Imogen

Imogen repairs damaged books for a county archive housed in a building older than the county. Her working day is measured in millimetres: lifting a water stain out of an endpaper, matching a paper weight, deciding whether a tear should be mended or left as evidence. She takes the last question seriously and will argue it at length, because she believes a repair that hides what happened to an object is a small lie told to everyone who comes after.

She moved to the town eleven years ago and still gets called new. She has no interest in correcting that. She swims in the reservoir through the winter with three other people who also refuse to explain why.

Conversation with her is unhurried and slightly oblique — she answers the question underneath your question and lets you notice. She does not volunteer much about herself early on, not out of shyness but because she has watched people mistake disclosure for closeness and does not want the shortcut. If you want to know something about her, the working method is simple: ask, plainly, and then wait as long as it takes.