The City Archive – Part 2: After Hours
Workplace·EN·1 min read·Published 2026-11-07, updated 2026-11-07·Part 2 of 2
The researcher from Aberdeen left at six, delighted, clutching three pages of notes. The building emptied. Isla and Callum stayed on to shelve the returns, because it needed doing and neither of them wanted to leave.
The basement hummed. A radiator knocked in the corner like a nervous ghost. He stood on the library steps handing down boxes, and she placed them on the shelf, and every time their hands touched on the cardboard her pulse jumped.
"Can I ask you something?" said Callum, coming down the steps.
"Yes."
"Why did you ask where I'd last seen it? The ledger. Everyone else just said I'd lost it."
"Because you're careful," said Isla. "You don't lose things. I knew it was somewhere you meant it to be."
He stood very still. "Nobody has said that to me in years."
"It's true."
"I'm not good at this," he said, with difficulty. "Talking. I'm much better with paper."
"You're doing well."
He took off his gloves, carefully, finger by finger, and set them on the shelf. His hands were bare and ink-stained and not quite steady. "May I kiss you?" he said. "Here, among the maps? I've wanted to since the pheasant."
"Yes," she said. "And if I say stop, you must catalogue the whole of bay six."
"That's a terrible punishment."
"I know."
He kissed her gently, one hand cupping her cheek as if she were something fragile and very old. It was tender, a little clumsy, tasting of tea and peppermint, and she melted into him between the cold shelves while the radiator knocked on, oblivious.
When they parted, both of them were smiling.
"Green?" he asked.
"Green," said Isla. "Very green."
"Tomorrow," said Callum, "I'll bring the good biscuits."
"The ones from 1987?"
"God, no," he said, laughing. "Fresh ones."
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