Work Text:
By nine fifteen on Friday morning, Felicity Elliot had already been told three times that the matter was probably too small to justify a solicitor. The first person to say it had been the client herself, which Felicity could forgive. The second had been a clerk in the office who was trying to warn her that the morning list was already overfull, which Felicity understood. The third had been the landlord’s representative on the telephone, who described forty-two pounds in withheld wages and a disputed room deposit as “hardly the stuff of litigation,” and that was the one that made her put down her pen. Felicity sat in a cramped interview room at the legal-aid centre in north London with two cardboard folders open in front of her, a mug of tea cooling beside a stack of photocopied tenancy forms, and rain threading down the window in narrow grey tracks.
Across the desk sat Teresa Mendonça, twenty-six, recently arrived from Madeira by way of several months with relatives in Southampton, employed until the previous week in the kitchen of a small hotel near King’s Cross and living in a furnished room provided through the same man who had arranged the job. Teresa had come in because two weeks’ wages had not been paid and because, after she complained, she had been told the room was no longer available to her. The landlord intended to keep her deposit for “cleaning and inconvenience.” Felicity asked Teresa to repeat exactly what had been said, not because she doubted her but because exact words often had a way of revealing how confident somebody had become in getting away with things.
Teresa folded her hands over the strap of her handbag and said, “He told me if I wanted trouble, I could have trouble. Then he said people like me should be grateful somebody gave us work.” Felicity wrote that down without changing expression and asked, “Who is ‘he’?” Teresa gave the name again: Martin Vale, proprietor of Vale Rooms and, through a separate company name on the payslip, one of the men connected to the hotel kitchen. Felicity drew a line beneath both names.
The legal-aid centre occupied two floors over a chemist and always smelled faintly of damp coats, copier toner and whatever lunch somebody had reheated too early. Felicity had worked there long enough to recognise the hierarchy by which cases tried to disguise themselves. Some arrived loudly, carrying court dates, eviction notices or police paperwork, while others presented as one small administrative insult and required patience before they admitted their true size. Teresa’s case had all the signs of being the latter. The paperwork was poor but not nonexistent, which was often more useful than perfect paperwork because sloppiness left traces. There was a handwritten receipt for the deposit, a wage envelope from January, two typed notes pushed under Teresa’s door warning about “house standards,” and one form describing the room as employer accommodation even though the rent had been deducted separately from her wages. Felicity asked where Teresa was staying now. Teresa said with a cousin’s friend in Kilburn, sleeping on a sofa and keeping most of her clothes in two carrier bags. When Felicity asked whether Vale had given her anything in writing terminating the room, Teresa shook her head and said, “Only that I should be out by Sunday.” Felicity asked whether anyone else rented rooms from him. Teresa answered, “Many.”
Felicity’s pen stopped briefly. “People from the hotel?” she asked, and Teresa said some worked at the hotel, some in two restaurants Vale’s brother knew, and several did cleaning work. Felicity asked whether they had the same arrangement, with rent deducted from wages and no proper agreement. Teresa said she did not know, then corrected herself. “I think yes. We complain about him, but complaining together in the kitchen is not the same as knowing.”
Felicity knew that distinction well. Her childhood had taught her to notice the distance between what people experienced and what institutions would accept as evidence. Cecil, her father, had made law sound tidy when she was young: facts established, documents examined, obligations defined, disputes resolved. Felicity had gone into the same profession partly because she understood the power of that tidiness and partly because she mistrusted what vanished when tidy people decided which facts counted. By twenty-seven, legal-aid work had stripped away any remaining romanticism. Most of her clients did not arrive with clean bundles of evidence. They arrived with bus tickets, half-remembered dates, letters written in a language they only partly understood, envelopes thrown away because nobody had told them envelopes mattered, and stories interrupted by embarrassment whenever money entered the conversation.
Felicity had become good at building chronology from disorder. She asked Teresa to begin with the first day she had met Vale and took her through the entire arrangement without allowing either of them to skip a week simply because nothing dramatic had happened. Teresa had been introduced by a family acquaintance. Vale said he could find work and a room. The hotel paid cash weekly at first, then occasionally late. Rent was deducted before the money reached her. When hours were short, the rent did not become shorter. When Teresa was ill for three days in February, Vale still deducted the full amount and added what he called a housekeeping fee because another worker had cleaned the shared bathroom. Felicity asked, “Did you agree to a housekeeping fee?” Teresa answered, “I agreed there would be a bathroom.” Felicity’s mouth tightened with the faintest trace of amusement, and she said, “That is a different contract.”
