MargenI worked eleven years in the lost property office at the station. People came looking for umbrellas, wallets, glasses, the odd ring dropped between the rails. I had a method: every object, a tag; every tag, a date. Whatever went unclaimed for ninety days was given away. Nothing was kept for ever. That was the rule, and rules were what held me up.
One November afternoon an elderly woman came in, in a coat too big for her, as if she had inherited it from someone taller. She came up to the counter and did not say umbrella, or wallet, or suitcase.
"I've come to look for my son," she said. "I lost him here, on platform three, in 1981. He was six. I let go of his hand for a second."
I had spent eleven years giving bad news in a soft voice: it hasn't turned up, perhaps tomorrow, I'm sorry. I opened my mouth to say that this was not that sort of office, that I only kept things, objects, things that fit on a shelf.
But I looked at her and I couldn't. I asked her what he was like. She described him with a fierce precision: the red jumper, the missing tooth, the way he dragged his feet. She talked for ten minutes. I was writing it down on a tag, without noticing, as if that boy could be filed away too.
When she had finished, I handed her the tag. I don't know why I did it. She read it, folded it carefully, put it away in the pocket of the enormous coat.
"Thank you," she said. "Nobody had ever let me describe him whole. At home no one says his name any more."
She left. She never came back. I retired last year and they closed the office. The day before, I emptied the shelves, gave away what was left, kept the rule to the very end. I took only one thing with me: a blank tag, with no date, in case someone ever comes back looking for what fits on no shelf at all.