The Found Goods Warehouse at East Station only woke up after the windows had closed. The neon sign "ACCEPT 7-15" still pulsed in the glass, as if he couldn't believe the day was over. Trolley tracks glittered on the concrete floor, the air smelled of dust, damp and other people's stories that no one had picked up. Lena walked in, closed the grille and switched on the overhead fluorescent lights. Light poured into the shelves: rows of umbrellas like dried birds, boxes of keys that would never open the right door again, suitcases with their locks tightened and mirrors turned to the wall so as not to disturb passers-by with their reflections. - 'Well, finally,' sighed the thermos on the second rack, stretching the lid like a neck. - I've been waiting since Thursday for someone to listen to me. - 'Alphabetical order,' he reminded dryly the dictionary standing next to him, which, after years of lying around, had become accustomed to the order and dictates of the table of contents. Lena nodded, although she did not look at them directly. Over time, she had learned that talking to things was akin to working in a reading room: whoever spoke in whispers often had the most to say. The notes in her notebook were in tiny handwriting, with margins: "Thermos, steel, red, talks about cold hands, doesn't like winter". "Dictionary, no first pages, pedantic, hates tea stains". Across the room a paper rustled. A new delivery was waiting to be unpacked: cardboard boxes tied with tape, plastic bags with tags, and in the middle of them - something that didn't fit in with the rest. A wooden box. Not fresh, not antique, just the kind you transport halfway around the world without asking for customs. The wood was the colour of dark honey, the corners wrought with copper, a handprint on the lid, as if someone had once sat down to rest. The tag was gone. - 'No number,' she said in a half-hearted voice, already feeling the grip of the procedure tighten at the back of her head. - They don't accept without a number. - I've been sent - an old train ticket protruding quietly from a crumpled wallet. - Just somewhere else. - Don't mess it up,' burbled the umbrella, tapping the tip against the floor. - Anyone who stands without a tag starts saying things they think are important. Lena crouched down by the crate. There was a gentle chill from inside, as if there was a different climate inside; it smelled of salt water and something like linen drying in the wind. She glided her fingers along the fitting. Under her thumb she felt a gouged letter - no, not a letter, but a notch resembling a lost sign. - 'Don't open it,' whispered a chair with too thin legs. - You won't be able to close it. - 'Open it,' snorted a metal paint can from the shelf above her, still riddled with lumps of the past. - The air inside needs to breathe. Lena raised her gaze. The nocturnal voices in the warehouse usually had a tone of ordinariness: complaints about the temperature, unfulfilled purpose, minor compliments and remarks about the lighting. Now, however, they spoke in short sentences, without casual digressions. It was as if each of them stood at the door. - 'Write it down,' asked the typewriter in the corner quietly. - 'Start with the date. 12 November. - It's July,' Lena reminded without smiling. The machine tapped one letter as if it had coughed. She hung her jacket back on the back of the chair and began to walk around the box. She looked for a mechanism, a hidden spring, something to explain the coldness. Thin cracks shone between the boards, too even for the case. As she moved her ear closer, she heard short, impatient breaths, but it could only be the echo of her own bloodstream. - A key - whirred a bunch of keys from a box marked 'miscellaneous'. - I know which one. She pulled out the box and dumped it carefully on the table. The keys clattered with metal. One of them, a flat one with a tiny tooth on the end, moved by itself and snagged her finger. It wasn't the heaviest or the oldest, yet for a moment she felt like she was holding a piece of cold sunshine. - How do you know it fits? - she asked. - Because I remember what it opened - he replied. - It was a very long time ago and yet it hasn't stopped sticking. The upper fluorescent lights would hum harder, like snow on an old television. The clock on the wall jumped a minute and stopped at 2:07, joined by others one by one: a pocket watch, a dotted alarm clock, an expensive chronometer that had been demanding calibration for a week. The whole room suddenly started breathing evenly, steadily, like a single organism. - 'Leno,' called out someone very close by, in a tone that is remembered in the skin, not in the ears. The voice had a timbre that one notices when touching rusty iron rather than when talking. - Leno, don't leave me here another night. Her heart leapt in such a way that she had to push her hand away from the chest. None of the stuff addressed her by name. No one should know it. Nor a voice that bore a deluded resemblance to a lullaby once sung by someone she remembered as fuzzy as an imprint in soft sand. - Who said that? - she whispered. - 'Me,' too many things answered at once: the buttons that clinked in the tin; the piece of paper with the tram number on it, which trembled in the draught; the old mirror that dared to lift its cold eye to her. - What's inside. The layer of dust on the lid of the box moved like the skin of a goose. Lena slid the key into the lock. There was a palpable resistance and softness, a strange combination, as if she were placing her hand on someone's shoulder rather than the mechanism. - No - the umbrella beeped. - Now - grunted the thermos, which suddenly felt boiling water inside it. - 12 November - tapped the machine, this time in two letters, as if it had blinked twice. The fluorescent light above the desk went out and the neon in the glass finally stopped flashing. All the sounds that usually made up the background - the dripping of the pipe, the rasp of the metre below, the whisper of the draught in the cracks - suddenly withdrew, like a wave just before it hit. Lena reflexively held her breath. The key lay in the lock, waiting. From a neighbouring shelf, the cello that had been silent for months made a single sound, so clear that it pierced the air like a needle. And then something vibrated in the case - not a thud, not a crack in the wood, but a gentle, disturbingly familiar intake of air, as if someone had gathered the strength to tell her the one sentence she wasn't ready for, and the lock under her fingers began to turn on its own, centimetre by centimetre, with a quiet, irreversible click....