Her calves have gone numb. Half past eight to now, standing in parcel glue's smell.
Export is on the post-office palace's third floor, between parcels and quiet-boxes. The lift takes parcels.
She has brought the good folder. Elastic still tight. Mother's license. Four years of receipts. Death certificate, two stamps. Job offer. Tenancy. Ticket. Two windows have sent her here.
"You want to take her with you."
"I want to take her with me."
"The license doesn't travel. The recording does."
He turns the screen. Export duty on the retained portion: twice her flight and more. Beneath it, a signature declaring this has been explained. He does not ask for hers. Two windows along, someone signs.
"And if I pay?"
"A file that plays. No host abroad. No answering. No presence. People buy it. Usually play it once."
"If I don't?"
"The license lapses at the end of the paid month. The estate keeps the recordings for the statutory period. The standard version is preserved."
"What's the standard version?"
"What she was assessed to be. The rest has the price on it."
"I'll keep paying from there."
He answers correctly and at no charge: "Foreign premises can't be registered."
He opens the paperback tucked behind the receipts. 1984. Her mother has argued in the margins.
The parcel clerk leans through from the next window. “That's personal material.”
“It's a used book.”
“Has it been assessed?”
The export man puts it beside her ticket. His screen offers PERSONAL RECORDINGS. He closes the box. It opens again. He turns the screen away.
“Keep it in your hand,” he says.
An appeal takes eight months and has a fee. In eleven years he has seen none succeed.
On the landing she lets go of the folder. Her hands take time to let go of its shape. Below the counting-house lane, the boats cross. Her mother crossed in April. Paid. Stamped. Done.
At the glass-roofed arcade she buys a tin she has passed for years. Another city painted on it. Cream buildings, blue harbor. Almost free. At home it takes the license's place on the shelf.
On the last Thursday she pays at the hall. Cash warm from her coat. A month she will spend abroad.
"Receipt?"
"Yes."
She puts it where a passport would go. At the airport's final call her calves give. She holds the rail until they take her again. On the belt the folder is dark at the front pocket. A thumb-sized patch.
Her aunt has tied a red thread inside her coat. "So nothing follows you." She unties it while she waits. She takes it to the trash can, then puts it in her pocket.
From the dawn flight: two hills. A channel. A hook of lights. On the far hill a crane swings loose in the wind. Below, a hall of cabinets hums forty notes to a row. One runs until the month she paid for runs out.
Cloud fills the window.
In the tin, wrapped in a sock, her mother's glasses case travels free. The hinge is stiff. It was stiff for her mother too.