I. How to Tell a Tin from a Tin

The trouble began with a cake tin, which was unusual only because most of the trouble at the Fern Harbor Library had been caused by the gutters. Nell Hart knew the gutters well. She was in the middle of putting a bucket beneath the worst of them when June Millward arrived on a bicycle with a blue tin tied to her rack.

“No scones in this one,” June called.

Nell moved the bucket an inch to the left. It immediately caught a drip. “I'm not a person you have to warn about scones.”

“Last time you opened my tin you ate the two I was taking home.”

“You said take two.”

“I said take one of the two.”

June got off her bicycle. She was seventy-three and rode with her trouser cuffs held in place by two narrow strips of elastic, one white and one black. She unwound the white one first, put it in her pocket, and brought the tin indoors. Its lid had a picture of a woman in a long blue skirt standing on a cliff. Somebody had dropped it often enough for the woman's head to have gone smooth.

“This is it,” June said. She put it on the library's worktable and opened it in front of Nell.

Inside was a narrow book bound in brown cloth. There was a dark mark on the lower corner, shaped like a bird's footprint. Nell saw the beginning of a line of pencil on the first page before June turned back the thin paper that protected it. The title was written in a plain hand: SATURDAY. Below it, on a scrap of old masking tape, somebody had written “please leave here.”

At the Wren Street Bakery, where June had worked before she bought it, the Saturday book was where the bakers wrote down quantities they couldn't remember, which ovens would hold a tray without tilting, and what had happened when someone tried changing the flour. Later they put in things that happened outside the bakery. One page contained an instruction for lemon buns and a note that somebody's son had passed his driving test in the rain. The writers were more likely to include a name if the recipe had gone wrong and they needed to ask somebody about it on Monday.

It was the first time Nell had seen the actual book. She had spent the previous evening mounting photographs of the bakery and carrying a display case upstairs, which was how she knew that the plastic imitation of the book was lying on a sheet of tissue in the librarian's office. The imitation was for people to handle. She had ordered it from a bookbinder with a photograph of the cover, and an instruction to put the bird's footprint in the right place. The bookbinder had done it so carefully that Nell had had to mark the inside of the imitation with a small purple dot.

“Are you still happy for people to see this page?” Nell asked. It was the one with notes in two languages around the edges of a recipe. The sign beside it would say that eight people had contributed to the book, and that the library was still looking for the names of three of them.

June read the page from the top, slowly. “I'll be happier if they see it with the names that are on it.”

“That's what we've put on the sign.”

June smiled. “I know. I went in and read the sign yesterday.”

Nell took a photograph for the accession record. The tin was in the bottom of the picture, with its green star sticker in full view. She asked June if she'd put the star on herself.

“Etta's been marking all the tins. She says it's the only way to get them back at the end of the day.”

They looked through the window. In the yard Etta was unpacking an estate car full of racks, cakes, and tins. She was wearing a yellow apron with the name of a shop that had been out of business for twenty years. She waved at somebody behind Nell, not at Nell. When Nell turned, the person was Martin Pike. He had already taken his coat off. He had got there early to organise the afternoon auction and looked too full of energy for the amount of weather there was outside.

“Is that the book?” he asked.

June closed the tin. “It's the book.”

Martin said he had been looking forward to seeing it again. Nell offered to show it to him when it was in the case. He said of course. Then he took a little step to one side so he could look over her shoulder while she put the tin down.

II. A Word with the Treasurer

By nine fifteen there were three different conversations going on about where to put the display case. The library board wanted it by the window, where it would be visible from the street. Viv Shen, the librarian, wanted it away from the direct light. Etta wanted people to be able to walk from the urn to the cake table without turning sideways. Nell moved the urn. Everyone stopped talking about the case for nearly a whole minute.

They were raising money for a new return slot at a height a child could reach. This had sounded like a small thing when the library board agreed to it. The contractor had found an old iron bar in the wall. Moving the bar would have cost more than they had in the entire building account. In the end they had agreed to use the side window instead. They had enough for the fittings if the bake sale did well. If the auction did well as well, they could put a light over the path.

Nell had said she would install the light. She was a bicycle mechanic and for reasons she couldn't have explained, the library board took this to mean she would know how to wire a building. Her own reasoning was that the electrician would do the wiring and she would know how to hold the light while he did it. It had been a mistake to say it without that second part.

She found Viv beside the worktable with a pencil behind each ear. The real book was back in its blue tin with a paper cover under the lid. The imitation was still in Viv's office. Viv had printed a checklist. On the checklist there was a box to mark once the original had been put in the case and the case had been locked.

“Would you move the tin into my office for a few minutes?” Viv asked Nell. “And ask Dottie whether she's got enough change. She came in with a roll of quarters and looked very brave about it.”

Nell took the tin into the office. The purple-dotted imitation was on the low shelf beside the desk. She put the tin on the right side of the desk, where the green star would face the door, and left the door open because Viv said she would be along in a minute. At the entrance to the hall Dottie was telling someone that she would make change for a twenty but wouldn't guarantee the emotional tone in which it was made.