By ten twenty the forty-two pounds had become eighty-six pounds in disputed deductions, one unpaid week Teresa had initially forgotten because she had been given an advance later, a deposit of seventy pounds, and an accommodation arrangement whose legal status Felicity did not yet trust herself to classify without checking. None of this was enormous by the standards of litigation. Together it was nearly three weeks of Teresa’s disposable income. Felicity had long ago lost patience with people who called a sum trivial because they happened to possess more of it. She asked whether Teresa would be willing to contact any of the other tenants. Teresa became cautious immediately and said some were frightened. One woman’s immigration paperwork was still being processed, another spoke little English, and a man from Cape Verde had already told everyone that Vale knew somebody at the council. Felicity asked whether Teresa believed that claim. Teresa said, “No. But I believe Vale wants us to believe it.” Felicity underlined that sentence too. She explained that nobody had to become part of Teresa’s case and nobody should be pressured into giving information, but if other tenants had received identical receipts, deductions or threats, she needed to know. Teresa agreed to speak to two people she trusted. Before leaving, she asked Felicity whether the case was worth all this work. Felicity closed the folder and answered, “If somebody owes you money, the amount does not become legitimate because it is inconvenient to recover. Let me decide how much legal work it needs. You decide whether you want it back.”
The next client was waiting, and the next after that, so Teresa’s file spent nearly three hours beneath a stack concerning a threatened eviction, a benefits appeal and a man who had been dismissed after refusing unsafe work. Felicity moved through each without carrying the previous person visibly into the room. It was a discipline she had learned because clients could tell when they were being treated as the sixth problem of the morning. At one fifteen she finally returned to her own desk, where another solicitor had left half a cheese sandwich wrapped in paper beside a note reading EAT THIS BEFORE YOU BECOME A LABOUR MARTYR. Felicity ate it while telephoning the hotel.
The manager claimed Teresa had been casual staff and that wage records were handled elsewhere. Felicity asked for the payroll address. He gave her a company name that differed slightly from the one printed on Teresa’s envelope. She asked who owned it. The manager said he was not certain. Felicity said, “You have paid staff through this company for how long?” The manager became defensive and replied that he only managed the premises. Felicity asked where the employment records were kept. He said he would have to find out. She told him to find out and gave him until Monday to respond in writing. By the time she replaced the receiver, the other solicitor, Graham Haines, had emerged from his office and asked whether the tiny wage claim had become interesting. Felicity said, “It has acquired relatives.”
Graham pulled a chair over without invitation because he knew that phrase. Felicity showed him the two company names, the lodging receipt and the deductions. He read silently for a minute, then asked whether Vale owned the hotel. Felicity said perhaps not directly. The surname appeared only on the accommodation documents, while the hotel paid through another entity and the restaurant connection might belong to a brother. Graham said, “Could simply be disorganisation.” Felicity answered, “Certainly. I’m very interested in how consistently disorganised they are.” He read Teresa’s account of the housekeeping fee and said the lodging arrangement might be tied to employment strongly enough to complicate possession. Felicity agreed, which was precisely why she did not want Teresa returning alone to collect the remainder of her things if Vale became hostile.
Graham suggested writing first and seeing whether forty-two pounds suddenly appeared. Felicity said she intended to write, but she was no longer convinced forty-two pounds was the question. Graham pointed out that finding three badly treated employees did not automatically produce a conspiracy. Felicity replied, “No. It produces three badly treated employees. That is already sufficient reason to count them.”
The letter she drafted that afternoon was intentionally dull. Felicity had found that people expecting anger were often more unsettled by precision. She listed the unpaid wages, disputed deductions, deposit, demand to vacate, request for a complete wage record and request for the legal basis on which Vale intended to retain the deposit. She asked that no property belonging to Teresa be removed or disposed of and that all future communication regarding the dispute be made in writing. No accusations of exploitation appeared. No threat of public embarrassment appeared.
No declaration about migrant workers, bad landlords or class power appeared, although Felicity had opinions on all four. The law did not improve when used as a leaflet. She read the draft twice, altered one sentence that sounded more certain than the evidence allowed, and handed it to the typing pool before attending an afternoon housing meeting at the council offices. By five thirty she had almost forgotten the case in the immediate practical sense, though one detail kept returning: the second company name on the wage envelope. Something about its blandness bothered her. It sounded constructed to disappear.
