I wore gardening gloves because they were the only ones I owned. I told myself they were for the rotten frame. A splinter was easier to think about than what I had come to do.
The house belonged to Bernard and Hetty. They were the last people on the row who hadn't accepted the relocation offer. My extra payment depended on every house being vacant by the same date. The developer called it a coordination allowance. It was enough to pay the deposit on the flat I wanted, the one with a lift and a window that faced nothing scheduled for demolition.
Bernard took Hetty to a weekly appointment. I had helped him carry her chair down the back step when the removable ramp broke. That was how I knew the latch was loose, and which afternoon the house would be empty.
I did not go inside. I broke the latch, pushed the window open and disturbed the pots beneath it. Anyone would have recognized an attempted break-in. The security consultant had already told Bernard that an occupied house surrounded by vacant properties was vulnerable. I wanted the sentence to become something he could see.
Their car returned while I was lifting the last pot.
I crouched in the passage between the houses. The glove caught on the broken frame, leaving a strip of green rubber behind. I heard Bernard open the passenger door, then the familiar clatter of the chair coming from the boot. Hetty asked whether he had remembered to stop for bread.
I stayed in the passage until they went inside. A spider moved over the toe of my shoe. It took everything I had not to shift my foot.
At six, Bernard knocked on my door.
He held the strip of glove between finger and thumb. I had taken the gloves off and left them beside the kitchen sink. From the doorstep he could see one lying with its fingers upward, the tear clear along the side.
"Bad afternoon," he said.
"What happened?"
He looked past me at the sink. Then he folded the strip into his palm.
"We're going. In the morning. My sister's made up her downstairs room."
I said I was sorry. I heard how quickly the words came out.
"Could you help?" he asked.
I agreed before he named what he needed.
The next morning I arrived with packing tape, imagining boxes. Bernard opened the door and asked me to come upstairs. Hetty sat on the edge of the bed wearing her coat over her nightdress. She had not slept. Every noise had sounded like someone trying the window again.
"She won't go back to bed," Bernard said.
There were dark marks beneath his eyes too. I remembered the relieved way I had slept after he told me they were leaving. I had looked up the flat again before turning out the light, checking whether it was still available.
We carried Hetty down on a sturdy chair. Bernard took the upper end; I walked backward below her feet, watching each stair so I would not stumble. She apologized for being heavy. She was not heavy. She was frightened of the angle and kept asking us to stop where there was nowhere to stop.
At the bottom she gripped my wrist until Bernard brought her own chair.
"Thank you," she said.
I had expected to be able to hate Bernard for arranging this, for making me feel it in my arms. He looked too tired for arrangements. He needed help carrying his wife and I was next door.
We loaded the clothes, the medication bag, the box of photographs. Bernard left the kettle because his sister had one. Hetty asked for the little radio she kept by the bed. I went upstairs for it and saw the disturbed patch on the pillow where she had sat through the night.
When everything was in the car, Bernard locked the house and gave me the key.
"You'll see the people from the company," he said. "Tell them where to send the papers."
The green strip lay on the kitchen table. He had not taken it. I saw it through the window as I went back to my own house, then looked at the key in my hand. I could retrieve it whenever I chose.
He had left their replacement ramp on my doorstep. It was only three weeks old, made for a step the same height as mine. A note said someone else might find it useful if I didn't.
The sale completed a month later. The extra payment arrived as promised. When I cleared the house for handover, I paid a man to remove the ramp because it would not fit in my flat's storage space. He asked whether I wanted to keep the note attached to it, and I told him it could go with everything else.
