pauses at photographs whose placement she could still remember arguing with. The marks in the page-nine image had survived all the work done around them. She had seen them so often that it took an effort to look at the whole spread again.

She wrote a short thank-you note and slipped it inside the cover. The order needed posting tomorrow. For tonight, it required a protective board, an envelope and enough tape to hold it securely without making the recipient fight their way into a small book.

Her scissors were under a stack of working prints.

Moving the prints exposed the familiar wall photographs: pale rectangles where signs had been, holes from old fittings, patches of paint whose edges remained visible through later coats. She set three beside one another while retrieving the scissors, then left them there as she finished packing.

The middle photograph was the trouble.

On its own she liked it. Between the other two, its dark edge made them look washed out. She moved it to the end, where it acquired an importance the subject could not support, then took it out altogether. The remaining pair looked less decided than they had before.

Kanno sat down.

The parcel waited near the edge of the table while she brought over a few more prints. For twenty minutes she tried arrangements which became less persuasive the longer she looked. One combination was attractive and empty. Another made the photographs appear to explain a story she had never witnessed.

She separated that one immediately.

The room had grown dimmer. Kanno switched on the desk lamp, moved it so the reflection stopped crossing the glossy corner of one proof, and tried again. Eventually she put a small mark on the back of two prints to remember a pairing worth returning to. The dark-edged photograph went into a separate sleeve. She still wanted to keep it.

Her phone sounded as she was clearing space for dinner.

**Isha:** Morioka. We have finally chosen. Two nights, hopefully 2–4 June. I'm asking about my shifts tomorrow. Thomas has already requested the Friday.

Kanno read the message with the pleasure of someone who had spent an afternoon contributing to the indecision.

**Kanno:** Good. What decided it?

**Isha:** We want to walk all day and still be able to go back to the room before dinner. And we both actually want the city.

Kanno pictured the three of them around the holiday pages on Sunday: Thomas looking for something the timetable could settle, Isha tracing water, herself making the coast less convenient by asking where on it they intended to sleep. She was glad they had stopped. She was also a little envious of the two nights, especially the part where somebody else would make breakfast.

She sent back that it sounded good, then added that she had another copy of *Until Replaced* ready to post.

Isha's reply arrived while Kanno was getting food from the refrigerator. She wanted to know whether the buyer was someone from Small Works.

**Kanno:** A name I don't recognise. They didn't say where they found it.

She added a photograph of the wrapped copy, with the address turned away. Isha's pleasure in the small sale came through clearly in her reply. The exchange left Kanno wanting to see them, though not tonight, when the table was covered in photographs and she had yet to eat.

She asked whether they would be home on Sunday afternoon.

They would. Coffee was agreed.

After dinner, Kanno washed up and returned to the prints. With the food cleared away, the arrangement she had marked looked slightly better. She took a reference photograph of it for herself, then gathered the sheets carefully, putting the work away before she could spend the rest of the evening making and undoing the same decision.

The parcel remained on the table.

She checked the address and reached for the tape. As she turned the envelope, her attention returned briefly to the café—not the village through the windows or the three maps, but the ease of the last part of the conversation. She had stopped checking her own words so closely. She remembered that more clearly now than whatever she had been trying to infer from a hand.

She missed sitting there a little.

She sat with that for a moment, the tape resting across her fingers. Then she finished sealing the envelope and set it against her work bag so she would remember it in the morning.

By the time she had showered and found something comfortable to wear, the evening was well advanced. She left the desk lamp off and took the sofa instead, pushing a cushion beneath her elbow as she turned on the television.

A panel of people were trying to identify an everyday object from a photograph taken much too close. Kanno recognised it before any of them did and watched, increasingly offended, as they talked themselves towards an answer which was plainly wrong.

“Oh, come on,” she said.

She drew her feet up beneath her and stayed to see whether anyone would notice the hinge.