Monday morning provided the first answer. Vale telephoned before nine and announced that Teresa’s account was “grossly misleading.” Felicity listened while he explained that she had left work voluntarily, damaged bedding, owed rent and had been given several advances out of kindness. He spoke rapidly and with the special confidence of a man accustomed to complaints reaching him privately and dying there. When he paused, Felicity asked for copies of the wage records, the signed accommodation terms and the invoice for the damaged bedding. Vale said there was no invoice because his wife had replaced it herself. Felicity asked what had been damaged. He said staining.
Felicity asked when. He said sometime in February. Felicity asked whether Teresa had been informed. Vale said everybody knew the rules. Felicity replied, “That is not quite the same question.” He became colder and told her his tenants were treated very well considering what other landlords charged. Felicity said she was not presently conducting a survey of other landlords. She wanted the documents supporting his deductions. Vale asked whether she truly intended to waste legal aid on this. Felicity said, “I intend to determine whether my client is owed money. You can make that quicker by sending the records.”
Teresa returned that afternoon with another woman.
Her name was Ana Paula Gomes. She cleaned rooms at the same hotel, lived two doors from Teresa’s former room and carried a brown envelope containing every wage slip she had been given over fourteen months because her father had taught her never to throw away paper with money written on it. Felicity silently blessed Ana Paula’s father. The records showed irregular deductions labelled ROOM, CLEAN, ADV, LINEN and once ADMIN. Ana Paula said she had never understood the administration charge. She had asked Vale and been told, “That’s paperwork.” Felicity asked whether there had been paperwork associated with it. Ana Paula smiled without humour and said, “No.” More importantly, Ana Paula’s wage envelope bore a third company name. The address printed beneath it was the same post-office box used by the company on Teresa’s January envelope. Felicity laid the documents side by side and asked Ana Paula whether she had ever worked anywhere other than the hotel. Ana Paula said no. Had the employer ever changed? Not as far as she knew. Had anybody explained why the name paying her wages had changed? Nobody had explained there had been a change at all.
The third tenant arrived twenty minutes later because Teresa had encountered him downstairs and told him there was a solicitor who actually wanted receipts. João Fernandes worked evenings in a restaurant in Camden and rented a room in another Vale property three streets away. He had no wage slips but had kept a small notebook of payments because his mother in Porto insisted he record everything he earned and sent home. Felicity asked who employed him. João named the restaurant.
She asked who arranged the job. Vale. She asked who owned the room. Vale or Vale’s brother; João had never been sure. The rent receipt carried the same handwriting as Teresa’s. João had also paid an administration fee upon moving in, a key deposit and a cleaning deposit separate from the ordinary deposit. Felicity asked whether he received the key deposit back after a lock had been replaced. João said, “Why would I? He said the new key was better.” Felicity rested her fingertips against the page and asked, “Did you ask for a better key?” João laughed once and said, “No. I was happy with the old bad key.”
By four o’clock, Felicity had five names.
By Wednesday, she had nine.
They did not form a neat group. Some were Portuguese. Two were Irish. One was a young woman from Ghana who had grown up partly in London and resented Vale’s habit of speaking to her slowly whenever money was discussed. Another was an English man from Leeds who had moved south for kitchen work and had assumed the constant deductions were simply “London nonsense.” They worked at three different businesses and occupied rooms in two buildings, but the patterns repeated. Employment arrived through Vale or somebody connected to him. Accommodation followed.
Deductions appeared without explanation. Deposits accumulated under several names. People who challenged missing wages discovered that their housing became suddenly insecure. Nobody had lost a fortune. That was almost the mechanism. Ten pounds for linen, twelve for cleaning, a week’s short pay, a deposit reduced by twenty because of a mark already present when the tenant moved in. Each amount was small enough to make formal protest feel disproportionate and large enough, repeated across enough people, to become useful income for somebody.
Felicity covered one wall of the interview room with paper because the centre had no board large enough. She wrote tenant names down the left side, employer names across the top and categories of deduction in narrow columns. Graham came in carrying coffee, stopped in the doorway and said, “Your forty-two pounds has become architecture.” Felicity accepted the coffee and told him, “I needed to see whether the same charges followed people between companies.” He studied the wall and asked whether they did. Felicity pointed to three columns. Cleaning appeared in eight files.
