Torn Across Once

Nell read the letter through once, standing at the counter with the cold machines at her back, then turned it face down beside the shop book. She didn't touch the ruled line. Her hands were dry, but she wiped them down her overall anyway.

Under the line it said Collector's countersignature. Above it was Dasu's name, typed, and Winnie's door number, and the word faulty, twice.

"I'm not signing a thing that calls her box faulty when it's only the fuse, and I'm not leaving Dasu to be struck off for it either." she said. "Somebody go and fetch the fuse from Winnie's, before noon."

Dasu was in the doorway under the lit box, hands open at her sides, the cardigan pocket left alone. "Don't fetch it on my account, Nell, it's Winnie's fuse and Winnie's to say. I'll not have it carried out of her house by anyone she hasn't told, and I'll not sign her box faulty either, so let noon come if it must."

Winnie had come down the row without either of them seeing. She stopped under the box with coal on her fingers and something shut in her fist.

"Nobody carries it out of my house but me, and I'm here, aren't I. I'll put it back with my own hand, Dasu, but I'll not have my name typed on a paper to say why."

Perry was a step behind her with his tin. "Put it in, Winnie, and leave the paper be. Nell can write in her book that the fuse went back by your hand at whatever o'clock it is, and that'll do for anyone who asks."

Nell wrote it under the float line. Fuse back by Winnie's hand. She left a space for the time and turned the book round.

Winnie read it and grunted. "That'll do, Nell, as long as it says my hand and not my name on a paper. Come on, Perry, mind my knees, and you can watch the light and say what you saw."

Nell tucked the letter under the book and stood in the doorway next to Dasu. Up the row Winnie climbed her step and reached up with her thumb. The box over her door stayed grey. The whole row had been saying since last night that Winnie's fuse wasn't blown, it was just taking its time.

"Give it its time, Perry," Nell called. "Dasu, if noon comes and it's still dark, I'll go up and stand with Winnie myself before I put any name to that line."

"Don't go up for me, Nell."

A van with the office's lettering came round the bend and pulled in behind Dasu's. The door slammed. A young man in a grey coat got out with a clipboard and started reading numbers off the doors.

The box over the launderette took its half second, in Dasu's voice.

*I'd sooner that light stayed dark, so it's Winnie's fuse in the wrong and not my sheet. I'm glad of every minute it doesn't come on.*

"You heard that, Dasu, we all did, and I'll not pretend we didn't," Nell said.

"I said it, Nell, or something said it for me, and it's true as far as it goes. I'd sooner not be glad of the dark, and I'm not asking you to forgive it."

Nell went out and met the lad before he got to the mat. "Morning, lad. The Collector's name is on that letter and I'm the one who answers to it, so you'll say your piece to me and not to her."

Dasu came out beside her. "I'm the installer on that paper, lad, so if you want a name, take mine and no one else's."

Nell went back to the counter, took the letter out from under the book and held it up so he could see the blank line. Then she tore it across, once, and put the halves down.

"That's my answer to your office, lad, and you can write that I gave it."

Dasu took the fitting sheet out of her pocket and laid it beside the halves, still folded. "That's Nell's answer, lad, and mine is the sheet, which was mine to carry and is no one's now but Winnie's to read if she wants it."

Winnie had come all the way back down. She picked the sheet up between two black fingers and didn't open it. "I'll hold this, Dasu, since you've made it mine, and I'll read it in my own time at my own table."

Perry's voice came from out on the row. "I'll say what I saw at noon, lad, and not a minute before."

Nell looked at the two halves on the counter, then past the lad's clipboard to the grey box over Winnie's door, and the pen was still in her hand with the space for the time left empty.