The unstitched corner

An original literary non-fiction-style account of preparing an embroidered gift for a school caretaker.

Our plan was to embroider a small picture of the school entrance for the caretaker's retirement. I drew every window, every step and the tall gate he had opened before most of us arrived each morning. The other volunteers admired the drawing. When we began stitching, however, the building quickly became more important than the person we meant to thank.

We argued about the colour of a drainpipe. We counted bricks on a photograph. I spent an evening correcting the angle of the noticeboard. In the corner of the cloth, where we had intended to put our names, there was still an empty rectangle. I suggested filling it with another window so that the picture would look balanced.

Then a former pupil visited. She had brought no design advice. Instead, she asked whether we remembered the caretaker keeping her broken umbrella in his cupboard until she could collect it. Someone else recalled the spare socks he had found after a wet sports afternoon. These were small memories, told while we searched for a missing needle. None appeared in the carefully counted bricks.

For the next meeting, I brought a piece of paper rather than a revised photograph. I asked everyone to write down one thing they remembered him doing. The answers did not all fit my idea of a suitable thank-you: one person remembered being told off for leaving a bicycle against a fire door. But she also remembered him waiting until she had moved it before explaining why it mattered.

I left the corner of the cloth unstitched. We would place a folded sheet of memories behind it, in a small fabric pocket. The picture would still show the entrance. It would no longer be the only thing we gave him.

Explain why the narrator decides to keep the corner unstitched and add the written memories.