The smallest promise

The girl showed Nell the shelves.

There were letters never sent, photographs never taken and birthday presents still wrapped in the shop’s tissue paper. In a glass jar was a laugh Nell had swallowed during a very serious meeting. The jar trembled when she picked it up.

“This is ridiculous,” Nell said.

“I know. You bought the guitar twice.”

On the large table lay a finished book with a yellow cover. Nell reached for it, but the girl rested a hand on the spine.

“That isn’t yours yet.”

“Then whose is it?”

“The person who finishes it.”

Nell sat down. Beyond the tall windows was a gray sea. It looked exactly as she had imagined it would look on the morning of her postponed trip.

“I’ve been busy,” she said.

The girl nodded. She did not accuse her of anything. Somehow this was worse.

“I wanted it to be good.”

“Which thing?”

“All of it.”

The girl considered this. Then she pushed a pencil across the table.

“You don’t have to take everything today.”

Nell picked up the pencil. It was the ordinary kind she used in the workshop, soft enough not to mark a repaired page too deeply. She turned to the last page of her unfinished story.

For a while she wrote nothing.

Then she wrote one sentence. It was not a particularly good sentence. It did, however, lead to another.

When she finally looked up, the girl was gone. The red guitar remained. So did the suitcase, the goggles and the jar containing her laugh.

The room had become a little smaller.

Nell returned through the paper door and found that her tea was still warm.

The following morning she went to the swimming pool. She stayed in the shallow end and clung to the side. On the way home she bought a train ticket to the coast.

That evening she wrote a page.

Weeks later, when she finished her story, Nell opened the notebook to page fourteen. The door was still there, but the room beyond it was no longer a waiting room.

It was a workshop. The windows were open. A girl in an old school jumper was learning three chords on a red guitar.

Nell sat beside her and began something else.