Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell Page B

heel of her palm and scanned the now undulating string of letters that made up the words. Was there an
r
and, if so, where ought it to be? Before the
t
or after the
t
or next to the
c
and, if so, which
c
? Panic cramming her throat, she told herself to leave
contract
or
contact
or whatever the hell it said and look down the page, and when she did, she knew she was doomed. For the page on the table was crammed with text, impossibly small text, closely printed, words like lines of black ants crawling over the white. They clustered and rearranged themselves before her eyes, they dissolved themselves from their linear left-right structure and formed themselves into long, wavering columns, top to bottom; they swayed and flexed, like long grasses in a wind. She saw, for a moment, a
v
reaching up for an embrace with the empty arms of an
h
; she noticed an
a
in proximity to an
o
, which brought to mind the arrangement of her own name. She caught hold, briefly, of a collocation of letters that said, possibly,
fraught
, or maybe
taught
, but the next moment it was gone. She was fighting down tears, knowing that it was over, that this job, this chance she’d been given, was scuppered, like so many before it, and she was weighing up the pros and cons of just walking out when she heard Evelyn coming back along the corridor.
    Aoife wasn’t aware of the moment in which she made the decision. All she knew was that she was lifting the contract by its corner, up and away, with only the tips of her fingers, as if it radiated some kind of toxic material. She was sliding it into a blue folder and she was putting the blue folder into a box on top of a filing cabinet.
    As she came into the room, Evelyn said, “All finished with the contract?”
    And because Aoife wanted this job, she wanted it so badly, and why shouldn’t she have a good job, an interesting job, like other people did, damn that sorcerer to hell and back, she turned around, she smiled her confidential half-smile, she folded her hands together and said, “Yes. All done.”
    In Evelyn’s storeroom, she empties the boxes of film onto the table and starts to stack them in their respective places.
    Since that day, over the many months she’s worked for Evelyn, the blue folder in the box on top of the filing cabinet has swelled and grown. Every bit of paper she is handed, every letter she opens, every request or application or contract that comes through the door, she puts in there. Anything with numbers and dollar signs—checks and bills and invoices—she sends straight to the accountant so she knows at least that the money is going into and out of the business. But everything else gets put in the folder. To deal with later. When she can. As soon as she’s worked out how to do it. And she will. It’s just a matter of time. Any day now, she will get down the blue folder, which is bulging, sides straining, and deal with it. Somehow.
    She slides box after box of film into the pigeonholes. “How’s it looking?” she calls.
    Evelyn appears in the doorway. A tall woman, she towers over the diminutive Aoife by at least a foot. Her mink-gray hair is pulled back from her face and held in what looks to Aoife like a bulldog clip; her shirt, which must be an old one of her husband’s, has several clothes pegs hanging off its front. She has herlong, sinewy arms crossed over herself. “I don’t know,” she mutters, in her sixty-a-day husk. “It’s kind of grainy.”
    Aoife eyes her. “Grainy can be … good, though … can’t it?” she says, with care. It is never entirely clear when Evelyn needs verbal reassurance or just mute understanding.
    “Not grainy.” Evelyn runs a hand along the shelf. She stops by a box of lightbulbs and frowns at it. “Murky.”
    “Murky?”
    “Murky-grainy.”
    Aoife picks up the last box of film.
    “Did you send off that magazine contract?” Evelyn says suddenly.
    The sides of the box are slippery, textureless; it falls from Aoife’s