Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

but no one knows. No one realizes that when she tilts her head and says, Order for me, would you, or when she turns to the row of inverted spirit bottles, each with its convex Cyclops eye, her jaw is locked with the tension and terror of being found out.
    She cannot read. This is her own private truth. Because of it, she must lead a double life: the fact of it saturates every molecule of her being, defines her to herself, always and forever, but nobody else knows. Not her friends, not her colleagues, not her family—certainly not her family. She has kept it from all of them, felt herself brimming with the secret of it her whole life.
    She’d been in New York for six months, perhaps more, perhaps almost a year, she forgets these things, when she was shelving sketchbooks in the art-supplies store, her mind blurred with tiredness, as she’d been working at the club until four a.m., and she saw Evelyn Nemetov through the window. She was looking up at the store sign, which, from where Aoife was standing, said: ATTA TA or sometimes KCATTATRA or KCATARACT or RATATATTAT . Aoife recognized her straightaway: she’d been to an exhibition of hers, several times, in London. Evelyn Nemetov, on a sidewalk in New York, in a raincoat several sizes too large and a canvas hat pulled down low on her forehead, standing there, hands in her pockets, as if she was just another member of thehuman race. To Aoife, it was as if a Greek god had materialized right there on Fifty-second Street, had decided to pay a visit to the mortals of New York, to see how life was, before returning to her insubstantial, deified form. Aoife stood in the store, a stack of sketchbooks in her arms, and willed Evelyn Nemetov to come inside, to open the door and walk in. And, after a moment, she did. Not only that, she walked right up to Aoife and said she was looking for some tape, not just any kind of tape, the one that was adhesive on both sides. Did Aoife know what she meant? She couldn’t find it anywhere. Double-sided sticky tape, Aoife said, speaking ordinary words to Evelyn Nemetov, as if she might understand. Yes, Evelyn Nemetov replied, do you have it? Yes, Aoife said. And she went to get it, and when she was ringing up the tape on the till she turned to Evelyn Nemetov and said, Do you need an assistant, I could be your assistant, please let me try, just give me a chance.
    When she first came to New York, she knew no one, she was obsessed with studying families, she felt herself to be broken, like the city, but then she found the club and then she met Evelyn and everything was different.
    ·  ·  ·
    Aoife reaches the top floor of the building and fishes in her pocket for the key. She pushes her way through the heavy door, easing the bag in after her.
    She always gets the urge to shout at this point. That is what you do, isn’t it, when you arrive in an apartment with someone else there, someone who is expecting you? She has to stop herself every time. Evelyn doesn’t like shouting: it makes her jump and disturbs her concentration. This is not, after all, your average apartment.
    Aoife advances over the floor in her too-big boots. She could walk through these rooms at midnight in a blackout, if she had to. She knows where everything is, where everything goes. If asked,she could find anything at all within two minutes. This is, after all, her job. But it gives her a strange, unfamiliar pleasure because she is not known for organization, for knowing-where-things-are. If her family were told that she was good at this, that she could do it, they would laugh and gape in disbelief. But they don’t know and no one will ever tell them.
    “Is that you?” she hears Evelyn murmur, from what sounds like the direction of the darkroom.
    “Yeah,” Aoife says.
    “My God, I thought you’d been kidnapped. Eaten by wolves. Joined a cult or something.”
    “Nothing so exciting.”
    “You’ve been hours.”
    “Sorry,” Aoife says, resting her palm on the darkroom