The Parcel

At the sorting office on the A57, there was a blue parcel bag that came back every Wednesday.

It was not large. A book, maybe. A folded shirt. Something soft enough to take the shape of whatever sat on top of it in the van. The address label had been printed by someone with a dying cartridge, so the letters faded toward the right-hand edge and the postcode looked as if it had been left out in rain.

Maureen kept it under the counter after the third return.

She was not supposed to. Undelivered parcels had a shelf, a form, a process, a grey tub with a cracked corner. There were rules about where things waited. But the blue bag kept finding its way to the top of the pile, and every Wednesday a driver scanned it, frowned at the beep, and said, "This one again."

So Maureen put it under the counter.

The return address was a flat above a dry cleaner's in Eccles. The delivery address was a house near the canal bridge. She knew the house. Everyone on that route knew it. White door, green bin, bay window with the blind always half down. Nobody ever answered.

On the fifth Wednesday, she tried the number written in biro on the back.

The call rang out.

She did not try again. That would have made it a thing.

At half eleven, when the shutters were down and the office had the stale warm smell of cardboard and printer dust, Maureen took the parcel from under the counter and smoothed the label with two fingers. The tape had lifted at one corner. Beneath it was an older label, and beneath that, the ghost of another one. The bag had been used before.

She liked that. Not liked. That was too cheerful a word. She noticed it with a kind of relief.

Outside, the road went on carrying what it carried. Buses with no passengers. Vans with their side panels dented. One blue car slowing at the lights, then moving on. The canal bridge was a mile away, black against the sodium lamps.

Maureen turned the parcel over.

On the bottom, in small handwriting, someone had written:

please send it back if she has gone

The sentence had no full stop. It looked unfinished because it was unfinished, or because whoever wrote it had known better than to pretend a full stop would help.

Maureen read it twice.

Then she put the parcel back under the counter.

The next Wednesday, the driver came in with his scanner and a tray of failed deliveries. He lifted the blue bag from the tray before she said anything.

"This one again," he said.

Maureen held out her hand.

He gave it to her.

Neither of them mentioned the form. Neither of them mentioned the shelf.

She smoothed the label with two fingers.

Outside, the A57 kept its own address.