Room 208

Nina's room was almost empty by the time Leila knocked.

A suitcase stood open on the bed. Anushka's clothes were folded into it with a precision that would last until the first time someone needed the yellow cardigan. Two supermarket bags held food and cleaning things. A box of toys sat beneath the desk. The picture on the wall showed a different hill from the one in Room 214, though it seemed to have been selected by the same person who did not want anyone to recognise a place.

“We got the keys,” Nina said.

Leila smiled. “That's good.”

“It is.”

They both heard the effort it took to say it without qualification.

The Eastbridge flat was small but usable. Nina had visited twice, checked the route to work and arranged a different nursery pattern for Anushka. Some things would cost more. Some would become easier. There would be a kitchen. Nina repeated that last fact with the dazed pleasure of someone describing an extravagance.

Anushka was under the bed.

“What are you doing?” Leila asked.

“Finding the blue one.”

“The blue what?”

“She'll know when she finds it,” Nina said. “This has been the system all morning.”

Toby arrived carrying the cardboard house. He had taken the garden apart so it would travel without losing trees.

“I brought it for her to see,” he told Leila, too quickly.

Anushka crawled out with a blue hair clip. She ignored the clip immediately when she saw the house.

“Is it coming?” she asked.

Toby looked at the model. He had worked on it through most of their time at the hotel. The roof had been replaced twice. The windows had curtains. One wall carried a smudge of yoghurt that had dried before anyone noticed.

“The little bench can,” he said. “And one tree.”

Anushka considered the offer. “Two trees.”

“One big one and one small one.”

“All right.”

They negotiated the choice of trees while Nina taped the toy box shut. Leila helped fold the last clothes. A sock emerged from behind the radiator, followed by a pencil and a receipt Nina had been looking for a week earlier.

“It gives things back once you've stopped needing them,” Nina said of the room.

Leila looked at the empty desk. She had only ever seen Nina downstairs or passing in the corridor. In here, the private effort of their stay became visible: the way toys had been stored in a wash bag, the corner of the cupboard lined with newspaper, a drawing taped to the mirror low enough for Anushka to see it.

“Can I ask you something?” Leila said.

Nina glanced up. “Yes.”

“For my art project. I'm using drawings of the journey and the hotel. Not names or room numbers. Would you mind if one picture showed the breakfast room when we were making the house?”

Nina stopped folding.

“Would Anushka be recognisable?”

“I haven't decided how to draw the people yet. I could leave them out.”

“Then show me before you use it. I don't want someone looking at my daughter and knowing where she's been staying without me choosing that.”

Leila nodded. “That's fair.”

“I don't mind the table. Or the terrible chairs. They can handle publicity.”

Leila laughed, relieved less by permission than by knowing where the edge was.

Downstairs, Mo checked the return of the key cards. Nina had misplaced one and found it inside the pocket of Anushka's raincoat. Mo ticked a box, wished them well and gave Anushka two mints instead of one.

“Because she's leaving?” Toby asked.

“Because I'm feeling reckless.”

Toby accepted a mint too, which made the policy easier to respect.

Nina's brother arrived in a borrowed van. He carried the suitcase while Leila and Toby took lighter bags. Anushka insisted on carrying the two cardboard trees herself. At the vehicle, she became suddenly uncertain.

“Are we sleeping here tonight?” she asked.

“No, love,” Nina said. “At the flat.”

“But my bed's upstairs.”

“There'll be a bed there.”

“Not that one.”

Nina crouched beside her. Leila looked away, giving them the privacy available in a car park.

Moving somewhere better did not stop it being a move. She had known that in theory. Watching Anushka grip the trees, she understood it differently.

When the van was loaded, Nina hugged Mum carefully, mindful of her sore wrist, then hugged Leila. She smelled of laundry powder and the hotel soap.

“Come and see us once the boxes are less aggressive,” she said.

“We will.”

“Actually come. Don't make it one of those nice things people say while a vehicle is waiting.”

Leila promised to message about a day.

Toby stood beside the van. Anushka held up the small bench through the window.

“It goes in my room,” she told him.

“Not near water. The glue isn't for that.”

She nodded gravely. The van moved away, turned past the restaurant and disappeared into the traffic.

Toby watched the empty space for a while.

“Can we go up?” he asked.

“Of course.”

In the lift, he held the cardboard house against his chest. The gaps where the trees had been looked larger than Leila expected.

“You can make more,” she said.

“I know.”

He did not sound comforted, so she stopped trying.

That evening, someone new stood in the breakfast room holding a container and looking at the microwave as though there might be a rule written somewhere they had missed. Leila recognised the expression before the woman asked.

“You can use it after breakfast service,” she said. “Just check with reception if it's busy.”

The woman thanked her. Leila showed her where the cloths were, then went back to the table where Toby had left one of the original paper trees beside her plate.