Administration appeared in six. Key deposits appeared in five, including three tenants who had never been issued new keys. Graham asked whether she had enough to allege coordinated wage theft. Felicity said no. He asked whether that frustrated her. She answered, “Not particularly. I don’t need the largest possible theory. I need the correct one.”
The correct one, initially, was several smaller claims connected by evidence. That distinction mattered because Felicity disliked the professional temptation to enlarge a case until the clients disappeared behind it. Teresa wanted her wages and deposit. Ana Paula wanted an explanation of deductions and feared losing her room. João wanted his key money back mostly because the principle had begun to annoy him. Others wanted nothing formal at all but were willing to provide copies of receipts. One man withdrew after a day because his cousin had warned him that Vale might interfere with his job.
Felicity did not lecture him about solidarity. She returned his papers and told him that if anything changed, he could come back. After he left, a volunteer asked whether she was disappointed. Felicity said, “Of course. That does not make his fear unreasonable.” The volunteer asked whether keeping everybody together would strengthen the case. Felicity replied, “Legally, perhaps. Human beings are inconveniently not exhibits.”
The first real pressure came not from court but from the letters. Three employers received separate requests for wage records. Two landlords received requests for tenancy and deposit documentation. Vale received notice that multiple clients had now raised similar complaints and that the centre required communication in writing. Within forty-eight hours, Teresa was offered her unpaid wages but not her deposit.
The hotel described the payment as an “administrative correction” rather than an admission that anything had been withheld improperly. Teresa brought the letter into Felicity’s office and asked whether she should take the money. Felicity told her yes. Teresa seemed surprised and said, “But then he wins something.” Felicity asked what. Teresa said he could pretend it had been a mistake. Felicity answered, “He can pretend whatever he likes. You are not required to remain unpaid in order to preserve my argument.” Teresa signed for the amount.
The deposit took longer because Vale insisted the room had required cleaning. Felicity asked for photographs, inspection notes or receipts. None appeared. Instead, another letter arrived claiming that tenancy deposits for employer-linked accommodation were “customarily retained against final liabilities.” Felicity read the sentence twice and passed it to Graham, who said, “Customarily is doing heroic labour there.” Felicity said she wanted every client asked whether the phrase final liabilities had ever appeared in anything they signed. It had not. More useful still, Ana Paula produced a small printed leaflet given to new tenants that promised deposits would be returned after keys were surrendered and the room inspected. Felicity placed the leaflet beside Vale’s letter and said, “There we are.” Graham asked whether she enjoyed moments like this too much. Felicity replied, “No. I enjoy them exactly enough.”
The case finally reached a county-court hearing in limited form because Vale refused to return Teresa’s deposit and challenged the deductions. Felicity did not turn the morning into theatre. Teresa wore a navy skirt borrowed from Ana Paula and arrived forty minutes early because she feared missing the bus connection. Felicity met her outside the courtroom with the bundle already indexed. She explained what would happen, where Teresa would sit and which questions mattered. Teresa asked whether Vale would be there. Felicity said his solicitor was attending and Vale might not.
Teresa exhaled with relief and then seemed ashamed of being relieved. Felicity noticed and said, “You are allowed to prefer not sharing a room with a man who threatened your housing.” Teresa nodded. After a moment she asked, “Will they ask why I did not complain sooner?” Felicity answered that they might. Teresa said she had no good answer. Felicity told her, “You do. You needed the room, you needed the job, and at first you did not know the deductions were improper. Those are facts, not excuses.”
Vale’s solicitor attempted to make the dispute administrative. Records had been imperfect, communication had been unfortunate, the employer and accommodation arrangements had overlapped informally, and everyone accepted that small cash businesses sometimes produced documentation below ideal standards. Felicity did not object to every sentence. Some were true. Instead she returned repeatedly to the same narrow questions. What authorised the cleaning deduction? Where was the inspection record? Why did the written leaflet promise deposit return while Vale now claimed retention was customary? Why had room access become conditional immediately after Teresa questioned wages?
The answer to the last question became particularly vague. Vale’s solicitor suggested timing alone proved nothing. Felicity agreed. Timing alone proved nothing. Timing, written notes, similar experiences and unexplained deductions proved more.
The judge ordered the deposit returned, rejected most of the claimed cleaning charges and required a portion of the costs to be paid. It was not a sweeping judgment. No declaration was made about an exploitative network. Nobody was arrested. The hotel remained open, the rooms remained occupied, and Vale left the building with enough legal room to insist that the dispute had been a misunderstanding. Teresa received seventy pounds and a written finding that the deductions had not been substantiated.
