What happens in the video
“Last box. Let’s go!” A man slides a carton into the back of a van already stacked with deliveries. Beside him, a woman in a rust-colored shirt pauses at a worktable. “Hear that ticking?”
The man gestures toward the load. “We’re delivering by noon.” But the woman stays beside a smaller box on the table. She bends over it and lifts the cardboard flaps while he watches. The footage cuts off before we see what she finds or learn what made the sound.
Continuation:
Inside the carton, tucked between two folded tea towels, was a green kitchen timer shaped like a hen. Its beak pointed straight up. As the woman lifted it out, it gave one furious ring.
Both of them jumped. From the packing table behind them somebody called, “Well, the eggs are done.”
The driver, Leon, started laughing. His colleague Priya was looking at the underside of the hen. A piece of tape across its base read Flat 4, Rose Mercer. The delivery label on the carton read Donation stock.
“Leon, who packed the little boxes?”
They were helping move the contents of a retirement building before repairs began. Residents’ belongings were going to temporary flats. Things they’d chosen to give away were going to a charity shop. Somebody had put Rose’s kitchen box on the wrong table.
They checked the carton. Under the towels were two eggcups, a chipped blue plate and a recipe book fat with loose slips of paper. Leon glanced at his watch. Then he climbed back into the van and pulled down the boxes he’d just loaded.
“Read me the flat numbers,” he said.
They found two more mistakes. A bag intended for the shop contained a wedding album. A box marked for a resident held twelve identical mugs from the common room. Sorting them took eleven minutes. Leon called ahead, explained the delay, and gave the people waiting a time he could actually keep.
Rose was in her new kitchen when they arrived. She showed little interest in the plate or the eggcups. When Priya produced the green hen, though, she took it in both hands.
“My husband wound this every morning,” she said. “Tea brewed for four minutes. If I touched the pot early, I’d hear about it from the other room.”
“Does it still keep good time?” Leon asked.
“Terrible time. Always has. We liked the tea that way.”
She invited them to stay for a cup. This time Leon checked the schedule before answering. Their next delivery was two streets over, and they had a quarter of an hour. He sat on an upturned box while Rose wound the hen.
Four rather generous minutes later, the bell rang. Rose poured three cups, opened the recipe book and took out a photograph she kept inside the cover. Her husband was standing at a stove holding a blackened piece of toast. On the back, in his handwriting, were six words.
Should have set the other hen.
“You had two?” Priya asked.
Rose smiled into her tea. “Somewhere in that van, you’ll find a rooster.”
