The Place at Dad's Table

Dad arrived on Sunday in a car Leila had not seen before. He spent the first two minutes explaining that it was not really new, only new to him, which seemed to answer a question nobody had asked.

Toby climbed into the back and pressed the button that moved the window.

“Don't keep doing that,” Dad said.

“I'm testing it.”

“It works.”

“Both ways?”

Leila stood beside the passenger door with their day bag. Mum had packed sandwiches despite Dad saying they would buy something. The sandwiches had led to a small silence at reception, where Mum handed over the bag and Dad said, “I've got money for lunch, Caz.”

“I know,” she replied. “They were already made.”

Now the bag sat at Leila's feet, containing an argument nobody intended to unpack.

They drove to the riverside museum in Westmere because Dad remembered Leila liking it when she was twelve. She did still like it. That made it difficult to object to the fact that he had not asked what she liked now.

“You've got exams coming up?” he said on the bypass.

“Assessments. And the exhibition.”

“That's the art thing.”

“Yes.”

“Good. You always were good at art.”

She looked at the dashboard. “It's on the twenty-seventh.”

“Send me the date.”

“I did.”

“Well, send it again. Things get buried.”

Toby leaned forward between the seats. “I've got my last home match next Saturday.”

“Saturday's tricky.”

“You said you might.”

“I said I'd see.”

Toby sat back. Leila watched the space where his reflection moved in the window. She wanted Dad to notice what she noticed without needing her to point at it.

At the museum he bought tickets before either of them could suggest the free ground-floor rooms. The woman at the desk gave Toby an activity sheet and a pencil too short to be comfortable. He accepted the sheet, looked at the cartoon mouse printed on it and put it in his pocket. At eleven, he was beginning to dislike being invited to behave younger than he felt.

They spent an hour among boat models and old tools. Dad knew things about engines. When Toby asked a question about a turning wheel, he answered it fully, using his hands to show how the parts worked. Toby leaned closer. For a while, nothing was missing from the afternoon.

Leila found a display of sketchbooks used by a surveyor who had drawn the river before the new road was built. There were practical notes beside the pictures: measurements, weather, the names of people who owned certain pieces of land. One page showed a kitchen chair on a riverbank. The surveyor had noted that he borrowed it from a woman named Mrs Vale and returned it before dark.

She liked that better than the perfectly finished painting in the next case.

Dad came up beside her.

“Still drawing everything?”

“Most things.”

“Let's see.”

She hesitated, then handed him the little notebook he had bought her years ago. He recognised the cover immediately.

“You've still got this.”

“It's useful.”

He turned the pages. The wardrobe in Janice's garage. The allotment chair. The empty spare room at Esme's. His expression became careful at the drawing of the hotel beds.

“It's not ideal, is it?” he said.

“No.”

“Your mum keeping on at them?”

Leila took the notebook back.

“She's speaking to Sonia. Yes.”

“You have to keep pushing with these things.”

“She is.”

“I wasn't saying she isn't.”

But something in his tone allowed the room to seem like a problem Mum had failed to manage firmly enough. Leila disliked how quickly she began defending a person who was not there to hear it.

They ate the sandwiches by the river. Dad bought drinks and an unnecessary packet of crisps because the existence of the sandwiches still appeared to trouble him. Toby fed a crumb to a duck, then remembered the sign asking visitors not to feed them and looked personally betrayed by the bird's willingness to participate.

“You could come to mine for a bit,” Dad said.

Leila looked up.

“Both of us?”

“Weekends, certainly. And you, Lei, during the week if you needed somewhere quiet. Sian's daughter is mostly at her dad's at the moment. There's a room.”

“What about school?”

“We'd work something out.”

“How long is the train?”

“I'm not sure exactly.”

“Would you be able to take Toby?”

Dad opened his drink. “That's more complicated. He's got school and football. I work early.”

“So do you have a room or don't you?” Toby asked.

“Yes. I'm saying we'd need to look at the arrangements.”

The offer sat between them, generous in outline and faint around the edges. Leila wanted the room badly enough to begin filling those edges in herself: a train before seven, a bus at the station, somewhere to keep her paper. She imagined Mum and Toby staying behind while she opened a door on her own things.

Then she pictured Toby watching her take the bag.

“It's just something to think about,” Dad said.

She nodded. She did want to think about it. She did not want the thinking to mean what it might mean.

On the walk back to the car, Toby ran ahead to a model lock built into the river path. He operated the little gates while Dad explained them. Leila watched the water fill one chamber and empty into the other. The mechanism was simple enough to understand and still satisfying each time it worked.

“I'm glad you're taking the art seriously,” Dad said when Toby moved out of hearing. “Don't let all this stop you.”

“What do you mean by all this?”

“The accommodation. The stress.”

“I wasn't planning to.”

“I know. You're sensible.”

She was tired of being sensible in conversations where other people could afford to be vague.

“Could you come to the exhibition?” she asked. “Not just see about it. Put it in your calendar now.”

He looked slightly hurt, then took out his phone.

“Tell me the date again.”

She did. He entered it while she watched. The small act should not have felt as important as it did.

Back at the hotel, Mum was in the breakfast room sorting socks into pairs. She had washed them at the laundrette and brought them back slightly damp because the dryer took more coins than she expected.

“Nice day?” she asked.

“Good,” Toby said. “I worked a lock.”

Dad told her about the model and the engine room. He did not mention the spare bedroom. Leila waited for him to do it, then realised he might be waiting for her.

She hated being the passage between them.

“Dad said I could stay with him some weekdays,” she said.

Mum stopped folding a sock.

“Did he?”

“We'd need to work out the travel,” Dad said quickly.

“Yes,” Mum replied. “We would.”

There was no shouting. Leila almost wished there had been. Instead there were polite sentences about timetables, early starts and checking with Sian, each one adding another thing that had not been established before the room was offered.

Dad left after promising to call. Toby went upstairs. Leila remained beside the laundry.

“Would you mind?” she asked.

Mum put two socks together and folded one over the other.

“I would miss you.”

“That isn't what I asked.”

“No. I wouldn't mind you having somewhere quieter. I would mind a plan built out of things nobody has checked, because you're the one who would have to live inside it.”

Leila sat opposite her. The breakfast room was empty except for them. Beyond the glass, someone pushed an overloaded trolley towards a car.

“I liked having my own room at Esme's.”

“Of course you did.”

“It felt like being disloyal.”

Mum looked at her properly then.

“Liking a room isn't a betrayal, Leila.”

She reached across the table and passed her a pile of unmatched socks.

“Help me work out where these came from. I appear to be washing for an additional person with one foot.”

Leila began pairing them. After a while, she told Mum about the borrowed chair in the surveyor's notebook. Mum asked what was interesting about it, and Leila found that she could explain.