✏️ The Littlest Spy

10. Inquisition

Slowly, their tentative attempts at acting like a couple morphed into a routine. It was a little crowded in the apartment, which was clearly designed for a single person, but it wasn't as hard as Isadora might have expected. The fact that Brock was nearly always awake first, washing dishes from the night before or crushing a forest of empty beer cans and transporting them to the big recycling bins in the yard, meant that mornings were always easy for her. Later in the day, she would try to take responsibility for preparing dinner, if Brock didn't get there first. And sometimes she let him cook, because he seemed to take a quiet pride in preparing something that was both tasty and nutritious.

Today, Isadora had decided to make breakfast. It was a decision she'd made many times before, but this was the first time she had been up in time to actually follow through on the promise to herself. And even as she fired up the stove, she could hear the faintest movement from the lounge to suggest that Brock was awake; whether he had been awake earlier or the faintest trace of her footsteps on the soft carpet had been enough to rouse him. He didn't say anything, though. He must have known that she had something to prove; even if she wasn't quite sure in herself what it was.

She didn't go for the full spread Brock favoured. She hoped that he wouldn't mind too much. And then she grinned a little, realising that she wasn't obligated to make him happy. They could quiz each other about the Kleins' backstories just as easily between bites of scrambled egg on toast. And if her taste for black pepper in the eggs was more than he preferred, then that was too bad for him. It would give Bernard Klein something else to whine to his country club buddies about; the surprise when he learned that his wife's tastes didn't perfectly match his own. That wasn't something for Isadora to feel bad about, and she found herself almost hoping that he would be unimpressed. She wasn't sure why she felt like that. Maybe it was just an irrational feeling of inadequacy creeping over her, after all her effort, that she hadn't actually added anything new to their legends. She could quote dates and places from memory, while Brock barely seemed to be trying, but he was always the one to come up with details that would make so much sense to add.

She had her head down and was studying the papers in front of her when she heard a knock at the door. She quickly rose, automatically checking that she was dressed properly in the hallway mirror, to head off any irrational fears about her reputation. She didn't need to do that now; she already knew that she'd gotten dressed in comfortable-but-casual clothes this morning, and since Brock's arrival she wouldn't even have dared to leave her bedroom without putting on respectable clothes. Still, the habit was so deeply ingrained that she rarely even noticed it.

Standing outside was a middle-aged woman wearing a tweed skirt and blazer, one pearl earring jiggling slightly as her hand brushed it while checking her hair. She had a small selection of envelopes in one hand. It looked like an even mixture of advertisements and letters from the taxman; the two inescapable burdens of independence.

"Good morning, Mrs Jennings," Isadora greeted her. "Have they been putting my mail in your pigeonhole again? It's not like we even have similar names."

"Well, it's that new porter," her neighbour said, and gave an exaggerated frown. "You know what they say about those people. They only make the effort when it's their own kind."

"Uhh... yeah..." Isadora said, accepting the bundle of letters. She hadn't seen the new porter yet, so wasn't sure which particular demographic was to blame for a careless mistake today; and she didn't want to get into a debate about the issue. Her neighbour was relatively pleasant, but she divided the world into a tiny 'us' and a whole variety of 'them's, and while she would never say anything to those people directly, Isadora was eager to avoid a lecture on what the nebulous and ever-changing 'they' had supposedly done.