The Long Way Round
By late morning the heat had already settled into the town with the confidence of something intending to stay. I’d been halfway through a piece of client work — one of those tidy, self-contained tasks that behaves itself if you don’t disturb it — when Emma rang from the shop to ask a small favour.
There was a reclaimed library ladder waiting at a place on the edge of town. Not heavy, she said. Just long. Too long for a normal car. Would the Land Rover do?
It would, I said, because the canvas top could be removed, and because offering the Land Rover always feels like volunteering something larger than the problem actually requires. I told myself it would take half an hour. Forty minutes at most.
By the time I’d unclipped the canvas and rolled it back, the sun was already high enough to be personal. The metal fittings were warm to the touch. Murphy watched from the shade behind the front gate, unimpressed by the activity and making no move to assist.
When I picked up the ladder, I could only make it fit at a diagonal that was wrong enough to notice and not wrong enough to justify changing. Dark wood, worn smooth, rungs polished into shallow hollows. I padded the corners with an old blanket and tied it down with straps that only reached if persuaded. Even in the open air, the cab quickly began to smell of dust and warm beeswax.
The first delay came almost immediately. Roadworks, unannounced except by a handwritten sign cable-tied to a temporary barrier. The diversion arrow pointed confidently in two different directions. I chose one and was rewarded with a queue of stationary cars and a family unloading paddleboards directly into the flow of traffic.
Half an hour, I’d said. Forty, allowing for summer.
Murphy began panting in earnest.
Progress through town took on that peculiar summer rhythm: short bursts of movement followed by long, inexplicable pauses. People stopped dead to consult maps. Others drifted across junctions as though guided by private rules. A man stood in the road taking photographs of the harbour from an angle that required everyone else to wait.
Someone raised a hand in apology while continuing exactly what they were doing. I nodded back, because that’s what you do.
The ladder crept forward every time I braked. Not much. Enough.
By the time I reached the final approach to the shop, another closure presented itself. This one was total. No through access. No turning space. A laminated notice explained it all very carefully.
I parked where I could, which was near enough to see the shop window but far enough to make the last part unavoidable.
The ladder was lighter than it looked and more awkward than expected. I lifted it out, balanced it against my shoulder, and started the walk. The rungs knocked harder than I wanted them to, catching the bone of my arm. Sweat ran into my eyes almost immediately. I blinked it away, shifted my grip, felt the ladder shift with me.
Murphy stopped abruptly. I had to stop too.
He drank from a dog bowl thoughtfully positioned outside a cafe. I waited, the ladder redistributing its weight with quiet persistence. The sun bounced off the pavement, flattening everything into glare.
When I reached the shop, Emma was mid-conversation with a customer and gave me a grateful look that had to serve as thanks. I leaned the ladder against the tall shelving, where it immediately looked as though it had always been there. A problem resolved. A favour completed.
There was no sense of completion. Just the knowledge that I now had to get back.
Most of the afternoon had been spent moving an object I hadn’t wanted to move.
The return journey was slower. The heat had thickened. The town sounded louder, though nothing had changed. I drove with the canvas still off, the sun directly overhead, and tried not to calculate how much of the day had been used up already.
Back home, I refitted the roof without enthusiasm, and headed indoors with Murphy. The house felt unusually still. Upstairs, the office held the warmth of the afternoon. The document on my screen waited patiently, as if it had been there all along.
It took longer than usual to remember what I’d been doing.