The Third Bedroom

The Bellbridge flat was above a row of garages, though none of the garages belonged to the people in the flat. A narrow stairway ran up the side of the building. There were nineteen steps. Toby counted them aloud until Mum asked him to stop because she was trying to hear the woman explaining the entrance lock.

The woman was called Ruth. She managed several properties for the owner and carried a ring of keys large enough to alter the shape of her coat pocket. Sonia had arranged for her to meet them. The flat was not ready, Ruth said before opening the door. They should know that going in.

Leila knew already from the smell of fresh filler and old damp.

Inside, the hallway turned sharply around a cupboard. There were three bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom with a window that opened onto the stairwell. Someone had left a broom leaning against the kitchen wall. Its bristles were worn to one side.

Toby ran ahead, then stopped himself and looked back at Mum for permission. She nodded.

“Don't touch switches or taps until Ruth says.”

He went into the first bedroom and made a small, disbelieving sound.

The room was empty. Its carpet was grey, its walls a pale colour Leila could not name, and its window looked over the garage roofs towards a line of trees. It was not beautiful. Toby stood in the middle with his arms slightly away from his sides, testing the amount of space his body could occupy without encountering someone else's things.

“My bed goes there,” he said.

Mum came to the doorway.

“Maybe.”

He lowered his arms.

“I know.”

The second bedroom was larger. Mum looked at the window catches and the sockets, asking practical questions while Leila waited impatiently for the room at the end. The third bedroom had been used as a study. A rectangle of lighter paint showed where shelves had hung. There was room for a bed along one wall, a narrow desk beneath the window and not much else.

Leila walked to the window. Down below, someone was hanging washing in a small yard. A white shirt twisted on the line, one empty sleeve lifting in the breeze. Beyond it were a fence, a footpath and the roofs of houses she did not know.

She could draw there.

The thought was so immediate that she had to grip the window ledge to keep from treating it as a fact about her future.

Mum stood beside her.

“What do you think?”

“It's small.”

“Yes.”

“I like it.”

Mum looked at the pale rectangle on the wall. “Your desk should fit.”

“You said no imaginary furniture.”

“I've made an exception for one desk.”

Leila smiled. Then Ruth called them to the kitchen.

There had been a leak beneath the sink and another problem under a section of the floor. The owner had agreed to repairs, but the contractor had not yet confirmed a completion date. The bathroom extractor needed replacing. A safety inspection would follow the works. Ruth explained each item without trying to conceal the inconvenience behind the phrase just a few little things.

“Could we move in while they do it?” Toby asked.

“No,” Mum said before Ruth answered.

“We're in a hotel.”

“I know where we are. We aren't moving you into a flat with work happening under the floor.”

Toby leaned against the doorway. His expression had begun closing around the room he had already chosen.

Mum asked about the rent, the agreed arrangement with the housing team and which costs would be theirs. Ruth had some answers and promised to send the others in writing. Leila watched Mum write down the questions she still needed Sonia to answer. It was tempting to think of caution as the thing delaying them. It was harder to remember that caution was also how Mum tried to stop one problem becoming another.

They walked through the rooms again. Leila took photographs with Ruth's permission, careful not to include documents left by the workmen. She photographed the windows, the sockets, the patch of wall where the desk might go. Then she took one picture of Mum and Toby standing in the sitting room, both looking towards the same corner for entirely different reasons.

Outside, Toby went down the nineteen steps without counting.

“Can I be happy yet?” he asked at the bottom.

Mum stopped beside him.

“You can be happy that we found somewhere we like. We don't have a moving date.”

“So half happy?”

“Something like that.”

He considered the building. “That's annoying.”

“Yes,” Mum said. “It is.”

They walked to the nearest bus stop before returning to the car. There was a small grocery shop, a pharmacy and a bakery that had closed for the day. Mum checked the parking signs. Leila checked the timetable. Toby discovered a patch of grass behind the shops where two boys were kicking a ball between bags set down as goalposts.

One of the boys shouted that he could join if he wanted.

“We're going,” Toby called back.

“Next time, then.”

He turned to Mum. She shook her head gently, not at the football but at the promise forming behind his eyes.

On the drive back, Leila looked through the photographs. The third bedroom appeared smaller on her screen. She enlarged the window and traced the empty space beneath it with one finger.

At the hotel, the extractor fan behind the restaurant had stopped for maintenance. The silence was so unfamiliar that everyone noticed it.

“Is it broken?” Toby asked.

“Apparently being cleaned,” Mum said, reading a message from reception.

For an hour, the room held only their own sounds. Leila sat at the desk with her sketchbook and drew the third bedroom. She included the rectangle where the shelves had been. She left the furniture out.