The Person Who Needed to Know

The student-support office contained a box of tissues, a bowl of plastic-wrapped biscuits and a chair whose adjustable back had given up at an unhelpful angle. Leila chose the other chair.

Miriam Shah, the support coordinator, noticed without commenting. She turned her monitor slightly away from the door before opening the message from Mum.

“I've read the practical information Caroline sent,” she said. “You don't have to tell me the whole story again.”

Leila had prepared the whole story in sentences stripped of anything that might make her cry. Being told she did not have to use it left her oddly unready.

“All right.”

“First, who here already knows?”

“Esme. Ms Armitage knows we moved, but I didn't say where.”

“Do your tutors know why the journey changed?”

“Not exactly.”

Miriam took out a sheet with a simple timetable printed on it.

“We can agree what they need. Your attendance tutor needs to understand that the new route has a connection. That doesn't require the details of your accommodation. Your art teacher might need to know about storage and workspace. Are you comfortable with me explaining those two things?”

Leila stared at the timetable. “Will it go on something everyone can read?”

“No. I'll record the support we've agreed, and the relevant staff will have the information they need. I won't put a story about your family in a general announcement.”

The question had sounded childish when Leila rehearsed it. Here it was answered as though it were a normal thing to want to know.

“Then yes.”

They went through her week. Miriam marked the free periods when the art room was usually open and the evenings when the library stayed staffed. There was a small lockable storage cupboard available for large work, though Leila would have to share it with two other students.

“Can you get back safely if you stay later?” Miriam asked.

“The bus is hourly after six.”

“Then let's not build a plan around six.”

Leila had expected help to mean a list of things she would have to do differently. Instead, Miriam crossed out the evening option.

“We can also look at travel costs,” she said. “There's an application. I can't approve it sitting here, but I can help you get the right information together. Your mum doesn't need to guess which document we want.”

She printed two pages and wrote her name at the top. Leila began folding them to put in her bag.

“Would you prefer an email copy as well?”

“Yes. Things get moved.”

“All right.”

Near the end, Miriam asked how she was sleeping.

Leila thought of the folding bed and the extractor fan, then of the spare room at Esme's.

“Some nights are fine.”

“That's a useful answer. And the other nights?”

“Not so fine.”

Miriam waited. Leila found herself describing the light under the bathroom door and how she could tell when Mum was awake because her breathing became careful. She stopped after that. It was enough to have said it.

“We can speak again,” Miriam said. “Not because I can fix the hotel room. Because it's a lot to carry into a lesson and pretend you left outside.”

Leila nodded, then looked at the biscuits.

“Can I actually have one of those?”

“Please. They're becoming a display.”

She chose a plain one. At the door, Miriam asked whether she wanted a second for her brother. Leila nearly said Toby was too old to need a biscuit brought home from an office. Then she remembered how pleased he could be by something nobody else had thought to save.

“Thank you,” she said.

In art, Armitage was scraping dried paint from a palette with a tool that looked insufficiently forgiving.

“Miriam's emailed,” she said quietly when Leila came in. “We can keep your folder flat here. You can take smaller pieces back and forth.”

Leila nodded.

“I don't need you to change your project because of this,” Armitage added. “You can draw pineapples for six weeks if that's what you decide.”

“I wasn't going to draw pineapples.”

“I'd be disappointed. You've shown no previous interest in them.”

Leila put the folder on the table. Inside were the doors, the hotel plan and the bus-window drawing. She had placed the plan beneath everything else, but she took it out first.

“I think I want to use the journey.”

Armitage looked at the plan, then at the folded envelope with the fire escape.

“Tell me what you notice on it.”

“The back of things. Everyone makes pictures of the front. The shop signs and the nice bit by the river. But from the bus you see where people get deliveries, and the stairs they use when something goes wrong.”

“Where are you in the pictures?”

“On the bus.”

“Can we see that?”

Leila looked at the window sketch. The faint line at the bottom was meant to be her knee, but it looked more like an accidental mark.

“Not really.”

“You don't have to put yourself in. I'm asking whether that matters to what you're trying to make.”

For the first time in days, Leila wanted a large sheet of paper rather than a way out of the conversation.

She worked through lunch. At half past one, Esme arrived with a sandwich and put it beside her without ceremony.

“You weren't answering.”

“My phone's in the cupboard.”

“That's a terrifying new development.”

Leila moved a pencil so the sandwich would not pick up graphite. Esme leaned over the new drawing. It showed a row of shops reflected in glass, with the inside of the bus beginning to appear over them.

“That looks like the place where my dad bought the terrible sofa.”

“It is.”

“The one with the spring that attacks people?”

“I don't know its personal history.”

Esme sat on the stool opposite. She had a biology folder open but did not take out a pen.

“Are you all right?” Leila asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“You're not insulting the drawing.”

“I'm trying to work up to something constructive.”

Leila smiled and went back to the window frame. Esme stayed until the bell, occasionally reading out a sentence from her notes and asking what it meant. Neither of them could answer.

On the way home, Leila left her large folder at college. She checked the cupboard lock twice, then forced herself to walk away. The bus felt different without the folder balancing against her knees. She could sit properly. She could get off without apologising to three people.

At the hotel, Toby was waiting in the lobby with Mum. His football bag lay between his feet.

“Training,” Mum explained. “Janice is taking him. I'm doing the late visits.”

Leila handed him the wrapped biscuit.

“What's that for?” he asked.

“Existing.”

“Good. I'm good at that.”

He put it in his football bag and then retrieved it because it might get crushed. Mum watched him with a tired smile.

“How was the meeting?” she asked.

Leila took out the two pages. They had not become easier documents simply because someone had printed them kindly. There were still boxes to fill in. But there was a name at the top she could use when something did not make sense.

“She asked who needed to know,” Leila said. “Before she told anyone.”

Mum read the top page.

“That sounds good.”

“It was.”

Janice arrived with her car keys hooked over one finger. Toby went out with her, already eating the biscuit. Mum left for work. Leila went upstairs alone.

For twenty minutes the room belonged to her. She sat at the desk, where there was just enough space now that the folder was gone, and opened the gallery application.

In the address box she wrote Junction Lodge, followed by the road and postcode.

She did not submit it yet. She still needed to answer the questions about working with people. But when she saved it, she left the address where it was.