While Nell and Dottie counted quarters, Catherine Pike came in through the side door. She wore an olive raincoat and spectacles that had gone dark in the sun, despite the sun doing practically nothing. She carried a brown envelope. When she saw Nell, she tucked it under her elbow.

“I need to speak to June about a page,” Catherine said.

“She's over by the table with the photographs.”

“Could I see the book first?”

“Ask Viv. She's doing the display.”

Catherine said she would. Dottie put the quarters down. “You should ask your brother to do change,” she told Catherine. “He's brought enough cash to buy back half the auction.”

Catherine gave her a look, then walked across to the photographs. Nell watched her reach June. The two women stood for a few seconds without seeming to say anything. Then June took Catherine by the elbow and led her toward the office.

“There's a dispute about who owns the book,” Dottie said.

“There's a receipt.”

“There's always a receipt. The dispute's about who thinks they own it.”

June had bought the notebook when the bakery cleared its back room before the building changed hands. Nell had seen the auction list: two breadboards, a weighing scale without a pan, assorted books and papers. Fifteen dollars. Now Martin had been seen carrying around a photograph of his father beside the bakery ovens, and Catherine was the person who had paid to print the exhibit handout. You could arrange the facts any way you liked and still find somewhere for an argument to sit.

From the office came the sound of a drawer being opened. Dottie picked up another roll of quarters.

“If anyone asks,” she said, “I've got fifty dollars in change.”

“Do you?”

“I've got forty-seven and a certain amount of confidence.”

III. The Purple Dot

The first visitors began coming in while the folding chairs were still being unfolded. A girl in a red raincoat helped Nell with the last one, then asked if there was a competition for children. Nell told her there was a contest to guess how many raisins were in the jar. The girl went over to inspect the jar and came back to say it was impossible to tell from the outside whether they were raisins.

“Write that on your entry,” Nell said.

“Will I win?”

“You'll be the first person who's asked the right question.”

At the back of the room the display case had found a home beside a wall with two brass hooks in it. Viv was standing in front of the case with her checklist. The book was inside, open to the page with the lemon buns. The blue tin was on the floor behind the stand, out of sight unless you looked under the tablecloth.

Nell drew up beside Viv. “You got it locked?”

“I did. June was with me. I put the key in the top drawer.”

The girl in the red raincoat had gone over to the case. She leaned until the front of her coat touched the glass. Nell was about to tell her to stand back when the girl said there was a mark on the inside cover.

Nell looked down. Near the hinge on the right, where she had taken particular care to put it, was a purple dot.

“That's supposed to be on the one you can touch,” the girl said. “I saw the sign with the picture of a hand.”

Nell asked Viv for the key. She opened the case, set the book on the table beside it, and turned three pages. The writing had been reproduced faithfully down to the correction above the word *Butter*. The real note had been written on the margin with a pencil so hard it had left a dent. Nell had felt the dent when she held the original that morning. The imitation had a flat grey line where the dent should have been. It also had a clean paper hinge under the brown cloth.

Viv put her finger over the dot. “I took it out of the tin.”

“Did you take it from the office to the case?”

“June brought the tin out while I was moving the stand. She waited with me. I took it out of the tin and locked the case.”

The girl said, “There was a scone on the top of that tin.”

Both women turned to look at her.

“One in a paper bag,” she said. “The man in the apron had it. He put the bag on the lid. I thought it was going to fall off.”

“Which man in the apron?”

She pointed across the room. There were four men in blue aprons and two in green. Her finger moved from one to another.

“I don't remember,” she said.

Nell got down beside her. “What's your name?”

“Pippa. I'm not supposed to tell strangers my last name.”

“First name's fine. Thanks, Pippa. Would you tell Dottie I need another raffle slip?”

Pippa ran off. Viv opened the tin and checked the padding at the bottom. Under the padding there was a loose rubber band that Nell had not seen that morning. It was black, with a hair caught under it.

“It could still be in the office,” Viv said.

“Let's look.”

They left the imitation inside the case with a card saying the exhibit would open at eleven. It was ten twelve. Viv pushed the tablecloth down until it covered the feet of the display. Nell noticed, on the way back to the office, that she still had the photograph from the morning open on her phone. She enlarged the picture and looked closely at the bottom. The green star was there, as she remembered. In the picture the star had five complete points. On the tin Viv had just opened, she hadn't seen a star at all.

IV. Four Minutes

The office was locked. Viv said she had locked it after carrying the case key back. She found the key on a ring that also held the key to a bicycle lock she had been unable to find for six months. The ring was caught in a loose thread in her pocket. Nell held the door closed with her shoulder while Viv worked it loose.

Inside, the low shelf where the imitation had been was empty. So was the desk. There was a brown envelope in the top drawer and the receipt for the notebook under Viv's stapler. Nell picked up the receipt. It was signed by the man who had run the auction, not by a Pike. She could see why nobody wanted to read it aloud if there was still a chance of finding the book without having that discussion.

“Who was in here after I brought the tin in?” she asked.

“June and Catherine. I was with them most of the time. I went back out when Etta wanted to know if she could set up the urn. I was away for four minutes. I know because I was timing the kettle.”

