Three Rooms Don’t Make a House

Before they could spread the large cloth out, Aron swept the whole garden path. One wet leaf stuck to the broom. He tried to shake it off. It shifted a little and stayed there.

Mila picked it off by its stalk.

‘That works too,’ he said.

She dropped it into a planter. Then they helped lay the clean groundsheet flat. Grandma and Ilyas carried the big cloth outside. The three patterned sections lay side by side. There were still no clouds across the moon.

While they waited, Aron set his fish on the bench. He had wedged a scrap of paper between the two halves of the peg to hold its mouth open.

‘Waiting for his dinner,’ said Mila.

‘Asking for a better view.’

Aron turned it towards the wall. The wall said nothing. On their piece of paper, Mila drew three boxes for the rooms, side by side. That was much quicker than drawing the kitchen.

When the cloth held enough light, the adults lifted it again. They slid the yellow section into the middle of the frame. Grandma moved slowly. Mila watched the ordinary stitches shift, with the silver threads beneath. Then the old kitchen appeared.

Aron put one foot through the opening and snatched it back.

‘It’s cold.’

‘A bit,’ said Mila. ‘You get used to it.’

He put his foot inside again, leaving his other shoe on the real floor. He looked from his hands to the table, turned round and stepped back out.

The cardboard fish was still in his hand.

‘So that just comes with me.’

‘You do too,’ said Ilyas.

Aron shrugged, but stayed on the real side a moment longer. Then he walked all the way to the table. He laid the fish on it and pulled one of the borrowed chairs towards him.

‘This could go in front of the curtain.’

Grandma rested a hand on the frame. ‘Try it.’

Aron lifted the chair a little and walked backwards towards the opening. At the edge, the wood grew thin. Mila could see his trousers through it. He took another step and suddenly held nothing at all.

The chair stood in its old place in the kitchen.

Aron looked at his empty hands. ‘We’ll have to fetch our own chair, then.’

Mila took the cardboard fish from the table and brought it out. Its peg still worked exactly as before. She made it snap once beside Aron’s hand.

‘This comes out.’

He nodded, slowly this time.

Then everyone had to leave the kitchen. Grandma slid the cloth over the rollers. The table faded before the yellow line was quite out of the way. For a moment, Mila saw a chair leg with no chair. Then there were only silver threads.

The dark red stitches moved into the middle.

A room appeared with a narrow window and a long shelf along the wall. On it stood wooden spools, a vase with something dark inside and a sewing machine with a large round wheel. A tape measure hung beside the door. It was so straight that at first Mila thought it had been stuck down.

‘The sewing room,’ said Grandma.

‘Upstairs in the house?’

‘Next to the little bedroom. Later, we kept books in there.’

Mila knew that room, but not the shelf or the sewing machine. She thought the window ought to be much bigger. Perhaps it looked smaller because of the dark roll of fabric in front of it.

Aron ran a finger round the wheel. It turned a little way, then dropped back. There was no sewing-machine noise.

‘Can you sew with it?’ he asked.

‘They’re shapes made of light,’ said Grandma. ‘You won’t get any real thread out of it.’

Mila looked at the spot where her pile of comics used to go. Once, she had spent a whole afternoon reading there while Grandma worked downstairs. In this room, there was barely space for one chair.

‘Did your mum sit in here all day?’

‘Sometimes. Evenings too, sometimes.’ Grandma held the edge of the frame. ‘I used to bring her tea. She usually let it go cold.’

Mila looked at the empty space beside the machine. No cup. Nobody would ever come in and put one there.

Aron made a short clicking sound with his tongue.

‘Don’t copy that machine,’ said Grandma. ‘You could hear it from downstairs.’

He stopped. For a moment, Mila thought Grandma was cross. But she was only looking at the window, her mouth slightly crooked.

The green room was brighter.

The conservatory had windows on two sides and a wicker chair with a thick cushion. Three empty pots stood on a low windowsill. Beyond the glass hung a still curtain of raindrops. A large drop clung to a slender twig and never fell.

Aron put his rice tin on the real floor. He went into the room and tapped the glass made of light with his fingernail. There was no sound of rain. He came back, picked up the tin and tilted it very slowly.

Now Mila could hear the rain.

The cardboard fish peered round the chair back and opened its mouth.

‘I’d have liked to know about that sooner,’ said Aron in a voice higher than his own.

‘About what?’ asked Mila.

The fish turned towards the rainy window. ‘You keeping air in here that I can’t swim in.’

Ilyas sat on a real chair beside the opening. He gave one short laugh so he wouldn’t miss the next words.

Mila came closer. ‘Then the fisherman can come in and explain it’s a conservatory.’

Aron turned the fish towards her. ‘Perhaps the fisherman doesn’t know either.’

‘But it’s Grandma’s house.’

‘Not to the fish.’

Mila looked at Grandma. She was sitting in the wicker chair for a moment, her hands loose in her lap.

‘We used to sit here when the kitchen got too hot,’ she said. ‘My mother hardly ever had time.’

‘But you always sat at that big table,’ said Mila.

‘You and I did, often enough.’ Grandma stood up. ‘Everyone who lived in that house did different things.’

Ilyas checked his watch. There was time to take everything calmly out of the frame. By the time they spread the large cloth in the garden again, clouds had covered the moon.

Mila stood still, her fingers holding the groundsheet flat.

‘Will it work now?’

Grandma nodded. ‘You need to see the moon to borrow light. You can give it back like this. Watch.’

The silver glow weakened. There wasn’t a gap in the clouds or a patch of moonlight on the path. Still, the edges emptied, then the rest. Mila walked round the cloth once more, checking for folded corners.

Aron put their drawing of the rooms on the bench. ‘I want to do the rain.’

‘And the kitchen,’ said Mila.

‘That too,’ he said.

The large roll stayed in the community hall’s storeroom that evening. Back at the flat, Mila tied the blue ribbon neatly round the small cloth again and put it, with its label, behind the pillowcases. She slid the stack back in front.

On their drawing, Aron had put a fish beneath the conservatory. Mila added a table beneath the kitchen.