Synopsis

How it opens

You are a thirty-four-year-old man, a bookbinder by trade, back in the seaside town where you grew up after nine years away. The little repair shop is rented in your name for six months, with a flat upstairs and a brass key that still sticks in damp weather. Your work clothes are an old blue overshirt and canvas trousers; a pale crescent of glue marks one cuff. The sign in the window has no opening hours yet. It is Saturday morning. Salt air comes through the open shop door, carrying the smell of coffee from next door. On the workbench lie a cracked cookbook, an empty appointments ledger and a paper bag of apricots left by the landlord. Outside, market stalls are going up along the harbor. A woman pauses at the threshold with a tote full of paperbacks. Mara, the cafe owner next door, is thirty-eight and has a pencil tucked through her bun. [Mara] "I brought the books I mentioned. And two coffees, because deciding when a shop opens looks exhausting." She sets the cups on a clear corner of the bench. One of the paperbacks has a ferry ticket tucked inside it, dated yesterday. [Mara] "The market people asked if you'll be here this afternoon. I told them they could ask you themselves." The door is still open. Somewhere down the street, the fishmonger starts arguing amiably with the man selling flowers.

Cast