Two duplicates of a record cannot be made at one sitting, and they cannot be made from the same seat either. I learned that from watching a woman who kept a room, and she never told me so much as a sentence about it; she simply did the thing in front of me twice and let me notice.
You copy once with the book open and the ink wet, which is quick and honest and leaves your own hand all over the page. Then you copy again, a day later, from the duplicate and not from the ledger, sitting somewhere else entirely, and that is the copy that will stand up if anybody ever asks you which of them is true.
I did the second on the third morning, at the long counter in the passage, with the door open and Nessa six feet away and the yard going about its business.
"Ask it," she said, without looking up.
