The Letter (Part 2)
The letter said that the site at Elm Lane had been reviewed and found to be surplus to the council's needs, and that the council intended to sell it to a commercial developer for housing. Consultation would stay open for four weeks. There was a phone number that rang in an office where nobody picked it up.
They met that evening in Declan's kitchen, seven of them, with the letter lying in the middle of the table like something that might go off.
“Four weeks,” the bus driver said. “They've been planning this for a year and we get four weeks.”
The teacher had the letter in her hand. “It says consultation. That means they haven't decided.”
Declan shook his head. “It means they've decided, and they'd like us to be quiet about it.”
Some of them were content to sign something and let it go. Zara understood that. They had all watched the library close, and the swimming pool, and the Thursday market. You learn what a fight costs. She looked around the table and worked out who would still be doing this in three weeks, and the answer was probably four people.
“There's a full council conference on the twenty-eighth,” she said. “Anyone can ask to speak. Five minutes.”
“To say what?” one of the sisters asked.
“To say that this isn't empty land.”
They discussed it until eleven. In the end they agreed on three things: a petition on paper, door to door, because paper is harder to ignore than a website; a letter from the teacher's class with the sunflower measurements attached; and two speakers at the conference.
“Two,” Declan said. “Who's the second one?”
Nobody answered. Zara had already put her hand up for the first, and everyone at that table knew that Declan had not said more than one sentence in public in his life.
He looked at the letter for a long moment. Then he said, “Right. Me.”