It was a question for Monday.

The email began "Whenever you have a moment", which my brain translated as "Before you finish breakfast". It was Sunday. I had a moment. Several, in fact, arranged around toast.

A colleague wanted a figure from a spreadsheet we had discussed on Friday. I knew roughly where it was. Finding it would take five minutes, unless it took longer, which was how most of my five-minute jobs expressed themselves.

I put down the knife and reached for the laptop on the shelf. Then I read the message again. The figure was for a meeting on Tuesday. Nothing in it asked for a Sunday reply. I was not on call, and our team had agreed that weekend messages could wait.

I was answering a question nobody had asked.

I still wanted to send something. A quick "I will look tomorrow" seemed harmless. It might have been. But I knew my own sequence: acknowledgement, opening the file to check one detail, noticing a discrepancy, sitting down properly because the toast was now cold anyway.

My sister arrived while I was considering this. She had brought a bag of oranges and wanted the jam. I told her about the email. She asked when the meeting was. I said Tuesday. She asked whether I could pass the jam on Sunday.

I left the message unread in the work inbox so I could find it at the start of the next day. I put the phone on the shelf and returned the laptop to the exact place from which I had nearly taken it. This was not an impressive distance. It was far enough.

On Monday I checked the file.

The figure was where I thought it was. There was also a comment from Friday that changed which total my colleague needed. I was glad I had opened the document during work, when I could ask the person who had added it.

I sent the answer and mentioned that I had picked up the message that morning. My colleague said she had sent it while she remembered, before taking her children out. She had not expected me to be there.

We later made our team's timing clearer in the messages themselves. "For Tuesday, no weekend reply needed" was a useful line. So was scheduling a message when that made more sense. The arrangement needed to be shared, because my private interpretation of "a moment" had proved unreliable.

The following Sunday I finished breakfast before checking anything. My sister did not visit, but she had left half the oranges. I had plenty to do with a knife.