The Grey Suitcase

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

Mr Brooks 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, Jess handed back two umbrellas, a child’s scarf and a pair of reading glasses. Someone had left the glasses 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 Jess could ask anything else, she had disappeared into the crowd.

“Don’t put it on the shelf,” Mr Brooks 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. Jess thought he looked like someone saying goodbye.

Jess 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.”

Jess 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 Brooks didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Rule number two,” he said. “Never open a bag.” “I didn’t open a bag,” Jess said. “I opened the ledger.” He turned a page, and for the first time that day, he almost smiled.