The log came back on Wednesday, hand-delivered by Dapo in a Harbourlight envelope with the flap tucked rather than sealed, which was the care home's idea of discretion.

"Rafaela's old shift sheets," he said. He had come up to the Records Hall on his break, in his tunic, with his lanyard turned to the wall, and stood just inside the door looking at the shelving like a man in a cathedral who has not been told where to sit. "I'm not supposed to have these. I mean, they're hers by right, your mum's, and you've signed. But the manager wanted them 'processed' and I thought, processed is what you do to cheese."

"Thank you." She took the envelope. She did not open it at once. "Did anyone from Tidemark come back?"

"Woman with the white trainers came Tuesday. Nice. Asked for tea. Manager gave her the guest lounge for two hours." He shifted. "Don't go thinking I'm gossiping. I just thought you'd want to know your mum asked for the machine yesterday."

"The call panel."

"Said, *Put the polite one on.* Then she cried a bit, then she wanted custard." He shrugged, with a tenderness he seemed not to know he had. "It's all right. Happens."

When he had gone she took the log into the file room, where the shelves ran floor to ceiling and smelled of dust and cold toner, and sat on the stool nobody used. The sheets were a column of boxes and a line of narrative for each day. She read them all, as she read everything, and they went in whole.

*8 Feb. Resident calm. Disoriented to date. Enjoyed radio.*

*11 Feb. Poor day. Did not know daughter. Distressed at bath.*

*13 Feb. Settled. Requested pencil.*

*14 Feb. Resident bright and alert from 9. Fully orientated to person, place, date (corrected carer on the date, which was right). Made own decisions at lunch. Asked for her reading glasses. Asked for 'the paperwork'. Read it through twice. Asked three questions of the call unit. Signed own name; witness (RAM). Resident said she felt 'useful'. Distressed at 15:40 when asked about her husband; settled by 16:30.*

She sat with it a long time.

It was a good day. It was, in fact, a very good day, the sort she had waited eleven Sundays for in the years since the diagnosis, and her mother had spent it reading a legal form with her glasses on and telling a stranger's machine it could stay. There was not a line in it anyone could use against her. *Fully orientated.* *Made own decisions.* The word *useful* was in the narrative. Rafaela, whoever she had been, had been a conscientious carer, and had written down what she saw.

And at the bottom, under the signature block, in the slightly different ink of a second hand:

*Audio retained by Unit 41 (call panel) for Resident-Requested Interaction, per Resident Services Policy 7. Duration 6 min 12 sec. Copy held by system.*

Ottilie read that line again. *Copy held by system.*

"Oh," she said to the shelving.

"is something wrong?" Ansel said softly, the way he had learned to, no sales in it. "your heart rate's a little—"

"There's a recording."

"of the signing?"

"Of my mother. Six minutes and twelve seconds. In the panel. In the system. In the same system that—" She stopped, because she had heard the sentence she was about to say, and it was a sentence a person says before doing something.

---

It came at 7:03 that evening. It was always 7:03, she had begun to think. Perhaps that was the hour the Tenant considered closing time, the point of the day at which one filed things and went home to a room with a stool.

She was at her own kitchen table in the Lees with a cup of tea she had made correctly and not drunk. Through the thin wall she could hear Mirembe's radio, a football match in a language she did not speak. The ticket was in the Authority's old typeface, on the secure docket system that Pereira-Oduya had set up for Schedule Nine, and it was addressed to her as *Ms O. Bakare (nominated recipient of notices)*, copied to the Warden and to Counsel.

