Echoes

Ada brought the first chair two weeks later. She had finished an overnight costume shift and walked along the river rather than pay for the bus. Mara was setting out notices explaining the workshop’s opening hours. While she talked, Ada lowered herself toward the stool, then stopped because it was covered with paper.

Mara cleared it. The chair needed bolts, which Ada had bought instead of breakfast. Once its legs were firm, Mara reached across the bench with part of her own loaf. Ada ate beside the repaired chair while Mara put the notices away. They could wait.

Before leaving, Ada asked whether she might send other theatre workers there. Mara almost explained the appointment system she had devised. Instead she checked how many spare bolts remained and told Ada which morning she would be back.

The following evening, Ada agreed to accept soup but not a visit. Ivo stood beside the tray in his flat, gripping one wrist with the other hand. He imagined the neighbours seeing him at her door and deciding he was buying her silence. Mara waited near the kitchen doorway until the surface of the soup stopped steaming.

He had made Ada’s meal for strangers sound like evidence against her. Now he was letting another imagined verdict keep her supper upstairs. He released his wrist and asked Mara to reheat the bowl.

Downstairs, Ada opened her door just far enough to receive the tray. Ivo did not enter or ask whether she had read his correction. Back in the flat, he wrote to the manager again about the cancelled wages. The bowl and the money were separate matters.

June brought a course acceptance and the landlord’s notice: the river workshop had to be empty by November. At the kitchen table, Ivo folded the letter along its existing crease. Mara waited with her hand open beside the bread. He wanted her to refuse the course so that one uncertain thing, at least, would disappear.

Instead, he put their bills between them. They protected the rent reserve, counted Mara’s remaining savings and removed the extra wages he had not agreed to earn. There was enough for the fee, but not for another workshop deposit.

Ivo passed her the bread. Mara accepted the course place and wrote to confirm the November departure. Neither decision cancelled the other. Before class that evening, she marked the workshop’s final date on the notices she had once been so eager to display.

Later that month, Ivo sat with Mara in the empty chapel beside the community hall. Ada had found other work, but the missing theatre wages had left bills overdue. Ivo had begun describing the affair as a misunderstanding. Mara touched his sleeve when he used the word, then withdrew her hand.

With his palms open on his knees, he said what he had done: damaged the robe, blamed Ada, and used the meal she prepared to make his accusation seem convincing. He had wanted the manager to trust him at her expense. He repeated the account toward the unlit altar without adding an excuse.

Outside, he asked Ada for the amount she had lost and proposed repayment dates. She corrected his figure to include an overdue charge. He entered the full amount, then asked the manager for a meeting with the costume staff.

On the last November afternoon, Mara stood beside the workshop bench while Ivo waited with a spanner. Ada had secured a repair corner in the community hall. Mara had offered smaller tools but kept postponing an answer about the bench. Paying to store it would leave her unable to meet the workshop’s final heating bill.

She emptied the drawers and asked Ada to measure the hall doorway. They unbolted the legs and moved the bench before dusk. In its new place, Mara steadied the frame while Ada tightened the final bolt; Ivo waited beside them until there was something to lift.

Ada set a split chair on the wood and pulled up a second stool for tomorrow’s learner. Mara handed over the drawer key. Then she went back to sweep the river room and return the landlord’s key, leaving the bench where it could be used.