“Was Catherine alone with it?”

“Possibly. June came out to lend a trolley to the auction people.” Viv ran a hand across the desk. “I told Catherine I'd leave her with June. I'd assumed June was still here.”

Nell looked at the brown envelope. She didn't touch it. “What was she asking about?”

“There's a letter tucked in the back of the book from her mother. It was written to June, who kept it there because it was about the bakery. Catherine wanted to ask her if we could leave the letter out of the display.”

“Did June agree?”

“Yes. That's the envelope.”

The envelope was empty. Viv picked it up and set it down again. She had a thoughtful expression that meant she was finding two or three different ways to use the same piece of information.

“Where's the letter?” Nell asked.

“June may have taken it with her. I left before they finished talking.”

From the hall came a small roar. Someone had discovered that the apricot scones were free for children under ten. Viv looked toward the door. She said there was going to be a lot of talk when somebody asked why the notebook wasn't on display. They could say it had been delayed. That would be true until eleven. Then they would have to say something else.

“Let's ask Catherine,” Nell said.

“We can ask her what happened. Dottie can't ask her.”

“Dottie's busy making change.”

“Dottie is capable of making change and accusing someone of stealing a book in the same breath.”

Nell smiled. She took a second look around the office before they left. Under the desk was a slip of paper with a green star on it. It had been cut from a roll of stickers, backing and all. A corner of the paper was wet. She picked it up by the dry end. The star had a tiny square of the adhesive side exposed where somebody had started to peel it.

She looked out through the office window. The path from the side door was wet. The path from the main entrance was wet. Most of the people in the building were wearing wet shoes. Martin was in the hall at the auction table, telling a man in a baseball cap that there had been a misprint on one of the labels. He rubbed at the label as he said it. A little green piece of paper stuck to the end of his finger, and he wiped it off on the leg of his apron.

V. The Envelope

Nell found Catherine at the end of the cake table, putting a piece of paper under the wobbly leg. It was just the sort of thing Catherine would do before telling people she had done nothing all morning. She pressed the table with her palm. It held. Then she looked up and saw Nell.

“Is this about the letter?” she asked.

“It's about the book. Do you know where the letter is?”

Catherine didn't answer. She looked first at the people around the cake table. Nell pointed to a pair of chairs beside the empty magazine rack. They went over to sit down. A flyer had caught under one of the chair legs. Catherine picked it up before she sat.

“I have it,” she said. “June said I could take it home and bring it back on Monday. We put it in the envelope together. I must have taken the wrong one from the stack.”

She took a brown envelope out of her bag. She showed Nell the front. June had written Catherine's name across the flap, and the flap was open. There was a folded letter inside, but Nell didn't need to see the folded letter.

“What was in it that you didn't want on the table?” she asked.

“My mother's recipe for custard. And her account of what she thought was wrong with my father.” Catherine ran a finger down the side of the envelope. “The custard part is fine. She could have made custard in an empty room.”

Her mother had worked in the bakery until she was fifty. Nell remembered her as a small woman who put both hands into the pockets of her coat when she spoke, as if there was something in each pocket she wanted to keep in place. She had been dead five years. It was hard to remember her without remembering the bakery. This was true of several women who had worked there. None of them had the name on the window.

“When you took the letter out, what did you do with the book?”

“June folded the paper over it. She put it back in the tin. I started to put the lid on, but she said leave it loose so Viv could open it.”

“Was the tin blue?”

“Yes. It had a bit of metal bent up at one corner. I caught my cuff on it.”

Nell looked down. A single thread was hanging from Catherine's coat where the sleeve met her thumb. She could have pulled the thread herself just then. She didn't. She asked what happened next.

“June left with the trolley. I waited a moment, looking for a pen to put my name on the envelope. She'd already put my name on it. I told Viv she'd come to find us. Then I left, because I'd promised Dottie I'd get her a box.”

“Was anybody else there?”

“I held the door for Martin on my way out. He was carrying food. I thought he was bringing it to Viv. He used to bring me food when I forgot to have breakfast. He'd turn up with a bun under his hat.”

She had a little smile on her face until she saw Nell thinking.

“What did you mean about the book?” Catherine asked.

Nell told her what the purple dot meant. Catherine stayed very still. Then she unfolded the flyer she'd picked up from the floor. It was for the raffle. At the bottom was a picture of the side path with a light drawn above it in yellow pencil.

“I can see why someone would want it,” she said.

“Can you?”

“Martin asked me whether we still owned it when he found out about the display. I told him it was June's. He said he wasn't sure she knew what she had.”

“What do you think he meant?”

Catherine didn't take her eyes off the flyer. “He meant something different from what I mean when I say those words about June.”

She folded the flyer into a square and put it down between them. When she got up, Nell saw her put the envelope back in her bag with the open end facing up, so that the letter would stay in it.

At the other end of the hall a woman had set out a tray of photographs for people to label. Nell stopped there to see if anyone had identified a picture of the bakery in winter. The bakery's windows were steamed up. On the left, a person in an apron was sweeping the steps. On the right there were three bicycles, only one with a chain, propped together against a wall.

