The till was 50 euros short and only two of us had touched it

At 00:20 on the last Saturday of October, with the terrace chairs already stacked, the till said €1,212.40 and the close-out should have said 1,262.40. Fifty euros missing. One note. Orange, the kind you can spot from across the room.

It was my last shift of the season at the rice place. A six-month contract, May to October, at a restaurant on the Malvarrosa where in August we sent out a hundred-odd paellas a day and in October you can already hear the sea from the bar. I’ve done three summers there. Noa, one: nineteen, first job, studying social care in the mornings, and at weekends she came over from the other side of Valencia with her uniform already on under her hoodie.

Paco, the owner, had told both of us on Monday that in winter he only opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and he only keeps one of us. He’d think about it. I needed that winter money so I wouldn’t have to ask my dad for cash in January, again. Noa needed it for whatever; I never asked.

“You count it or me?” she said.

“You count it. I’ve already done it twice.”

She counted it on the bar, facing me, sorting the notes into piles like at the bank. Twenties, tens, coins in stacks of ten. Six minutes. Same result: 1,212.40.

“Maybe we charged someone twice on card,” she said.

“Then we’d be over, not short.”

“Yeah.”

That night she’d handled the till almost the whole time. I was out on the terrace from ten, with table fourteen, a couple with two kids celebrating a birthday, and then the English lot at the end, and she stayed inside taking payments and making coffees. We both knew that. And we both knew that at half ten she’d gone to the toilet with her apron on and taken a while.

I didn’t think anything of it. OK, that’s a lie: I thought it straight away, and it bothered me so little to think it that I’m still embarrassed.

And in two seconds I had three pieces of evidence. On Friday, on the lunch break, I’d heard her ask Paco for an advance on her wages, and Paco told her end of the month, like everyone. That same week she’d turned up in new black trainers, because hers slipped in the kitchen. And every time I asked her why she crossed half the city to work at a beach restaurant, she changed the subject. Three things that meant nothing, and I built a whole story out of them.

“Do you want me to empty my apron?” she said.

“No, Noa, come on.”

She emptied it anyway. A pen, the order pad, a lighter that wasn’t hers, €23.50 in tip coins and a packet of mint gum. She laid it all out on the bar in a row and stood there looking at me.

I went to the storeroom for the broom, which was the handiest excuse I had, and from the storeroom I texted Paco.

00:41. “Paco, the till doesn’t add up, we’re 50 short. I haven’t touched the till since ten, Noa’s been on it. We’ll count it again.”

I read it before sending and it seemed fair. It was true. Every sentence was true. I hit send, the two ticks came up, and Paco, who’s still awake at that hour, read it right away. He didn’t reply. Just the two blue ticks.

I went back to the bar with the broom. Noa had started counting for the third time.

“You’re going to pin it on me, aren’t you?” she said without looking up from the notes.

“No.”

“It’s just they told me he’s keeping one for winter.”

“Me too.”

“I know. That’s why.”

She counted again. 1,212.40. I asked for the order pad and we went table by table, one to twenty-two, with the card-machine receipt roll stretched across the bar like a party streamer.

“Six. Two set menus and a bottle of white.”

“Card, 61.80,” I’d say, and look for the slip.

Eight paid cash and left three euros. Eleven was two Germans who paid separately and left a two-euro coin extra, which was sitting in its stack on the bar, because Noa had written it down in the pad with an arrow. She wrote everything down. That’s where I saw it, although it took me a moment to understand. Between 22:45 and 23:10 there wasn’t a single card payment. Twenty-five minutes without taking a cent at the busiest time of the evening.

“The card machine,” I said.

“What about it?”

“It froze. I told table fourteen to…”

And I stopped, because I already knew. I got my phone out. The notification had been there since 22:47, buried under fourteen messages from the uni group chat: “You’ve received €50.00 from MARISA G. Reference: rice table 14.” The one with the kids. The machine wouldn’t connect, the mum was in a hurry, and I’d said, “Just Bizum it to me and I’ll put it in the till.” Then the English lot came, and the cake, and the chairs.

The 50 euros had been in my pocket all night.

Noa worked it out from my face, not because I said anything.

“What?”

I showed her the screen. She read the reference. She laughed once, through her nose, more tired than amused.

“Fine. That’s that, then. Put fifty in and let’s go.”

I took a fifty out of my wallet, almost all my tips for the night, and put it in the till. 1,262.40. Right to the cent. She started switching off the dining-room lights, one row at a time, from the kitchen towards the door.

And I stood there with my phone in my hand and the message to Paco up at the top, in blue. “Noa’s been on it.”

For almost a minute I thought about doing nothing. The till added up. Paco wasn’t going to ask about a message that no longer made sense. Noa hadn’t seen it. I could delete it for everyone and leave that grey “This message was deleted” note that says nothing. And in winter he was keeping one.

I didn’t delete it. I texted Paco again.

00:58. “Found it. It was a Bizum from table 14, sent to me when the card machine went down. It’s in the till now. Noa had nothing to do with it, my mistake.”

Blue ticks. This time he answered: “Ok. Lock the shutter properly.”

We pulled the shutter down together, the kind you have to guide with your foot, and waited on the pavement for her brother to pick her up. It was chilly for the first time since May. He’d said he’d be there at 1:04. There were three minutes left and we didn’t talk for any of them. A delivery rider went past on a scooter with the square backpack on. Noa zipped her hoodie all the way up, covering the restaurant’s name.

“I texted Paco,” I said.

“When?”

“Before. From the storeroom. I told him you’d been on the till.”

She didn’t say anything. She held out her open hand and I gave her my phone. She read the first message. Then she scrolled down and read the second. Then she went back up to the first, and I knew exactly which sentence she was reading.

“‘I haven’t touched the till since ten,’” she read out loud. “You remembered what time you went out to the terrace. You didn’t remember a fifty-euro Bizum.”

“Yeah.”

“You remembered me, though.”

She gave me back my phone. Her brother’s car pulled up at 1:06, a white Seat Ibiza with the music on. She got in the front without turning round.

Paco called her on Thursday for the winter weekends. He sent me my final pay by bank transfer on Friday, €412.60, with the reference “Hugo, season. Thanks.” Noa texted me on Saturday, the first time since that night. It was a photo of the till from her first winter Friday, balanced, €846.20, and underneath a single line:

“Counted once.”