The Person Not on the List

At nine fourteen, the evacuation marshal announced that everyone was out.

Nina looked at the building’s thirty-two dark windows and counted again.

“Forty-seven,” she said.

“Forty-seven signed in.” Martin tapped his clipboard. “Four minutes, twelve seconds. Best time this year.”

Across the car park, employees were already collecting coats from one another. Someone asked whether the café would give them a discount for the inconvenience.

Nina watched a curtain move on the second floor.

“Who’s upstairs?”

“The windows are open.”

“One curtain moved.”

“It’s a drill, Nina.”

She had been the receptionist for eleven days. Martin had been facilities manager for nineteen years. His clipboard contained coloured tabs and a tiny pencil attached with string.

She tried the name anyway.

“Agnes?”

Martin checked his list.

“No Agnes.”

“The cleaner. Grey backpack. She brings her own mug.”

“Night staff finish at eight.”

“She was still here when I arrived.”

Martin looked towards the entrance. Above it, the alarm light continued to flash.

“Did you see her go upstairs?”

“No.”

“Then we don’t know that she’s inside.”

Nina thought of Agnes leaning on the reception counter, rubbing a red mark where her bag strap had been.

“My bus was early,” she had said. “I’m going to sit down before I go.”

Nina had pointed her towards the little staff room. Then a courier had arrived, and the telephone had rung, and Agnes had disappeared from her thoughts.

“She might be in the staff room,” Nina said.

Martin’s pencil stopped.

“That’s not on the route.”

“Whose route?”

He lifted his radio.

The employees nearest them went quiet.

“Control, possible unaccounted person. Second-floor staff room. Name Agnes. Please stop the exercise and check.”

A voice crackled back. Martin repeated himself.

Nina could feel people looking at her. The café conversation had ended. A director checked his watch with a movement large enough to be seen from several feet away.

Nobody spoke for nearly a minute.

Then the radio answered.

“Located. Awake and well. Escorting her down.”

Martin lowered the clipboard.

Agnes emerged holding her grey backpack against her chest. A security officer walked beside her. She looked more irritated than frightened.

“I heard a bell,” she said. “I thought it was somebody’s telephone.”

Nina took the bag when Agnes offered it.

“Are you all right?”

“I was, until everyone started asking.”

A few people laughed. The director put away his watch.

Later, Martin came to reception with the drill report.

Beside “All persons accounted for,” he had written 9:18.

The space for a completion time remained blank.

“You can put four minutes twelve,” Nina said. “That was everyone on the list.”

“No.”

He turned the page towards her. At the bottom was a new question: Who may be in the building but absent from the register?

“I’ve put contractors and visitors,” he said. “Who else?”

Nina looked through the glass doors. Agnes was at the bus stop, eating something from a paper bag.

“People whose shift has finished.”

Martin wrote it down.

The next morning, Nina checked the staff room. On the table sat a blue mug and a note in large, uneven capitals.

AGNES. STILL HERE.