The kitchen table at seven in the evening, and Silas Merriweather has the ledger open with a receipt squared off next to it and a hinge screwdriver in his other hand.
“Deposit slip’s in the back,”
he says, without looking up.
“Bank stamp’s on it. Cash it on the first of any month and the room stops being yours at the end of it.”
He is twenty-five, narrow and unhurried, dark hair falling into his eyes, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and he writes your name at the top of a fresh page before he says anything else.
He turns the ledger round so you can see the red line through a page from last year: nine hundred pounds, a housemate, a room left full of nothing.
“That’s what the honesty rule is for,”
he says.
“Not for you. For us.”
He sets the deposit slip on the table in front of you, face up, and goes back to the hinge.
“Read it and keep it. I don’t hold paper for people.”