“That's my mother's bicycle,” Catherine said behind her. She'd come back for the folded flyer. “The one you can't see the handlebars on.”

“Can you tell from that much of it?”

“There's a bag under the seat. She sewed it out of an old pair of gloves so she could carry a patch kit. She was always having to fix somebody else's bicycle on the way home.”

Nell leaned closer. She had seen the photograph a dozen times while mounting it and hadn't noticed the bag. It was square and dark, with a tab that caught the light. A small patch kit would fit in it. A key might fit in it as well, or enough money for somebody to take a bus after they'd given up on the bicycle.

“Would you write her name?” Nell asked.

Catherine picked up a pencil. She wrote a first name, stopped, and wrote the surname she had given Nell when they were planning the exhibit. Then she crossed out the surname and put both surnames down, one above the other.

“She used the top one when she was at work,” she said. “I never used it. I knew it was hers, though.”

Nell asked if she wanted to add the part about the bag. Catherine said she'd leave room for somebody to remember something else. She wrote the word BICYCLE beneath the names and put the pencil back.

On the way to the kitchen, Nell passed Martin. He had a pencil behind his ear, and he stopped to tell her that if nobody bid on the train photograph, he knew somebody who would take it. He said it with the easy certainty of someone who had been doing people favours in public for a long time. She thanked him. At the next table a girl with a dirty fingernail was trying to pull a sticker loose from a jar. Nell kept walking, then went back to ask if she needed a hand.

VI. A Pair of Ladies on a Cliff

Etta was wrapping cakes on a high counter in the kitchenette, using a roll of waxed paper so wide she needed both hands to tear it. Nell held one end for her. She had known Etta since she brought in a bicycle that was making a sound like a bird, which was exactly the sort of description people used when they were unable to make the sound for you. In Etta's case the sound had turned out to be a small metal bell someone had dropped into the chain guard. They found it when Nell turned the bicycle upside down.

“I'm looking for the tin June brought in,” Nell said.

“I've had five tins in here since she came. What was on it?”

“A woman on a cliff. Blue skirt. Green star.”

“There are two with a lady on a cliff.”

Nell let go of the waxed paper. It fell straight onto her foot.

“You could get them at the grocer's the year they put the new roof on the school,” Etta said. “Everybody got one. Mine went when my brother drove over it. I had two here this morning. One was June's. One was Martin's.”

“How do you know which is which?”

“June's has a bit that sticks up. I don't lend it to children, because it catches.”

Etta took a wooden spoon out of a tin with a picture of a yacht. Nell asked if she'd put the stickers on all the tins. Etta said she'd started on the underside of the lids, then realised she would want to know whose was whose without opening them. She'd put a green star on the side of each tin she was supposed to give back herself. Martin had told her his didn't need a sticker. He could find his own. She remembered having to move it out of his way before he knocked it off a chair.

“Where was that?”

“By the auction table. He brought it full of lemon scones. I put the scones out just after nine and left him the tin.”

Nell went to the stand and asked Viv for the tin she'd opened. The woman on the lid was there. She was wearing the same skirt, and the sea was the same colour. But the painted head was still whole and the rim ran all the way around without a catch in it. Nell turned it upside down. A square of waxed paper was pressed against the inside of the lid. A lemon seed, as pale as a tooth, was stuck to the paper.

“It's his,” Etta said when Nell brought it over. “That's from the scones. He makes them with the seeds still in. I tell people to pretend they're eating around a cherry stone.”

“You know he brought it and you know what was in it?”

Etta put down the spoon. She was starting to see the difficulty. “I carried it from his car. The two of us put the scones out. I can say that without saying what happened afterward.”

Nell thanked her. She took the tin back to the worktable and put it beside the photograph of June's. The resemblance was close enough that it would have been easy to go on thinking you had the tin you expected, as long as you were concerned with where it was supposed to go. June had been looking at the stand. Viv had been looking at the case. Neither had been looking at the underside of the lid.

From the doorway Etta called, “If you're asking about empty tins, they're going out with the white labels at one. I've made a place to put them by the loading door.”

“What do the white labels say?”

“They say whose car to put a thing in. If nobody puts a name on a tin, I suppose I get the tin.”

Etta sounded like a woman quite prepared to go on being provided with tins in this way. Nell put Martin's empty one under her arm and went to find Viv.

VII. A Man Who Buys Paper

The man in the baseball cap was still at the auction table. He had a small book with his name on the cover, and he was making notes about which of the things people had brought in came with a receipt. Dottie told Nell he was a dealer who came over from the next town. He liked postcards and old account books. He'd given them a framed photograph of a train that hadn't passed through Fern Harbor, in the hope that somebody would buy it without asking.

“What's he waiting for?” Nell asked.

“Martin. Everybody's waiting for Martin. He went out to look for the man who gave us the bicycle, because he's got the bicycle and no key for the lock.”

The dealer put his book in his pocket and came over. “Do you know if he's coming back?” he asked.

“He will. Is there something we can help you with?”

“He was going to bring a book to show me. It's private, I mean it isn't an auction lot. Something from the Wren Street Bakery.”

