What Wouldn’t Fit in the Box

On Saturday morning, a plate with two slices of bread and a screw stood on the little table. Mila looked at the screw.

‘That’s for the chair,’ said Grandma. ‘Not your breakfast.’

Mila sat on the other chair. Outside, someone wheeled a green bin along the pavement. From up here, it sounded like thunder. She had expected to find Grandma in the kitchen with her back to the back door and the kettle on the big table. Instead, Grandma sat opposite her, so close their plates almost touched.

‘Which boxes?’ she asked.

Grandma pushed her glasses up. ‘This one first. Then the long one.’

The first box held coasters, a kitchen timer and seven lids that didn’t fit yesterday’s shallow box. Mila lined them up. Arranged from largest to smallest, they looked as though there was one missing.

‘These must belong with the old table,’ she said.

‘The lids?’

‘The whole box. There’s always stuff in the drawer underneath.’

‘Exactly. That’s why I emptied it.’

Mila put the kitchen timer on the windowsill. The empty corner by the window would take one end of the worktable, she thought. If the other end stuck out in front of the kitchen door a bit, you could still squeeze past.

Grandma followed her gaze.

‘I want a table there where I can sit without banging my knee on a drawer.’

‘You never used to do that.’

‘You sat on the other side.’

Mila turned the smallest lid over. She had heard Grandma complain about her knee, but only when something fell on the floor. Usually, Mila picked it up herself after that.

They moved the chairs to reach the long packing box. Beside it stood something flat and wooden, wrapped in a blanket. Beneath the tape, someone had written FRAME.

‘Is that from the old shed?’ asked Mila.

Grandma pulled the blanket away. Two smooth rollers appeared, joined by wood. There was no glass. Standing upright, it was a little taller than Mila.

‘It belonged to my mother.’

Mila lowered the lid of the box. Inside lay a wide roll of grey cloth in a thin cotton cover, with cardboard caps on its ends. No light.

‘Another cloth like that one?’

‘A much bigger one.’ Grandma opened the cover a little. ‘Hold the roll here. Not the fabric.’

Together, they laid it across two chairs pushed close together. Mila could see the top layer. Ordinary coloured stitches ran across it: yellow, then green further along, and at the far end a red so dark it was almost brown. Beneath them, very fine threads gleamed when she looked from the side.

‘What is it?’

Grandma smoothed a crease out of the cover. ‘There are rooms in it. My mother made them when she was still working at the old house.’

Mila leaned closer. The yellow stitches made a corner, a little square and something that might be a door.

‘A floor plan?’

‘Not quite.’

Mila looked up. Grandma was studying the yellow line, her thumb against the edge of the roll. The way she had looked at the small cloth yesterday, before she knew what Mila had done with it.

‘Can we try it?’

‘We measure first.’

Grandma took a tape measure from the kitchen drawer. So she had found a place for that already. On an old envelope, she wrote two measurements. One metre eighty by two metres forty.

Mila opened the balcony door. She hooked the end of the tape over the threshold and walked towards the railing. A hundred and twenty centimetres. She looked at the envelope.

‘It’ll fit lengthways.’

‘And the other way?’

Mila looked at the space beyond the railing. A man with a shopping bag walked past a whole floor below.

‘No.’

‘Then we don’t let it borrow any light. We must be able to spread it completely flat to give it back. No folding it in half. No hanging it over that railing.’

Mila wound the tape back slowly. A narrow stripe of sunlight lay on the wall beside the balcony. She had wanted to see the light straight away.

Grandma rang Mr Ilyas. She listened, looked at the frame and said it wasn’t about the lamp. Then she handed Mila the envelope.

‘Coat on. We’ll go and have a look first.’

At the community hall, the puppet theatre’s curtain stood open. A note on the broken lamp said the electrician was coming on Monday. Ilyas was sweeping the floor. He leaned the broom against the wall as they came in.

‘No puppets this time,’ he said. ‘I did enough swimming yesterday.’

Grandma told him about the large cloth and showed him its measurements. Mila hoped he would ask to see it at once. Instead, he opened the door to the side room as wide as it would go.

‘We can get through here. Then out into the garden.’

They walked the route together. No narrow stairs. No doors that would only open a crack. Behind the hall was a walled garden, with a row of planters and a wide, straight path between them.

Mila held one end of the tape measure while Ilyas walked backwards until he had measured enough. They checked the envelope. The cloth would fit, with room all round it.

‘We can put a clean groundsheet here,’ said Grandma. ‘And there’s nothing overhead.’

Mila looked up. Just sky.

‘I’ll be here till ten tonight,’ said Ilyas. ‘You can use the side room. If you need longer, tell me before I’ve put the chairs on the tables.’

Grandma looked round the garden again. ‘Could we leave the frame here for now?’

‘There’s room in the storeroom. As long as you don’t bring another sea with you.’

Back at the flat, Mila’s job was to hold the doors open. Grandma and Ilyas carried the wooden frame between them, slowly down the stairs. The wide roll came next, still in its cover. Mila carried the bag with the envelope and tape measure. She kept having to hurry to reach each door ahead of them.

In the side room, they rolled the cover back a little. They never let the cloth touch the bare floor. Grandma showed her how its sides could rest loosely over the smooth rollers. In the middle, a narrow strip stood upright, about as wide as Mila’s bedroom door.

‘So the rest is still part of it,’ said Mila.

‘All of it. One piece.’

Mila pointed to the yellow stitches in the middle. ‘Is that your kitchen?’

Grandma nodded.

‘The real one?’

‘A long time ago.’

Mila stepped towards the cloth. It hung grey and still. Behind her, the cotton cover rustled as Ilyas put it on a shelf. She looked again at the yellow shape of a door. Nothing opened.

They would have to wait until evening.