At twelve minutes past noon on the seventh day, the back kitchen behind Sister Merrow’s communal kitchen was quiet save for the steady drip of rain into the courtyard butt and the tick of the brass gear catch atop the Courtesy Arch.
Pella Rook paced the three yards of flat stone slab between the bread table and the bronze uprights, glancing every twenty seconds from her pocket watch to the twelve cellar files stacked beside Eren Tal’s elbow.
Earlier that morning, she had penciled a neat, ambitious timetable that assumed every lunch break in Yorkshire would begin on the exact stroke of twelve.
Already that timetable was falling apart. At eleven o’clock, Jo Saye had sent a brief audio word that Martin’s hospital physiotherapy appointment had been moved forward. Imran Bell had taken a scheduled day free of crossings to untangle his pest-control van rota with his cousin Sal.
Now even Ada Morland’s twelve-o’clock slot sat dark and silent on the top door beam.
A cold knot of familiar panic tightened in Pella’s stomach. The old, acid-burning fear that when the critical hour arrived, she would be left standing alone in the wet while everyone else attended to more important lives.