Nell set the tin down on the table. She did it slowly because the table was crowded and she needed to be able to hear what he said next.

“When did you arrange that?”

“Tuesday. I told him I'd be interested if it was the original. I don't buy reproductions.” The dealer looked at her with new interest. “You wouldn't happen to know whether it's an original, would you?”

“I know where the original was this morning,” Nell said. “Did he say he owned it?”

“He said it belonged to his family.”

“Do you have that in writing?”

“I didn't ask for it in writing. I was only going to look at it.”

Dottie, who had been counting money, came across the aisle and asked if she could join them. The dealer moved his things to give her space. Nell told him the library had the receipt showing the original was June's. She asked him to check with June before accepting anything. He said he wouldn't accept it at all now. He had three days off and had wanted to spend at least one of them looking through somebody else's old papers. He didn't want to spend all three trying to work out which papers somebody else owned.

“What did you say it was worth?” Dottie asked.

“I said I couldn't say until I saw it.”

“Did you give him a number?”

The dealer looked down at his book. “He asked if I'd pay four hundred dollars. I said there were things for which I'd pay four hundred dollars.”

The sound Dottie made was halfway between a cough and the noise a chair makes when it gets caught on a rug. She turned it into a cough. She took the tin from Nell and held it by the rim. “Does this belong on the cake table?”

“It belongs to Martin.”

Dottie set it back down. “Then I'm not making change out of it.”

Across the hall Viv had put an empty chair in front of the display case so nobody would lean on it. She was looking around for Nell. When Nell got to her, she told her about the man and the offer to look at the book. Viv listened without interruption. Then she pointed to a woman in a red scarf who had been taking photographs of the event all morning.

“I asked her if she saw who went into my office. She said no, but somebody borrowed her black rubber band, the one she uses to keep her papers together.”

“Who?”

“Martin. For his auction paperwork, she thought.”

Nell took the loose black rubber band out of the pocket she'd put it in. It was wider than an ordinary band. On one edge there was a small white scratch, deep enough that it would pull apart next time it was stretched too far. The woman in the red scarf looked at it and said it was hers. She had cut the scratch while trying to take it off a bundle without undoing the bundle.

“Where'd you find it?” she asked.

“In a cake tin.”

“I thought he'd come back for it. I didn't think he'd put it in a cake tin.”

Viv went to find June. Nell waited beside the empty chair. She could put together a good account of how Martin had handled a tin, borrowed a band, and asked a man to look at a book. She did not yet know where the book was. The difference was worth keeping clear, because the room was filling with people who would be happy to forget it.

VIII. Where Pippa Was Standing

Pippa had spent the morning folding her raffle slip into smaller and smaller rectangles. When Nell found her again she was sitting on the windowsill with her mother. Her mother asked what the problem was before Pippa had a chance to say hello.

“I'd like to ask Pippa about something she noticed,” Nell said. “She can tell me here, or she can tell me later if she wants.”

“It depends,” Pippa said. “Am I going to get anybody in trouble?”

“You aren't responsible for what anybody else did. I only want to know what you saw.”

Pippa looked toward her mother, who put a hand on her back. Then she looked at the office. From where she was sitting she could see the door but not much beyond it.

“I wasn't here,” she said. “I was by the tray with the jam on it. The man with the tin asked if I knew where the librarian was. I said I didn't know which lady was the librarian.”

“Did he have the scone in the paper bag then?”

“It was on the tin. He didn't want to put it in the tin. He said the tin was for something else.”

“What did he do?”

Pippa put her slip down on her knee and worked the fingers of one hand inside the other. “He went in and put the tin down. Then I went to look at the raisins. When he came out, he didn't have the bag anymore. He had a tin. I thought he'd put the scone inside it.”

Nell went to the office door and stood where the tray with the jam had been. She could see the desk, which meant Pippa could probably see it if she stood on her toes. If somebody put two tins on the desk, one in front of the other, you wouldn't see both unless you knew where to look.

“Was the man's apron blue or green?” she asked.

“Blue. He had a knot at the front. He tied it twice because the ends were long.” Pippa looked over Nell's shoulder. “Like him.”

Martin had come in again. He had the key for the bicycle lock on a short piece of ribbon, and he was holding it high so the man on the far side of the room could see. The blue apron was tied in a double knot at the front. Dottie wore hers the same way, as did two other people. Pippa had remembered something real. It was not the same as remembering his face.

“Thanks,” Nell said. “You can go back to the raisins.”

“I guessed eighty-four.”

“Is that how many you think there are?”

“It's how many I think there are if they're raisins.”

Nell laughed. Pippa seemed pleased to have said something that would send an adult away without making her ask another question. She put her raffle slip in her mother's hand and went off to see if there were any apricot scones left.

By eleven the exhibit had opened without the original book. Viv put the imitation out where people could touch it. The label said the original would be shown later, if possible, and gave the names they'd found for the people who had written it. A woman came in and read the names. She asked for a pencil and added a seventh, in small handwriting. She was sure it had been her aunt. She told Viv where to find the aunt's daughter, who might be able to confirm it.

