Source A: The notebook that would not lie flat

I was given ten minutes and one shelf.

The first notebook sat squarely on the table. Its cream cloth cover was scarcely marked, and the year had been pressed into it in small gold numbers. Inside, the handwriting advanced in calm, evenly spaced lines. Each capital letter stood upright; each full stop seemed firmly planted. It was a notebook that behaved itself.

The second would not even lie flat. Rain had thickened its pages so that they rose around the broken spine like a fan. Brown tide marks spread through the paper, and several corners had been folded, unfolded and folded again. Threads showed where the cover had split. When I lifted it, something dry and grey loosened from the binding and settled on the table.

The choice appeared obvious.

The exhibition was about the night the river entered the town. Visitors would stop for perhaps twenty seconds before moving to the next case. The first notebook was clear, complete and presentable. Its opening sentence seemed ready for a display label: “The river rose with alarming speed.” The account continued in the same controlled manner, describing confusion, courage and eventual relief. It supplied a shape for the night: danger at the beginning, action in the middle, safety at the end.

I turned to the damaged notebook only because I had been asked to examine both.

“11.40 p.m. Mrs Hale refuses to leave without cat.”

The next entry was squeezed beneath it.

“11.52. Water at third stair.”

After that, the writing began to lean. Names appeared without explanation. Some were crossed out and written again. Halfway down one page, the ink stopped and pencil took its place.

“No room. Went back.”

I read those four words twice. The neat notebook had described several journeys through the flooded streets, but it had made them sound inevitable, almost smooth. Here, the blank space after “back” seemed crowded with everything the writer had not had time to record.

The following page had been torn away. On the page after it, only one line remained:

“All six out.”

Until then, I had been standing. I pulled out the chair.

A note inside the cover of the first notebook stated that its account had been copied from memory three months after the flood. That did not make it untrue. Distance had allowed its writer to explain what the rescuers had achieved and why the night continued to matter. Yet its graceful sentences now seemed less like windows and more like glass: clear, carefully fitted and separating me from the weather outside.

The damaged notebook offered no such protection. It jumped from times to names, from practical instructions to details that seemed useless until I imagined the frightened people waiting upstairs: “Tom singing because Elsie frightened.” A muddy thumbprint covered part of the final word.

I tried to close the notebook, but the swollen pages pushed it open again.

The curator returned and asked which one I had chosen. I placed the cream notebook on the shelf, stepped back, and then removed it. I tried the damaged one instead. Its broken cover cast an awkward shadow across the label.

Behind me, the curator cleared his throat.

The shelf was still only one notebook wide.