Love inthe Margins

Then I found Mum's handwriting. I recognised the way she squeezed an extra word above the line rather than cross anything out. “I am tired of being the place everybody else gets to rest.” The reply, in another hand, was short. “You can love a place and leave it.” I phoned her. “Was it really money?” I asked. There was a long silence. “You mean the café.” “I thought we lost it.” “No,” she said. “I didn't renew the lease.” Somewhere behind her, a kettle clicked off. “I'll come tomorrow. Don't promise anybody my brave little story before I get there.”

The first note was on page forty-three. “This ending is a lie.” I wrote beneath it, “You have not reached the ending.” A week later, the library called. Someone had returned the book and asked them to hold it for me. On page forty-four was a new message. “Then meet me where the story begins.” Underneath was the address of the café my mother had closed twenty years ago.

I am Nella Reed. I make indexes for books, which means finding where people buried the important thing and putting it in alphabetical order. This is useful work. Applying it to my mother has been less successful.

The librarian hadn't given anyone my number. I'd left a request to borrow the novel again, should its next reader answer. “An unusual reservation,” she said. I could hear her deciding whether to confiscate my pencil.

On Saturday, the café's green side door stood open. It had spent the intervening years as a furniture stockroom. Now a man was carrying its contents into a van. He had a chair balanced on one shoulder and a pencil behind each ear.

“One for mistakes?” I asked. “One for people who borrow pencils.” He lowered the chair. “You haven't reached the ending.” I held up the book. “Sam,” he said. “I was hoping you'd come.”

He'd invited me here because he couldn't leave the clearance job, not because he knew my mother. The coincidence belonged to the address. The invitation, apparently, belonged to me. That was unexpectedly harder to look at.

Then he opened a carton of books from the old café exchange. Messages crowded their margins: replies, questions, small negotiations between people who'd never shared a table. The new tenant needed the room empty on Monday. Sam had permission to keep the books, but nowhere permanent to put them.

“My mother ran this place,” I said. His smile changed. He stopped lifting things. I had spent twenty years imagining its closure as a bill she'd never managed to pay. Here were other people's words, still taking up space.

I could have taken a photograph and left. Instead, I asked for a pencil. “Borrowing?” said Sam. “Working.” I began a list of names and dates. He cleared a chair for me. Nobody had asked me to make this into a job. I sat down anyway.