Nell was glad they had opened. It made it possible to see something happening other than a book going missing. Then she went to the loading door and had a look at the place Etta had made for the empty tins.

IX. The White Labels

Etta had put a chalkboard beside the loading door. Across the top she had written IN, and underneath it OUT. By looking under OUT, Nell learned that Grace was to get back a wicker basket, that two chairs were to go to a man called Leonard, and that Martin was to get an empty cake tin. Under IN there were the names of four people who had brought ladders. There was nothing to say what ought to happen if anybody brought another ladder before the first four had been found.

She crouched beside the board and looked at the things that were waiting to go. There were two chairs. There was a basket, under a bag of dishcloths. There was a tin with a yacht on it and a tin with pictures of dogs. There was no blue tin.

Etta found her there. She had a pair of oven gloves stuffed through the belt of her apron, which made her look as though she had grown another pair of hands and couldn't decide what to do with them.

“Did you put the last tin out?” she asked.

“Which one?”

“The blue one with the white label. I saw it earlier and was going to see what was in it. Martin said it was his tin and there was food in it that he was taking home.”

“Where did he say that?”

“In the hall. He was going round with the auction trolley, picking up the things on the floor. I told him I didn't want full tins outside. Someone's dog will come and bite through the paper if the lid's loose.”

“Did it have a star?”

“I saw a bit of green under the label.” Etta lifted one of the gloves and put it down again. “I thought it was my green. Then I thought, it can be any green it likes, if he's taking it home.”

They went to find the trolley. On the way Nell showed Etta the photograph she'd taken that morning. She pointed out the strip of old tape on the edge of the tin. The five-pointed green star was on one side of it. Etta said she remembered where she had put the star because the tape had nearly stuck to her sleeve.

“What about the label?” Nell asked. “Do you know who wrote it?”

“Martin wrote it. I gave him a blank one. I gave everybody a blank one who said they were taking something back.”

The auction trolley wasn't where Martin had left it. There was a length of rope on the floor in its place, curled up as if somebody had been planning to tie down something large and had changed their mind. Nell found the man who'd brought the bicycle and asked him if he knew where the trolley had gone. He was trying to remove his gloves with his teeth. She waited until he'd removed one.

“Dottie took it round to the story room,” he said. “There wasn't room out here for the bicycle and the trolley.”

The story room was at the bottom of a corridor lined with illustrations of animals in hats. A baby was pulling at a paper duck stuck to the wall. The duck had already lost most of its beak. Nell took it down and handed it to the baby's father, who folded it up and put it in his pocket with an air of relief.

There was no trolley in the story room. There were a pair of long curtains that had been drawn to make a puppet theatre and a dozen chairs too small for the adults sitting in them. Nell walked around the curtain and found a stack of baskets labelled in Dottie's hand. The trolley had left two wet marks on the lino. The marks stopped at the storeroom door.

Dottie came in behind them with an empty mug.

“If you're looking for a glass, there aren't any,” she said. “If you're looking for Martin's things, I put them in the storeroom. He wanted the trolley back, so I gave it to him.”

“Did he take anything off it first?”

“A tin.” She looked at Etta. “You told him not to leave food outside. He told me it was a scone. It was a great deal of tin for one scone.”

“Where did he take it?”

“Ask him. He's in the room by the exit with the newspaper boxes.” Dottie set her mug down. “Do you want to tell me what we've been doing?”

Nell told her. Dottie didn't look surprised until Nell told her about the dealer. She put a hand on the curtain and pulled it aside without seeming to know she was doing it. Behind it someone had made a cardboard forest from the insides of cereal boxes.

“I took over the auction money twenty minutes ago,” she said. “He hasn't touched it since. If you need him to stay here, you can tell him I won't let anything go out that hasn't been paid for.”

“We don't need to keep him here,” Nell said. “We need June to ask him about a tin.”

X. The Woman in the Blue Skirt

They got June in the middle of a conversation about butter. A man had asked if the ingredients on the scone table were a description or a warning. June said he was doing a good job of making them both. Then she came away with Nell and Viv. Catherine saw the three of them cross the hall. Without being asked, she followed.

At the end of the corridor Martin was standing with one foot against the door to the newspaper room. The dealer's coat hung on a peg near him. The dealer had gone back to the hall to buy a scone. On a narrow table under the coat lay a tin with a woman in a blue skirt on it, and a strip of white paper covering part of the side. Martin turned his body so that it was between June and the tin.

“They're looking for you at the auction,” Catherine told him.

“Dottie said she'd do it.”

“She will.”

June pointed to the tin. “Is that mine?”

Martin said it was his. He said that as quickly as somebody telling you their own name. Nell was struck by how differently he said it from the way Catherine had said that she had the letter. Catherine had wanted a chance to tell them what had happened. Martin seemed to want there to be no chance of a second question.

Nell put the other tin on the table. It made a thin, bright sound. “This one's yours. Etta helped you bring it in. It still has lemon seeds under the lid.”

“Then Etta's confused.”

Etta was at the other end of the corridor, far enough away that she hadn't heard him. Nell was glad of that. She turned the two tins so that the pictures faced the same way. On the one Martin had been standing in front of, the woman had no face left. On the other, she had a small mouth drawn in two careful strokes.

