The Part She Could See

Leila returned to the Junction Lodge on a Friday afternoon with a spoon in her bag.

It had been packed accidentally with the cutlery, a plain metal teaspoon with a small dent near the handle. Mum said they could return it next time they were nearby. Leila decided she was nearby enough.

The bus from the gallery took her through part of the old route. She recognised the delivery doors, the school field, the garage with the blue door. Some details had changed. A sign had been repainted. The broken trolley shelter panel had been replaced. A hedge she drew bare now held enough leaves to hide the window behind it.

The drawings had kept one version of the journey. The road had continued without consulting them.

Mo was at reception, arguing politely with a printer.

“It's refusing,” he told her when she came in.

“On what grounds?”

“None it cares to explain.”

She put the spoon on the counter. He looked at it, then at her.

“Recovered property?”

“Accidental theft.”

“A serious case. I'll alert the relevant department.”

He put the spoon beside the mug on his desk and asked about the flat. Leila told him about the stairs, the desk and the first argument. He seemed more interested in the argument than in a description that made the move sound perfect.

“Normal service resuming,” he said.

“Something like that.”

She did not go upstairs. Room 214 might already belong to another family. Even if it was empty, she had no reason to ask it to hold her version of the past.

A boy waited beside his mother at the other end of reception, rolling a small suitcase back and forth over the same strip of carpet. His mother was reading a sheet of information. Leila recognised the concentration required to understand rules while also wondering where to put everything you had brought.

The boy looked at the mint bowl.

“Can I?” he asked his mother.

Before she could answer, Mo said, “One. Within reason.”

Leila smiled. She did not tell the boy that she had stayed there or that things would work out. She did not know his situation, and he had asked only about a mint.

She said goodbye to Mo and walked back to the stop. The restaurant fan started as she passed. For an instant, the sound brought back the whole room: the curtain, the green television light, Mum trying to move quietly, Toby's foot outside the blanket. She felt the memory without needing to stay inside it.

At Bellbridge, the nineteen steps were becoming ordinary. She could carry a bag up them without counting. The woman in the yard, whose name was Mrs Fenner, asked whether the exhibition pictures were still on display anywhere. Mum had told her about them while discussing the washing line. Leila said they were mostly in her room now.

“You'll make more,” Mrs Fenner said, not as a question.

“I think so.”

Upstairs, Mum was at work and Toby was with Callum. The flat was empty. Leila put the kettle on, then decided she wanted cold water instead and turned it off before it boiled. Being able to make an unnecessary change of mind in a kitchen of her own felt like a small luxury she hoped she would eventually stop noticing so intensely.

She went to her room. The thyme had grown enough to brush the edge of the new plant Esme brought. The brass handle lay on the desk, keeping a stack of loose drawings from curling. The exhibition panels leaned against the wall beside a page of questions about the future.

There were still things she did not know. Which course would be right. How the money would work. Whether she and Micah would manage the autumn timetables as well as they hoped. How long it would take Mum to stop checking the clock as though a few red numbers could measure her worth.

Not knowing had not prevented the desk from fitting beneath the window.

Leila opened the little notebook Dad had given her years ago. For the places you haven't drawn yet, he had written. She turned past the old door, the wardrobe in the garage, the chair beneath the plum tree. There were fewer blank pages now, but enough.

Outside, Mrs Fenner shook out a sheet before hanging it on the line. The cloth lifted, caught the air and fell into a shape Leila could not have invented accurately from memory.

She began drawing before it settled.