The last machine at the end of the row was still running when she arrived at half past eleven, the drum turning with someone else's clothes inside. She took the middle machine — habit, she supposed — and fed her coins in without counting them.
The launderette smelled of warm lint and something faintly sweet she couldn't place. A paper notice taped to the wall said PLEASE COLLECT YOUR ITEMS PROMPTLY and someone had written or else in biro underneath, then a small smiley face.
She sat on the plastic bench and watched her clothes begin to turn. A cardigan she'd had for years. Two mismatched socks. A shirt she'd worn to the interview that hadn't gone the way she'd hoped.
At five past midnight a man came in. He was holding a single pillowcase — white, with a small blue stripe along the border. He looked at the machines, then at her, with the mild panic of someone who hadn't thought as far ahead as he needed to.
"Do you need a coin?" she asked.
He blinked. "I'm not sure one is going to do it."
She dug in her jacket pocket and found three. He took them with both hands, as if they were something more than coins, and thanked her twice.
They didn't speak again. He sat at the far end of the bench and read something on his phone. She watched the drum. The cardigan pressed itself against the glass and fell away, and pressed again.
When her cycle finished she moved everything to a dryer and went to the coin machine on the wall. In her change she found a foreign coin — bronze, small, with a bird she didn't recognise stamped on one side. She turned it over a few times.
The man had gone. The pillowcase was in a machine by itself, turning slowly in the middle of a lot of water and space.
She put the bird coin in her jacket pocket, where the other coins had been. Outside, the street was wet and the buses had stopped. She walked home slowly, not minding the distance. She thought, later, that she hadn't felt that unalone in some time.
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