Sold, Subject to Collection

Mum put the sofa online on Sunday morning.

She photographed it in Janice's garage with the sheet pulled away and the cushions arranged more hopefully than they usually sat. The description said used, comfortable, marks as shown. Leila thought comfortable was generous. The sofa had a hollow in the middle that made two people lean together whether they liked one another or not.

Within an hour, three strangers had asked whether it was still available, one had offered half the price and someone called SilverFox72 wanted to know the exact height of the back.

“Why?” Toby asked.

“Maybe a low doorway,” Mum said.

“Maybe he's very short.”

“Possibly. I'm not asking.”

They were at Janice's because her brother needed to begin clearing the space he had mentioned. The deadline had moved closer in a way that felt unfair despite time having behaved normally. Mum had decided to sell the sofa, the narrow chest of drawers and the old dining chairs. The beds, table and wardrobe would stay for now, rearranged to fit the back of the garage.

Leila stood beside the chest of drawers. One drawer stuck unless lifted at the corner. The top had a pale ring from a glass she had left there during the hottest week of the previous summer. She had spent years disliking the chest because it was old and mismatched. Now she resented a stranger being allowed to decide whether it was worth twenty pounds.

“Could we keep that one?” she asked.

Mum looked up from her phone.

“We've talked about it.”

“I know. I'm asking again.”

“Leila.”

“It would fit in the small room.”

“We haven't seen the small room.”

There was the argument, waiting exactly where they had left it.

Janice came in carrying bin bags for items they were donating. She took one look at their faces and set the bags down quietly.

“Tea in ten minutes,” she said. “Whether or not anyone deserves it.”

Leila opened the top drawer. Inside were a loose button, a paperclip and a photograph of Esme pulling a face beside a badly decorated birthday cake. She took the photograph and closed the drawer too hard.

Mum put down the phone.

“I'm not selling it because your things don't matter.”

“I didn't say that.”

“No. You're behaving as though I have to prove I know they matter before I'm allowed to make a practical decision.”

Leila looked at her. Mum rarely said something that direct unless she had been carrying it for a while.

“We can't pay for storage indefinitely,” she continued. “We can't keep Janice's garage indefinitely. And I can't choose only things nobody feels anything about, because we'd keep everything except the broken airer.”

“I know.”

“Then help me decide. Don't make me be the person who doesn't care so that you can be the person who does.”

The words hurt because Leila recognised the arrangement as soon as Mum named it.

She sat on the edge of the sofa. It sagged beneath her exactly as it always had. On the underside of the nearest cushion, a small brown stain remained from hot chocolate Toby had spilled years ago. Mum had turned the cushion over and declared the problem temporarily solved. Temporary, in that instance, had lasted four years.

“I don't want to start again with everything different,” Leila said.

Mum sat at the other end. The hollow pulled them a little closer.

“Neither do I.”

They remained there while Janice moved boxes near the door and Toby searched for a game he remembered owning but could not name.

“What do you most want to keep?” Mum asked.

“The table. My desk. The wardrobe, I think.”

“Your desk is staying. The table too. We can keep the wardrobe if it comes apart properly.”

“And the shelf Toby keeps carrying around.”

“That shelf now has greater protection than any other item we own.”

Leila smiled weakly.

“What do you want?” she asked Mum.

Mum looked around the garage as though the question required more thought than it should.

“The mixing bowl,” she said. “The heavy one. My good pan. The lamp from the sitting room.”

“Not the sofa?”

“My back has had a long disagreement with this sofa.”

Leila laughed. The laughter let something settle, though not everything.

They spent the next hour sorting one box at a time. Leila found clothes she genuinely did not want, books she could let go and a packet of dried-out pens she had moved from house to garage with complete seriousness. Toby discovered the game, which turned out to be missing its board. He still wanted to keep the pieces because he could invent another game.

Mum allowed it after making him choose a smaller box.

SilverFox72 arrived at two. She was a woman in her fifties driving a van with a dog asleep in the passenger seat. The low doorway theory was correct. She inspected the sofa, sat on it and pronounced the hollow comfortable.

“My husband likes a firm cushion,” she said. “He can have his own chair.”

She paid the agreed amount without bargaining. Janice's brother helped carry the sofa out. Leila stood aside, holding the front door of the garage, and watched the familiar shape become awkward again in someone else's hands.

After it was gone, the space looked enormous for about three seconds. Then they moved the wardrobe into it, and it became storage once more.

The woman buying the chest of drawers came later with her teenage son. He wanted to repaint it dark blue. Leila almost told him not to, then remembered how often she had wished she could do exactly that.

“The top drawer sticks,” she said. “Lift this corner first.”

He tried it, nodded and thanked her.

When they left, Mum handed Leila the old brass handle from the bottom drawer. It had been replaced years ago after coming loose and was still in the drawer of spare things.

“You don't have to keep it,” Mum said.

Leila turned it over in her palm. It was not the chest. It did not need to be.

She put it in her bag beside the photograph of Esme.

That evening, she drew the chest from memory and then drew the empty rectangle it had left against Janice's wall. For the first time, she did not make the empty space darker than the thing that had gone.