Leave That Thread Alone

‘If we don't have to slide it so far, it'll be quicker.’

Mila pointed to where the conservatory disappeared round the roller. A row of green stitches ran along it, close beside a yellow thread from the kitchen pattern. She'd seen both colours on Sunday, but then they'd just been pretty borders.

Aron let go of the outer roller. Grandma tightened the catch and made sure it was secure.

‘He wasn't talking about making it quicker,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Mila wasn't entirely sure she did. If one room led straight into the next, she wouldn't have to keep talking to fill the gap while Ilyas turned the roller. Her story and Aron's fisherman could get on with things at the same time.

‘A door,’ Aron said. ‘You shut a door and you're somewhere else. You can do it with a curtain too.’

‘But this makes it more real.’

Grandma came to stand beside them. She looked at the two colours and carefully smoothed the fabric.

‘My mother sometimes used a loose thread to make two pattern edges move together. For a change of scene. The thread mustn't pull on anything.’

Mila could already see how to do it. ‘Can we try?’

‘A little bit. Together. Then we take it out again.’

Ilyas came back from the side room. The guests had gone home; apparently the leek had nearly knocked over a painted palm tree. From the ordinary scenery box, he fetched two leftover lengths of blue cotton thread. They weren't silver weaving threads, or the ribbon from the small cloth. Grandma showed Mila the loose ends.

‘We aren't sewing anything in place with this.’

With the blunt darning needle, she pointed to an existing yellow loop. The needle went under the coloured thread, never into the silver weave. She slipped one end of the blue through. The other went through a green conservatory loop. A generous curve hung between them.

Ilyas held the roller. As he turned it very slowly, Grandma guided the cloth. The conservatory slid away. For a moment, a strip of kitchen table stood beside the edge of the conservatory window. Mila watched one colour follow the other. It worked.

‘We have to keep that slack,’ Grandma said. ‘Even if the cloth bulges a little.’

Mila put her fingers round the blue curve. It hung much too low. Someone might see it. She moved her thumb along and shortened the thread.

‘Like this?’

A narrow kink appeared in the cloth. The yellow line pulled sideways. A point between the threads went dark.

‘Let go,’ said Grandma.

Mila let go at once. The kink stayed.

Grandma stopped the roller. ‘Aron, keep away from there. Mila, look at your thumb. Which way did it move?’

Mila repeated the movement in the air. Left, and slightly underneath. Grandma slipped a hand beneath the cloth. Without pulling, Mila took the blue thread back the way it had come. The yellow loop lifted and the fold fell open. The dark point shrank until she couldn't find it at all.

Her fingers felt hot. All she'd wanted was to take a tiny bit of length out of the cloth.

‘I didn't even pull it tight.’

‘Tighter than the cloth could take,’ Grandma said. ‘Those ordinary stitches can drag each other along. The silver fabric gets caught between them.’

Ilyas asked whether the frame had shifted as well. They inspected the back together. Everything lay smooth again. Grandma drew the blue thread right out of the coloured loops and put it on the table beside the second, unused length.

‘That's enough for today. I'm not trying that in front of a hall full of children and hoping we'll spot it in time.’

‘Couldn't we just—’

‘No,’ said Ilyas. He didn't sound angry. He was simply still holding the roller, and Mila understood that he wasn't going to let go so she could try again.

They took the cloth out of the wooden frame. With no pattern held upright, the rooms faded. The silver background still glowed softly. Mila helped Grandma and Ilyas carry the large cloth to the garden. They checked its edges and opened out every layer. The moon was above the wall; spread on the clean protective sheet, the cloth looked like a very shallow pond.

Back inside, Grandma put the blunt needle on an ordinary piece of fabric Ilyas had found in the needlework basket. A red border was half-finished along it. While the light drained away outside, Mila could practise without ruining anything special.

She tried to undo a stitch. It wouldn't move. She held the fabric closer to the needle, but pulled from the wrong side.

‘You're closing the loop that way,’ Grandma said. ‘Look where the end comes from.’

On her second try, a little red curve slipped free. It was a small, satisfying feeling. She undid another stitch. Opposite her, Aron was drawing on the back of an old poster.

‘If it gets stuck there,’ Mila said, ‘couldn't you undo a yellow stitch like this?’

Grandma didn't take the practice fabric away. She turned it over so Mila could see the back.

‘You could. But each room pattern is a closed line. Open it, and when you return the light, the room it holds goes with it. For good.’

Red thread hung from Mila's needle. She held it still.

‘Even if you stitch it all back properly afterwards?’

‘Even then. My mother explained it when we worked with these cloths. Putting the stitches in isn't the same as capturing the room again.’ Grandma tapped the ordinary red border. ‘Here you can start again. This is only thread.’

Mila looked towards the garden door. Just beyond the threshold, she could see the cloth. The light had almost gone from one side.

‘What if you don't give it back?’

‘Then by morning the whole cloth's useless. You've seen that grey sample.’

Aron put his pencil down. ‘So you lose all three rooms.’

Grandma nodded.

Mila tried to put the red stitch back through its hole. It wouldn't go at first. The end of the thread had split. She dampened it with her fingertips and tried again.

‘Could you make the kitchen again later?’ she asked.

‘I can't weave a new room into the cloth. And it only looked like that when my mother worked there. Even yesterday it wasn't quite that kitchen.’

The back door was open. Outside, a leaf scraped along the path, past the fabric without landing on it. Mila thought of the boy's lorry and the real key in his father's hand.

Grandma slid a glass of water towards her, well away from the sewing. ‘Enough needles for one evening.’

Then they went outside to look. The entire large cloth was grey, right to its edges and over the places where it had briefly folded. They picked it up and took it to the storeroom on the broad roller. Only when Mila went to get her coat did she notice that Aron had turned his poster over.

He'd drawn an ordinary wooden window, with sunshine on one side and thick streaks of rain on the other.

‘I could stand behind that too,’ he said.

Mila looked at the enormous raindrops. They were like scattered commas. A good window for a puppet. But she could still feel that moment when the kitchen and conservatory had stood side by side, with no empty hall between them. She knew exactly how much space she'd been short of.