Outside, she held the order in both hands and asked, “Is that all?”
Felicity knew what she meant. Weeks of interviews, photocopies, frightened tenants, letters, account books and one courtroom morning had produced a sum that would disappear quickly into food, travel and the money Teresa owed the friend whose sofa she used.
“For your individual case, nearly,” Felicity said, keeping the answer within the larger flow of people leaving the corridor around them. “The wages are paid, the deposit is ordered back, and we’ll make sure the payment actually arrives. The other files continue separately.”
Teresa asked whether Vale would stop doing it.
“I don’t know,” Felicity said. “He has less reason to assume nobody will challenge him.”
Teresa folded the order into her handbag and considered that. “That is not the same as stopping.”
“No.”
“You lawyers do not promise very much.”
“The good ones try not to promise what belongs to somebody else.”
Teresa smiled then, tired rather than triumphant, and asked whether Felicity would take a coffee before she went back to the office. Felicity checked her watch, realised she had missed lunch again, and agreed.
The wider effect appeared slowly enough that no single moment could be claimed as victory. The hotel improved its wage records after receiving repeated demands. One restaurant stopped deducting accommodation directly because its accountant apparently decided the arrangement was becoming more trouble than it saved. Two tenants recovered deposits without hearings after letters were sent.
Ana Paula received a partial refund of administration charges and rejected the first offer because Felicity had shown her how the calculation worked. João never recovered every pound of his various deposits, but he received enough that he came into the office carrying pastries and declared the remainder “tax paid to learn what not to sign.” Felicity told him not to describe theft as tuition. He said the pastries were still hers.
More important to Felicity was what did not happen. Nobody was turned into a symbol. There was no newspaper photograph of grateful immigrants standing behind the clever young solicitor. Felicity had no interest in feeding Labour campaign material with people who had come seeking wages rather than publicity. She attended a ward meeting one evening where housing enforcement was discussed and spoke about patterns without names. A councillor asked whether she believed the problem was widespread. Felicity answered that she believed informal employment and tied accommodation created obvious opportunities for abuse and that anybody claiming to know the scale without better data was performing confidence rather than analysis. The councillor asked whether that was a yes. Felicity said, “It is a request that you collect the information you need before asking me to decorate your suspicion.”
The remark travelled farther through the local party than Felicity intended, mostly because somebody repeated it accurately.
By the end of March, the centre had created a simple intake sheet asking new clients whether accommodation was connected to employment, whether deductions appeared under multiple company names and whether deposits had been itemised. Graham credited Felicity with inventing it. She objected that the clients had invented it by repeatedly experiencing the same problem. Graham said forms generally required somebody with a pen. Felicity replied that lawyers had spent centuries mistaking transcription for authorship.
On the Friday after Teresa’s payment finally cleared, Felicity left work later than planned with a folder under one arm and a headache beginning behind her left eye. London had entered one of those damp evenings when every pavement seemed to hold light without reflecting it cleanly. She took the Underground west because Alice had telephoned the centre earlier and said she would be in Kensington for two days before leaving again.
Their mother had suggested dinner, but Felicity had no intention of arriving at the family house still carrying the office inside her head. She arranged instead to meet Alice in a small café near Pembridge Road, somewhere they had both known in different forms since adolescence.
Alice was already there with tea and three pages of manuscript spread beside her cup, though she gathered them into a pile as Felicity sat down. At twenty-four, Alice had already acquired the odd professional rhythm of a person whose work could follow her anywhere because paper did not respect office hours. Felicity put her folder on the chair beside her and said, “If you tell me you’re writing in cafés because the atmosphere helps, I’m leaving.”
Alice smiled and answered, “I’m writing in cafés because people bring tea to the table.”
“That is a respectable reason.”
“You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
“Bad day?”
“Long month.”
Alice did not ask immediately for an explanation. She poured more tea from the small pot between them and waited until Felicity had removed her coat and eaten half a piece of toast before saying, “Housing?” Felicity nodded. Alice knew enough about the shape of her sister’s caseload to identify the broad category from the folder thickness alone.
“It started with wages,” Felicity said. “Forty-two pounds.”
Alice’s eyebrows rose. “And now?”
“Nine clients, three businesses, two buildings, several company names, deposits invented faster than I can categorise them, and one landlord who considers documentation a personal attack.”