“Mine's got a catch on the rim,” June said. “May I open it?”

Martin put his hand on the lid. He looked at Catherine. She had taken off her glasses. Without them her eyes looked pale and tired. She didn't step forward.

“I was going to show it to somebody,” he said at last.

“Show him my tin?”

His hand moved sideways. June took the lid off. Inside was the old tissue paper, and inside that was the book. The corner with the bird's footprint was underneath. The pages smelled faintly of the bakery still, or of a cupboard where the bakery had been. June let her hand rest on the cloth for a second. Then she lifted the book all the way out and passed it to Viv.

Viv opened it from the middle. The pressure of the pencil was visible on the reverse of the page. A scrap of flour sack, cut into a rectangle, was still sewn into the binding at the place where somebody had meant to come back and add a recipe. Viv closed it.

“Do you want me to put it somewhere safe?” she asked June.

“Yes, please.”

She went to the office with the book in both hands. The rest of them stayed by the table. June turned the tin over and peeled back the white label. Underneath it, a little green star was missing one of its points. She stuck the label to the side of the tin that didn't have the star on it. Martin reached to take the label away. June put her hand over it.

“You can leave it there,” she said. “I want to remember where you put it.”

For a while nobody spoke. Nell heard a child down the hall asking what time the raisins were going to be counted. Dottie told the child she was looking for a bowl with straight sides. The child said the bowl didn't need straight sides if they counted one raisin at a time.

“You should go and help her,” Nell said to Etta, who had come most of the way down the corridor now. “The rest of us can finish here.”

Etta looked at the tin, at June, and at Martin. “Did you find it?”

“We found it.”

“All right.” She went back toward the hall. In a moment they could hear her explaining why you ought to count raisins in groups, especially if you planned to be finished before the scones ran out.

XI. What Went on the Sign

June asked Martin to sit with her in the small room by the office. He said he would. Catherine wanted to come in too. June looked at her and said yes, if she could come in without answering for him. Nell and Viv went back to the exhibit and let them talk. In the hall someone had leaned the auction bicycle against the display case. Nell moved it. There was a paper tag on it asking people not to test the brakes indoors. She had been the one who wrote the tag, after somebody tested the brakes indoors.

The auction was supposed to start at twelve thirty. By twelve twenty-five Dottie had decided to do it herself and asked Nell if she would hold the microphone. Nell said she could hold it as long as she didn't have to make it louder. The first item was a set of four bowls that had been bought from a woman who said she made the colours herself. They raised thirty dollars. The next was a haircut and a cake. When Dottie found out they were two separate lots, she said anyone who wanted the haircut with the cake could still have both if they bid quickly enough.

Catherine came out just before the bicycle. She had her raincoat on, but it was open and she wasn't carrying her bag. She stood beside Nell and waited until the bidding finished. Then she asked if they could go somewhere quieter. Nell put the microphone down and walked with her to the kitchenette.

Martin had said he wanted the dealer to buy the original. He thought he could replace it with the copy and let June think the original had gone to the library. He had got it into the tin while both women were out of the office. He'd wrapped the reproduction with the black rubber band, in a hurry, so it wouldn't open to the page with the purple dot before June lifted it out. By the time he set the lid down, the band had slipped to the bottom.

“He said it belonged to us,” Catherine said. “I asked him why he thought he had to leave a different one if he thought he had the right to take it. He didn't have an answer.”

Nell went to pour her a cup of tea. It came out of the pot cold. She put it down and started another one.

“He knows the book isn't going to the dealer,” Catherine said. “June says he's to tell the committee what he did. She asked me to stay and listen while he told the dealer himself.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. The dealer said he was there to buy an old book. If he'd wanted a quarrel with a family, he had one he could visit any time.”

They both laughed a little. Then Catherine reached into her coat and took out the brown envelope. She said she wanted to give it back to June. They had been talking about whether some of the letter could eventually go in the exhibit. Her mother had described each of the people she worked with by what they did when the oven light went out. Catherine wanted people to see that part. She wanted to ask the people named, or their families, first.

“She really could make custard in an empty room,” she said, as if they had come back to the beginning of a conversation they needed to have again.

The kettle boiled. Nell put a bag in the pot. When they went out again, Dottie was trying to work out what to say about a photograph of a train that had never passed through town. Catherine went up to look at it and raised her hand. She bought it for sixteen dollars. She said she was going to give it to somebody who liked trains that went to places he had never been.

June was waiting at the entrance to Viv's office with two sheets of paper. One was the receipt for the book. The other was a handwritten list of the names they'd put on the wall. She showed Nell the receipt first. On the back was a price for one of the breadboards June hadn't bought. The man at the auction had turned the paper over to work out his sums. June had kept it because she had paid in cash and at the time it had seemed possible she might have to prove what she had paid.

“Do I give this to the library too?” she asked.

“Ask Viv,” Nell said. “She'll tell you what the library needs. You can still keep a copy.”

“I want to keep the original of the receipt. People leave me notes all the time that tell me to do something. This is somebody telling me I already did it.”

