Changing the Programme

When Mila woke, the sunshine had already moved off the windowsill. For a moment she wondered if she was late. Then she saw her bag on the floor, the cardboard template sticking out above the zip.

From the kitchen came the clink of a spoon against a bowl.

Grandma was at her little dining table with yoghurt and a slice of bread. She still had her thick socks on.

‘What time is it?’ Mila asked.

‘Nearly twelve.’

Mila sat opposite her. The sight of the bread made her hungry. Grandma pushed the bag towards her and picked up her phone. Eva had asked whether they were awake yet. There was a message from Ilyas too: the table in the storeroom was available. They could come and measure it later.

‘What table?’ Mila asked.

‘The little wooden one they put the Nativity scene on. I asked him yesterday if anyone still used it.’

Mila only remembered the Nativity scene, from a photograph in the hall. A sheep had been standing beside a fire engine.

‘Will it fit here?’

‘That's what we'll find out.’

After they'd eaten, Grandma fetched the tape measure from the kitchen drawer. Mila held its end against the skirting board beside the window. Grandma moved a box full of used packing paper. The carpet underneath was a little lighter.

They measured the space, the distance from the radiator and how far Grandma would need to push her chair back. Mila wrote the measurements on an envelope. Then they laid two narrow strips of cardboard on the floor. One kept slipping back under the chair.

‘Your feet need to get through there too,’ Grandma said.

Mila sat down and stood up again. Her heel had dragged the second strip out of place. She moved it a little further from the door.

Grandma nodded. ‘There. If the table fits inside that, I'd like to try it.’

At the community hall, Aron was already working with the fisherman. He'd shifted the mouth slightly on his hand so the puppet could look surprised very slowly. Mila left the envelope on an ordinary chair.

‘I need to say something to the group first,’ she said.

Aron lowered the fisherman. ‘Me too.’

The woman with the diary came in, still wearing her cycling helmet. She was in a hurry, as she had been on Monday. The sound man wasn't there; Ilyas had already phoned him. The woman who sewed the curtains pushed a bag of coloured fabric under her chair.

Mila stood beside the low stage. At home, she'd worked out what to say. Now her first sentence seemed far too long.

‘There won't be any real rooms tonight,’ she said.

The woman with the diary took off her helmet.

‘But they were there on Tuesday?’

‘Yes. I changed some of the threads yesterday. I wasn't supposed to. We've put the cloth right again, but the kitchen it held is gone.’

For a moment nobody spoke. Behind her, Aron tapped his knee with the fisherman's wooden hand, then stopped at once.

‘Then that has to come off the notice,’ the woman said.

Mila nodded. ‘I made it sound much bigger than it was going to be, too.’

Aron came to stand beside her. ‘We rehearsed a whole scene on Wednesday. I want to do that tonight.’

‘I'd like to see it first,’ the woman said.

Ilyas slid the painted window into its supports. ‘That's what we're here for.’

The ordinary version got off to a muddled start. Mila put the rain tin on the wrong side. Aron pointed to where it belonged and began his lines without waiting for her. She missed the first gust of wind. Ilyas raised the octopus above the edge, then let him sink out of sight again.

‘Again,’ he said. ‘From the door.’

The second time, Mila watched Aron's hand. When the fisherman poked his nose outside the window, the rain began. When he turned away, the tin fell quiet. She only had to follow him.

At the change of scene, Mila put down the rain tin and the newspaper. She held the cardboard window while the curtain-sewing woman released both clamps. Half a turn brought the yellow back and the red letterbox to the front. The woman clamped the window in place again. Aron set the fisherman on the dry side. He had a paper sandwich on a little stick.

‘Just in case,’ he grumbled.

Mila laughed. Aron glanced over his sleeve. This time he laughed back.

Afterwards, the woman crossed two lines off her sheet. She wrote something new and read it aloud: ‘The Fisherman Looks for a Home. A puppet show with rain, peculiar neighbours and a flower garden.’

‘And an octopus,’ Ilyas said.

‘He's one of the peculiar neighbours.’

She photographed the altered sheet and sent it to the people who looked after the announcements. The notice by the door needed replacing too. Mila went with her to the noticeboard. She pulled the old announcement out from under the drawing pins and put it in the paper recycling. Then she hung the new one straight.

In the storeroom, the little table stood between two stacked stools. Grandma and Ilyas carried it into the side room. A pale round mark showed on its top, but the legs didn't wobble.

Mila held the tape measure. With its short side against the wall, the top would stick out further than the strip of cardboard at home. She checked the envelope. There was more space beside the window than in front of it.

‘I'll put the long side against the wall, then,’ Grandma said. She sat at it for a moment, resting her hands on the wood. ‘My sewing box can go underneath. And the daylight will come from the left.’

‘Take it tomorrow if you like,’ Ilyas said. ‘It's only gathering dust here.’

Grandma asked about its height. They measured that too. Then she phoned Eva to ask whether she could bring the car and help on Saturday. Mila didn't draw the old table beside the new one. She simply wrote the new measurements on the envelope, below the first lot.

Then it was time to rehearse again. Aron had decided that, instead of complaining about the rain in the conservatory scene, the fisherman would try ordering the cloud away. Could Mila make a tiny puff of wind with the newspaper, just as his hand went up?

‘What if I don't see it?’ she asked.

‘Then I'll say it again. He won't mind. He's pretty bossy.’

Mila picked up the newspaper. The first cloud stayed exactly where it was. On the second try, she blew so gently that Aron had to ask whether the wind was still in bed.

Grandma came to watch, a sandwich in her hand. She stayed at the back, by the door. Mila saw that she was laughing before the octopus even appeared.