The Catalogue

Elsie had pulled her left cuff over her hand again. Mara pushed the cloth back, found the button and fastened it, though she could feel Elsie preparing to tug it loose as soon as her fingers were gone. The right cuff was already open.

“I want the buttons out,” Elsie said, testing the fastened cuff with her thumb.

“I can see that.” Mara let go of her wrist.

“Then why do you keep doing them?” Elsie asked. She was looking at Mara now, rather than at the cuff.

It was a fair question, and Mara could think of no answer that belonged to Elsie. She left the right cuff alone.

They were in the small visiting room at the centre, where the chairs had been arranged to face one another without quite looking as though somebody had arranged them. A box of pencils and a new pad of paper lay on the low table. Elsie had ignored both. She stood at the window watching a pigeon try to walk along the narrow ledge outside. Every time it slipped, it opened its wings as if this had been its plan.

“Do they have a dog?” she asked.

“It doesn’t say.”

“Does it say if they would get one?”

“No.” Mara slid the family card into its folder. It showed Asha and Ben Hales outside a house with a green door. In the photograph they leaned towards each other but did not touch. Somebody had written that they had a small garden, which was more useful information to Elsie than their occupations or the distance from the centre.

“Then I should ask them.”

“You can. Let them get here first.”

Elsie turned from the window. “I wasn’t going to ask them in the car park.”

“I know.” Mara had been entrusted with twenty minutes because Elsie listened to her. She could hear Ms Shah somewhere beyond the room and found herself measuring how much advice would fit before the visitors arrived. That made it difficult to tell where helping ended and rehearsal began. “They’ll probably ask about school. You can tell them about the rain jar.”

“That didn’t work.” Elsie pressed a finger against the window, following the pigeon as it slipped along the ledge.

“The blue water got all the way up the sides.”

“It wasn’t rain.”

“It looked enough like rain to me.” Mara remembered how disappointed Elsie had been when the blue water stayed where it was, despite all the instructions saying it should rise and fall.

Elsie considered whether to correct her again. She had a serious face for a six-year-old, though she could be made to laugh by the sound of a zip opening. The record described her as calm and affectionate. It did not mention that she argued with the weather.

Mara knew how the words had been chosen. The Haleses had marked the things they felt able to care for, and those two had been among them. They were reasonable words. She had heard them in so many different combinations that she knew when to sit still and when to volunteer for a game. When she was smaller, she had practised too, though she could no longer remember whom she had hoped would notice.

Elsie pointed to the folder. “What did they say about me?”

“They asked to meet you.”

“What else?”

“They liked that you enjoy animals. And they said they were looking forward to talking to you.”

This was true, though it did not tell Elsie why she was here. On the morning of a visit, truth was not always the same size as the question.

From the corridor came the sound of a trolley being moved and then the soft voice of Ms Shah, the placement worker, giving directions to someone. She had told Mara she was welcome to stay for the start, as long as Elsie wanted her there. After that, the conversation was supposed to belong to the child and the family.

Elsie heard the voices in the corridor and came away from the window. “What if I don’t like them?”

Mara sat on the edge of the sofa so they were at the same height. “You can tell Ms Shah. You don’t have to decide anything today.”

“But they do.”

“They don’t have to decide today either.”

“They could decide no.” Elsie said it without looking at Mara, as if the possibility might be easier to hear when it came from her own mouth.

There was no way to make that untrue. Mara picked a loose thread from her own sleeve and wound it around a finger.

“Just talk to them,” she said. “Maybe wait until you’ve talked about school before you ask about a dog.”

Elsie looked at the button Mara had fastened. “Why?”

“Because then they’ll have a chance to get to know you first.”

“They could get to know that I like dogs.”

Mara almost laughed. “Yes. They could.”

“Would they think I only want their dog?”

“They haven’t got one.”

“Would they think I only want them to get one?”

That was what Mara had done. She had turned a question about a dog into a test Elsie had not known she was taking. Before she could find a way back, the door opened and Ms Shah came in with two visitors.

Asha Hales was carrying an umbrella folded so neatly that Mara could not see how it had been wet. Ben Hales had damp hair and a paper bag in his hand. Neither looked at the family card or the pencils. They looked at Elsie.

“Hello,” Asha said. “I’m Asha.”

Elsie stepped closer to Mara, her buttoned cuff still hanging too far over her wrist.

“I’m Ben,” said Ben. He raised the bag a little. “I brought biscuits. I was told to leave these with Ms Shah first, so no one thinks I’m trying to buy your opinion.”

Ms Shah gave him a look over her glasses. “I said we’d check the ingredients.”

“You said that too.”

Elsie smiled before she meant to. Ms Shah took the bag and put it beside the folder. She introduced Mara as someone Elsie knew well, and asked Elsie if she wanted her to stay.

“Yes,” Elsie said. Then, with a glance at Mara, “For a bit.”

They sat. Ben chose the chair that left the sofa free for Elsie and Mara. Asha asked whether she might sit opposite Elsie or whether that was too much like school. Elsie said opposite was all right, and Asha waited until she had answered before pulling out the chair. Mara had never heard anyone ask permission about a chair in that room. It made her like Asha at once, which she tried not to do.