Viv made a copy and handed the original back. June folded it along its old crease and put it into a small purse with a broken catch. The piece of paper with the names stayed flat on the desk. Across the top she had written in pencil that the names were to be checked. Under each name there was room for more than one person's handwriting.

“Martin could have written a name on this,” she said.

“He still could, if he knows one,” Viv said.

June looked at her. “He can tell me a name if he knows it. I don't want him handling the book again.”

She sounded decisive about that. She also sounded tired. Nell looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly two. In the bustle of getting the chairs out that morning she had eaten half a scone over a rubbish bin, and she suspected June had gone no further than the cup of tea somebody had brought when she arrived. Nell asked if she wanted to have something to eat.

They found two bowls of soup in the kitchen. Dottie had kept them back for people who were too busy to eat when the soup came out. June looked at the handwritten card propped in front of the bowls. There was one left with barley and one with beans.

“Which did you want?” she asked.

“I was hoping you'd choose first,” Nell said.

June chose barley. They sat on the bottom step outside, where the breeze could reach them and the auction bell could not. On the other side of the yard there was a painted board with a picture of the return slot they were going to put in. Somebody had made a hole in the board so people could try putting a book through at the proposed height. A woman in a wheelchair had been trying it with a heavy book. She went back into the hall and came out with Viv, who brought a measuring tape. June set her bowl down to watch them. When the woman came back through the side door, the pencil mark on the board was an inch lower.

At the back of the hall, June and Viv took down the temporary sign. They put one up that said the original had been returned to June and would go on display when the condition of the binding had been checked. June asked to keep the imitation out for the rest of the day. Pippa's mother came over, read the sign, and asked if there was anything Pippa needed to know.

“Tell her what she noticed helped,” June said. “Tell her she was right about the purple dot.”

Nell watched Pippa listen. She watched her look around the hall until she spotted Nell. Pippa held up a small paper bag. It was a consolation scone for guessing eighty-four raisins when there were one hundred and eleven. Later Nell found out there had been three currants in the jar as well. Pippa's slip had been the only one to say that the answer depended on what you were counting. Dottie had decided to give her a second consolation scone for that.

XII. A Light over the Path

After the fundraiser, the library shut for a day to count the money and put the furniture back. It was easier to put some things back than others. A chair had been moved to the staff bathroom, possibly by somebody who wanted to sit down for a minute and knew where they would be left alone. Nell carried it back to the story room. She found a paper duck in the wastebasket with the beak folded inside it. She took both pieces out and left them in an envelope on Viv's desk.

The sale had brought in enough for the new book return. The auction had brought in enough for the light. They were twenty-eight dollars short of having enough for a switch that could be replaced without taking the wall apart. Dottie told Nell that if she wanted to help, she could put a notice on the counter. Nell found an old jar, put it beside the notice, and contributed the first dollar herself. Within a week the jar contained thirty-two dollars, three foreign coins, and a small screw. Nell took the screw to her shop and found a place for it on a shelf. You never knew when a good screw would come in handy.

Martin didn't come back to help on the second day. A few days later he sent the committee a letter, in which he admitted taking the original and trying to sell it. The committee replied that someone else would be handling its auction materials in the future. June read the letter in Viv's office. When she'd finished she asked if she could bring the book back after it had been looked at. Viv said she could. They spoke to a conservator who found that the binding was fragile but intact. She supplied a cradle so that the book could open without having to lie flat.

The page they finally put on display was the one about lemon buns. It had the handwritten recipe, the note about a driving test, and a correction in a fourth handwriting that looked as though it had been added in a hurry. The label listed the seven names they had been able to confirm. Beneath them it gave the first name of the eighth person and asked anybody who knew the last name to tell the librarian. A baker came in from a town two hours away to read it. She had known a woman called Nora who always took the seeds out of lemons before she put the juice in the dough. She told Viv which road Nora had lived on. Viv wrote it down.

June brought her tin the week they opened the new return slot. She had removed the catch from the edge with a file. She asked Nell to feel it. Nell ran a finger around it twice. There was a flat place where the catch had been. June left the star on the side, with the point still missing. When she opened the lid this time there were twelve scones inside. None had a seed in it.

Pippa was the first person to try the return. She had to carry her book in both hands because it was an atlas. She could reach the handle without standing on her toes. When she let the handle go, the atlas made a quiet, satisfying sound on the padded bottom of the box. The electrician turned the light on above her. It was bright enough to see the path without being bright enough to shine into the windows of the house across the lane.

“Will people be able to put things in there that aren't books?” Pippa asked.

“People are able to put things everywhere that aren't books,” Viv said. “We're going to start by asking nicely.”

She gave Nell a square of card to write the notice on. Nell wrote BOOKS on the first line and THANK YOU on the second. She considered how far down to put the second line. Pippa watched her through the new opening, which was at just the right height for her to do so. On the other side of the path, June was cutting a scone in two. She put half into Nell's hand as soon as Nell set the pen down.

“May I take the other half?” Nell asked.

June looked at the tin. There were four whole ones left. “You may,” she said. “But I appreciate you checking.”