The Grey Suitcase

On her first Monday at the Lost Property Office, Noor learned three rules. Rule one: write everything down. Rule two: never open a bag unless it gives you a reason. Rule three, which Mr Okafor repeated twice, was the most important: be kind, because nobody loses something they don’t care about.

Mr Okafor had worked behind the counter at Marlow Station for forty-one years. He had a grey moustache, a green cardigan and a habit of answering questions with another question. In the first three hours, Noor handed back two umbrellas, a child’s scarf and a pair of reading glasses that someone had left on the train from Leeds.

At eleven o’clock, a woman in a long green coat came to the counter with a small grey suitcase. It was old, with a brass lock and no label. “Please keep this safe,” she said quietly. She refused to give her name, and before Noor could ask anything else, she had disappeared into the crowd.

“Don’t put it on the shelf,” Mr Okafor said as soon as he saw it. “Give it to me.” He carried the suitcase to the old safe at the back, turned the key twice and stood there for a moment, as if he were saying goodbye to someone.

Noor was curious, so during her lunch break she opened the big ledger where every item was recorded. She turned the pages backwards: 2017, 2009, 1998. Each time, the same entry appeared, in different handwriting: “Grey suitcase, brass lock, no label. Left by a woman. Collected within the week by E. Marsh.”

Noor closed the ledger slowly. Three times in twenty-eight years, the same suitcase had come back, and every time somebody had collected it. “Who is E. Marsh?” she asked. Mr Okafor didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Rule number two,” he said. “Never open a bag.” “I didn’t open a bag,” Noor said. “I opened the ledger.” He turned a page, and for the first time that day, he almost smiled.