Ms Shah began with the rain jar. She had been briefed too. Elsie explained that the experiment had failed because the water went up the glass but never came back down. Ben asked how long she had waited. Elsie said all afternoon. Asha said that seemed long enough to count as an honest attempt.

“Do you have a dog?” Elsie asked her.

There it was, before school had got as far as lunch.

“We don’t,” Asha said. “We had one for a long time. Juno. She died last winter.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Asha smiled, though it did not quite hold. “She used to open the kitchen door with her nose. We still leave it unlatched out of habit.”

“What sort was she?”

Asha described an elderly grey dog with ears that never agreed about which way to point. Ben pulled out his phone, then looked at Ms Shah, who nodded. He showed Elsie a photograph. Mara could only see the edge of it, a paw against a yellow cushion. Elsie moved from the sofa to the rug for a better angle. Ben crouched rather than making her come to his chair.

“Would you get another?” Elsie asked.

Ben took a moment. Mara saw Asha notice it. That was the part of a meeting she was good at: catching the smallest pause and giving it a meaning before anyone else had finished speaking.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “Not soon. We found out how much time she needed when she got old, and I think we ought to be honest about what we can manage.”

Elsie gave the phone back. “Snails don’t need very much.”

“No,” Ben agreed. “I imagine they don’t.”

“They need a damp place. And you can’t forget where you put them.”

He looked up at her. “Has that happened?”

“Once. It was in my pocket.”

Mara had never heard this story. Elsie told it with such precise disgust about the state of the pocket that Asha laughed, and then Ben did. Ms Shah made a short note. Mara wanted to read it. She kept her hands flat on her knees.

They talked about the small garden in the photograph. It had a plum tree that produced enough fruit for one bad pie. Ben worked from home two days a week; Asha had recently changed shifts and could usually be home for the end of the school day. They were still learning whether those arrangements would hold. Neither pretended their house had been waiting empty for Elsie. When Asha asked what Elsie liked about the centre, Elsie said the big table at breakfast because she could watch everybody come in.

Mara saw Asha glance at Ben again. There were only two places at their kitchen table, perhaps three if a chair fitted at the end. She invented the room from one expression and caught herself doing it.

Ms Shah suggested a drawing. The new pencils had been untouched long enough to make the suggestion seem necessary. Elsie chose brown and green, drew a heavy curve that might have been a hill, and asked Asha to draw a house at one end. Asha’s house had a front step and a lopsided chimney. Ben added a tree without being asked. Elsie drew five small loops underneath it.

“Are those snails?” Ben asked.

“Yes. They’re going somewhere.”

“Where?”

Elsie considered. “They’ll tell us when they get there.”

Mara had been ready to help Elsie explain the picture. She left the pencils where they were.

When Ms Shah said it was time, Elsie made a noise of protest but put the pencils down. Asha did not reach across to hug her. She asked whether she might keep the drawing. Elsie said she had not finished it. Ben said they could look at it next time, if there was a next time.

Mara disliked the care in that sentence for half a second. Then she remembered what it would cost him to promise what he could not give.

In the corridor Ms Shah went with the Haleses as far as the entrance. Mara stayed to help Elsie put the pencils away. Through the open door she heard Asha say, “We’d like to come back, if Elsie would.” Ms Shah answered that she would ask her properly once the visit was over.

Elsie had heard too. She set the brown pencil on the rug instead of in the box.

“Can they?” she whispered.

“They can ask,” Mara said.

“Would you say yes?”

“I don’t get to decide.”

“I know. I mean if you were me.”

Mara thought of the damp-haired man kneeling to show Elsie a photograph of a dog he missed. She thought of Asha asking before she sat down, and of the two of them learning to fit one more chair around a table. She could not know what happened after a first visit. But Elsie had asked her what she thought, and she was tired of giving answers small enough to be impossible to disprove.

“I think I’d want to see them again,” Mara said. It was the furthest she could go without pretending to know them better than she did.

Elsie picked up the brown pencil. “Then I will.”

Ms Shah returned and asked Elsie the question herself. Elsie said yes, quite firmly, and then asked whether next time she could finish the drawing before anyone took it. Ms Shah said that could be arranged. She did not tell her what the Haleses would decide after another visit.

When they were alone again, Elsie took the drawing to the window. The pigeon had gone. She added a dot above the tree, too high to be another snail.

“Did they choose me?” she asked.

“They asked if they could meet you again.”

“You told me that.”

“That’s what I know.”

“Did I do it wrong by asking about the dog?” Elsie asked. The pencil had stopped moving above the roof.

“No.” Mara was certain of that, at least. “They liked talking to you.”

Elsie looked down at the animals beneath the tree. “You said to wait.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t.”

“I saw.”

Elsie pulled both cuffs over her hands. Mara could have fixed them. Instead she took the pencil box and waited while Elsie put a roof on the house.

Later, in her own room, Mara found the Allocation preference form beneath a stack of revision papers. It had arrived that morning, along with the timetable for her review. There were three spaces for work she hoped to do. The instructions said her preferences would be considered alongside the national forecast.

She wrote National Office for Demographic Continuity in the first space. She had written it there before, then rubbed it out. This time she left it. In six weeks she would be eighteen, and somebody would tell her where she was going.