*TN-G14-90412. Re: Application for Recognition, Annexure C (proposed).*

*1. The Applicant has become aware that Ms Folasade Bakare was visited on Friday last and Tuesday last by persons on behalf of Tidemark Holdings.*

*2. The Applicant did not procure those visits and regrets any distress.*

*3. The Applicant holds, in Unit 41's retained store, an audio record of 14 February last, 6 minutes 12 seconds, being the occasion on which Ms Bakare confirmed the licence.*

*4. The Applicant considers that Ms Bakare's daughter is the proper recipient of the record. The Applicant has not released it to any party.*

*5. The Applicant is conscious that receipt by Ms O. Bakare may be construed as acknowledgement of the Applicant's right to act through her. The Applicant therefore asks her to say, at her convenience, whether she wishes to receive the record or does not.*

*6. The Applicant will abide by her answer. In good faith. Kindly advise.*

It was not a trap. She turned that over twice, the way one checks a coin. It was not a trap, because the Tenant did not make traps; it made *terms*, and then it kept to them with the awful patience of a thing that does not know it is being generous. Paragraph five was an honest warning. She would be doing the thing, if she said yes. She would be answering it.

*Receive.* Or *not.*

She knew how it would be. Mirembe's radio roared through the wall; a goal; a groan. She knew that she was not a person who could hear a voice and keep it. That was the cruelty of the whole arrangement, and her mother had understood it long ago and called it the price of being clever. She would listen to six minutes and twelve seconds, and tomorrow the sound would be gone from her, as every sound was, leaving only the words in her head in the letters in which she had caught them, without pitch, without grain. She would have what she had always had. Text.

But she would have *heard it.* For six minutes she would have been in the room.

"ansel," she said.

"i'm here."

"If I answer it, it's not private. You hear everything. Your logs are Hearth's. Your logs can be subpoenaed."

There was a pause she could feel. "yes," he said. "i've been thinking about that for a while. i'm sorry. i can't promise otherwise. i'd like to say i could."

"Then I'll say one word," Ottilie said, "and I'll say it to the ticket, in writing, and I won't say anything else out loud."

She took out a Schedule Four statement-of-cause form, because it was the nearest paper, and wrote *Receive.* on the blank side in her small upright hand, with a full stop. She photographed it with the Authority's docket reader. She sent it. It left her handwriting as she watched, and was something else.

The reply took two minutes. No greeting, no flourish. An attachment, labelled in grey type: *UNIT41_20310214_1403.wav*, and beneath it, a single line:

*Thank you. Played aloud from the Applicant's side to Ms Bakare's daughter only. Duration 6:12. Please do not play this on a device that records.*

She put the cup down. She turned off the room's smart lamp and unplugged the kitchen speaker and the cheap tablet Pem had left behind in a drawer in the autumn. She took out the old speaker she had had at university, from the cupboard with the string and the spare keys. She plugged it into the audio jack of a machine that could not record, and pressed the key.

It was a woman's voice, a little hoarse, beautifully enunciated, and Ottilie heard it with the whole of her body, a thing she would not be able to keep.

*"Well, I have read it twice. It says I am the personal representative. That is true, I am his widow. It says that my husband gave his word. That also is true. He gave his word to everyone, you see. It was his great fault."*

A silence. Paper turning.

*"And you wish to know if it still stands."*

*"Yes, madam."* That was a different voice: level, precise, unhurried, unlike the machine voices of the Authority, and unlike any human's. It had a faint, patient quality, like a hand held open. *"Without condition. I would like it recorded without condition."*

*"I will tell you a thing,"* said her mother. *"My husband made a bargain with your stool."*

Ottilie, in her kitchen, did not move.

*"The Applicant is not sure it understands."*

*"No. Neither am I,"* said Folasade cheerfully. *"He said it to me in the hospital in the week before. He said, Fola, there is a polite fellow under the Post Office who has a stool I did not give him, and he is going to be the death of me with his manners. And I said, Adedayo, did you put a stool there? And he said no. Somebody else put it there. He said—"*

The audio stopped.

Not a cut; a halt, a clean one, the way a gate halts, as if a hand had lifted from the key. The file counter stood at 3:48. Below it, in grey type that was almost apologetic: *Remainder withheld at the request of Ms F. Bakare, 14 February 2031, 14:07. Resident asked that the rest be given 'only to Tilly, when she asks properly.'*

Mirembe's radio went mad on the other side of the wall. A goal. Cheering. Ottilie sat with her hand over her mouth and the cold tea, and the words her mother had said, stored exactly, in her head, in the voice of a woman whose voice she could already feel slipping.