The radio station kept two seconds of silence between the end of a song and the hourly news. It was long enough for a breath and short enough that listeners thought the broadcast had simply changed.
Nandi had produced the midnight slot for six months. She knew the silence as a small square on the screen, a gap she could stretch or close with one key. Lately, each time it arrived, she heard a kettle switch off.
She told herself it was the studio heating. She listened through headphones, then without them. The kettle sound remained: a click, a short hiss, the room after boiling water.
On Thursday, the gap opened. The click came first. Then a woman's voice, calm and close: “You left it on.”
Nandi pulled the fader down. The newsreader's microphone was still live; he looked over at her through the glass. She pointed to the monitor. He shook his head.
The broadcast continued. No caller had come through. No track sat in the queue. The silence closed on time.
She searched the studio for a source. There was no kettle, only a flask with cold tea at the bottom. Her hands were steady when she poured it away. She had not noticed how long she had been gripping the mug.
At home, she found the kitchen tap running. She had left it that way before work, she thought. The sink was dry. The plug lay beside it.
The next night she removed the two-second gap. The news followed the song without a breath between them. At 00:00, the newsreader began the first headline. Behind his voice, faint but unmistakable, a kettle clicked off.
Nandi lowered the volume. In the pause after the headline, her own voice said, “I heard you.”
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