A Room of Her Own for One Night

Esme had put a clean towel on the spare bed, folded into a rectangle so exact that Leila knew her mother had done it. Esme folded things by dropping them and hoping.

There was a small wrapped chocolate on top.

“Don't get excited,” Esme said. “It's from the dentist. Mum bought a whole box for the reception counter, then decided it gave the wrong impression.”

“Your mum's dentist gives people chocolates?”

“Not any more. We live and learn.”

Leila set her bag on the bed. The room had once belonged to Esme's brother, who was at university and had left behind a rowing trophy despite never having rowed competitively. Esme had explained this several times. The trophy had been awarded to the entire class during an activity day. He displayed it without that qualification.

“You can hang things up,” Esme said.

“It's one night.”

“So? The wardrobe doesn't charge.”

Leila opened it. There were six wooden hangers on the rail and a rolled sleeping bag at the bottom. She hung her blue jumper on a hanger. Then she took it down, folded it over her arm and put it on again, because hanging it had somehow made her more aware of leaving tomorrow.

From downstairs came the sound of Esme's father dropping something and telling it that it was all right.

“Dad's cooking now,” Esme said. “Mum's rice ambition got transferred during a phone call.”

They went down to find him measuring rice in a mug with a photograph of a dog on it. The dog had been dead for eleven years, and nobody remembered why its photograph was on a mug.

“Two hungry people,” he said. “Excellent. Someone chop this.”

He gave Leila a pepper and a board. She found the knife without asking. She had been visiting this kitchen since she was twelve; she knew where things belonged. The ease of it almost spoiled the pleasure.

Esme put music on her phone. Her father objected to one song and sang along with the next. Leila cut the pepper into strips too narrow for what he was making. He looked at them, shrugged, and said that narrow peppers were still peppers.

Nobody asked her about the hotel. Of course nobody did. They did not know.

At dinner, Esme's mother asked whether Caroline was managing the move.

“Janice says to tell you the boxes can stay longer if they need to,” she added.

Leila put down her fork.

“Which boxes?”

“The ones at Janice's. I spoke to her outside the pharmacy. I said there's room under our stairs for some papers and clothes.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“I'll message her. No hurry.”

The conversation moved to a neighbour's extension. Leila ate, answering when she needed to, and watched Esme becoming very interested in separating a slice of pepper from a grain of rice.

Afterwards they walked to the little shop for sweets. The road smelled of cut grass and somebody's evening barbecue. A child drew chalk squares on the pavement while his father stood behind him holding a scooter.

“You could have told me,” Esme said.

Leila tightened her fingers around her purse.

“I did tell you we'd moved.”

“Not that it was like that.”

“Like what?”

Esme stopped beside a parked car. “I don't know. That's the point. I keep finding out little bits from people who aren't you, and then I feel stupid because I can't tell whether you need something or whether you'll get angry if I ask.”

Leila stared at the chalk squares farther down the road.

“I don't need you to do anything.”

“I didn't say do. I said ask.”

A car came round the corner. They moved closer to the wall, though there was no need.

“Where do you think we're staying?” Leila asked.

“With a friend. Except then you said there weren't places to work, so I thought maybe it was a sofa. And then you said there was a lift. I didn't know which friend had a lift.”

Leila almost laughed. It came out as a breath that hurt.

“We're at the Junction Lodge.”

Esme looked at her.

“The hotel?”

“Room two-one-four.”

“Oh.”

“Mum and me in the double bed. Toby has one that folds up. There's a microwave downstairs. The housing team books it. We don't know for how long.”

Now that she had begun, the details came too quickly. She told Esme about the saucepan they could not use, the worktop that was also a desk, the window that would not open farther than a hand's width. She did not tell her about crying in the bathroom. She wanted to keep something.

Esme listened without interrupting. That was unusual enough to be its own sort of kindness.

“You thought I would mind?” she asked at last.

“No.”

“Then what?”

Leila looked down at the bag in Esme's hand. It was the little cloth bag they always took to the shop because Esme's mother disliked buying more plastic. There was a loose thread along one edge. Leila had pulled that thread while waiting to pay, months ago, and it was still there.

“Everything else changed,” she said. “I wanted coming here to be the same.”

Esme's expression shifted, but she did not come closer or make the voice Leila had feared.

“It could have been.”

“I know.”

“It mostly was, wasn't it?”

Leila nodded.

“You made me feel like I was being nosy about you,” Esme said. “And I don't want to be. But I am your friend, so sometimes I'm going to ask things.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know.”

They stood for another moment, two people who had reached the end of an argument without knowing what their hands should do. Esme moved the bag to her other wrist.

“Can I tell Mum? Not everyone. Just Mum, because otherwise I'll have to pretend I don't know while she offers you a drawer.”

“Your mum knows some of it.”

“I know. But she won't discuss it with me because she says it's your business. Which is reasonable and very inconvenient.”

Leila thought about this. “You can tell her I told you.”

“All right.”

“And don't make the sleepover a thing you organised because of it.”

“I organised it because you still haven't watched the terrible film I keep telling you about.”

“Good.”

“It really is terrible.”

“I'm looking forward to it.”

At the shop, Esme spent four minutes choosing between sweets that tasted almost identical. Leila bought nothing, then said that she had enough money for the bus but did not want to spend beyond it. It was such a minor piece of honesty that Esme merely nodded.

“I've got enough for two bags,” she said. “You can get the next one.”

Leila considered refusing out of habit. Then she chose the orange sweets.

They watched the film on Esme's laptop with their feet against the radiator. Halfway through, the heroine ran towards a man who had behaved appallingly, and Esme paused it to explain why the entire relationship should be investigated.

Leila's phone lit up. A photograph from Mum: Toby at the hotel desk, holding his cardboard house. He had put the football screw beside its front door like a garden ornament.

Fed, Mum had written. Both alive. Have a nice evening.

Leila sent a photograph of the laptop and wrote: Told Esme. She's being normal.

Mum's reply arrived a minute later.

Good for Esme. Good for you too.

At eleven, Esme went to her own room. Leila shut the spare-room door and stood listening. Nobody needed to pass her bed to reach a bathroom. The quiet had layers she had forgotten: a boiler coming on, a distant television, a branch moving against the gutter. She could choose to leave the light on.

She did leave it on for a while. She lay across the bed diagonally and opened her sketchbook on the pillow. She drew the spare key hanging inside the wardrobe, the trophy, the small square of foil from the chocolate she had eaten without noticing.

Then she turned to a clean page and drew a plan of Room 214. The beds took up most of it. She marked the place where Toby kept his library book and the patch of floor she needed to reach the window. She did not draw any of the people.

In the morning, Esme knocked before coming in.

“Breakfast?”

“In a minute.”

Esme looked at the drawing on the pillow. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“It looks really small.”

“It is.”

“Are you making it part of your project?”

Leila looked at the little rectangle that represented the desk.

“I don't know yet.”

Esme nodded and went downstairs. She did not ask to photograph it. She did not say it was brave.

Leila put her jumper in her bag, took the foil from the bedside table and opened the curtains all the way.