Alice rested both hands around her cup. “Did you get the forty-two pounds?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“And the deposit.”
“Better.”
Felicity took another bite and said, “You are very easily impressed by litigation.”
“I’m impressed by anybody getting their own money back.”
“That is closer to the point.”
Alice asked what made Felicity notice the wider pattern. Felicity explained the changing company names, the duplicated deductions and the way employment and housing had been tied together so that challenging one threatened the other. Alice listened without turning the account into material, a quality Felicity appreciated because writers could become intolerable when ordinary misery began arranging itself into themes in front of them. When Felicity finished, Alice said, “Dad would have hated the paperwork.” Felicity almost laughed. “Dad would have hated the absence of paperwork. He would have approved enormously of the eventual bundle.”
“He’d also have told you the original sum wasn’t commercially sensible.”
“He did tell me versions of that all through childhood. Not about this case, obviously.”
Alice smiled into her tea. “And Margaret would ask what the administrative cost was.”
“She did.”
“You told Margaret?”
“She rang Mother while I was there Sunday.”
“What did she say?”
“That recovering seventy pounds through legal aid probably cost the public several times seventy pounds.”
Alice gave the ceiling a moment of silent attention. “That is extremely Margaret.”
“I told her predictable non-enforcement costs more because people build businesses around it.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that was a better economic argument.”
Alice laughed, and Felicity finally allowed herself to do the same. The three sisters had become increasingly different adults without ever entirely losing the childhood arrangement underneath them. Margaret converted every problem into systems, incentives and institutional behaviour. Felicity wanted to know who had been harmed and what instrument could compel correction. Alice wanted to know what the experience did inside a person after the meeting ended. They irritated one another partly because each recognised the missing pieces in the others.
Alice asked whether Teresa was all right now. Felicity said she had found another room and was still working, though not at the hotel. “She asked me after the hearing whether that was all,” Felicity added. “I nearly apologised for the size of the result.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because it was what she asked for.”
“Because it was hers.”
Alice nodded and pushed the plate of toast nearer Felicity. “That sounds like you.”
Felicity took another piece and said, “Please don’t make me into a line from one of your books.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You had the expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one where somebody you know says something and you begin mentally stealing it.”
Alice protested that writers did not steal everything. Felicity reminded her of several childhood arguments that had later reappeared suspiciously improved in fiction. Alice claimed transformation constituted artistic labour. Felicity said, “That defence would not survive disclosure.”
The conversation moved away from law after that, which Felicity needed. Alice complained about a script meeting. Felicity reported that their mother was considering replacing the sitting-room curtains and had already acquired three fabric samples that differed only to people prepared to lie. They discussed Margaret’s latest board appointment, a cousin’s wedding, a church committee Felicity had missed twice because court ran late, and whether Joanna would ever allow anybody to remove the unstable stack of books beside her favourite chair. Alice said removing them might kill her. Felicity said the books or Joanna. Alice answered, “Either. Possibly both.” The café thinned around them until chairs were being turned onto tables at the far end.
When they finally left, the rain had stopped but remained everywhere else, caught in gutters, darkened brick and the shining roof of a parked car. Felicity carried her folder beneath one arm. Alice walked beside her toward the station, hands in her coat pockets, asking no further questions about Teresa or Vale.
At the corner where their routes separated, Alice said, “You know what I like about your work?”
Felicity immediately replied, “This sounds dangerous.”
Alice ignored the warning. “People come in because one thing has happened to them. You keep asking questions until you find out what that one thing is attached to.”
Felicity considered the description while a bus passed, throwing reflected light across the wet road. “Sometimes it isn’t attached to anything.”
“Sometimes.”
“And sometimes the one thing is enough.”
“I know.”
Felicity adjusted the folder under her arm. “That part matters.”
Alice nodded. “I know.”
They parted there without ceremony, Alice heading toward the Kensington house and Felicity toward the Underground with work still physically against her side. Inside the folder were copies of receipts for ten pounds, twelve pounds, seventeen pounds fifty, amounts that would never appear impressive in a newspaper. There were notes from interviews conducted in imperfect English, careful English, angry English and the entirely fluent language of someone who had finally realised a charge had been invented. There was Teresa’s original deposit receipt, seventy pounds written in blue ink beneath Vale’s signature. There were nine names whose problems overlapped without becoming interchangeable.
On Monday Felicity would return the folder to the cabinet and open whichever one came next.
She did not need it to be large before it mattered.