She was folding someone else's forgotten sock when the machine behind her stopped.

It was half past ten in a launderette on a side street, the kind of place that keeps the lights on for anyone who needs them. Three machines were running, but only she was there. The fluorescent strip above the change machine had been flickering since she arrived, and she'd stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing a dripping tap.

The sock was grey, crew-length, with a small hole worn through the heel. She folded it anyway and placed it on the lost-property shelf — a plank above the radiator, holding a child's glove, a belt, and a paperback with its cover torn off. She felt, obscurely, that someone would come back for it.

When her machine finished, she began pulling things out, shaking each piece before folding it. Near the bottom, stuck to the drum's inner wall by a scrap of damp, was a note on a receipt. Someone had written on the back in blue biro: Tuesday's socks. Don't forget the fabric softener next time. Love.

No name. No recipient.

She sat down on the plastic bench and read it again. She wasn't sure what she was looking for — whether it was a reminder to self or the beginning of something written to someone else and abandoned. The handwriting was the kind that leans slightly left, as if it had grown up shy.

The fluorescent strip steadied for a moment, held, then began again.

She finished loading her bag. At the door, she paused. From her jacket pocket she found a pen — the lid chewed, but working — and tore a strip from the receipt still in her back pocket. She wrote: Everything came out fine. Good luck with the softener. She folded it and left it on the plank beside the paperback, the belt, the single glove.

Outside, the street was wet and very quiet. She thought, later, that she should have added something else, though she couldn't think what.

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