It Fits on Cardboard

One side had torn off the empty moving box beside the cupboard. Mila pulled the large sheet of cardboard from beneath the other pieces and laid it flat on the table. Grandma put a hand round her breakfast bowl.

‘Not in my milk.’

Mila turned the cardboard over. Three little rooms fitted easily side by side. She drew two lines and put a table in the first space. The second got a window, the third a rain cloud.

‘Is that a spider?’ Grandma asked.

‘It's the conservatory.’

‘Those legs need to grow a bit, then.’

Mila lengthened the lines below the cloud. She wasn't as good at drawing as Aron. With his pictures, you knew what something was straight away, even when it was a puppet only half meant to look like a person.

Grandma put her bowl in the sink. ‘I'm going to the shops in a bit. Meet you at the hall at half past ten?’

Mila nodded. First she wanted to try something that couldn't damage any cloth.

She pushed her pencil through the cardboard to make a hole. Through it she threaded a piece of ordinary parcel string. Then she made another hole further along. As she stretched the string between them, the cardboard lifted. The three rooms bent towards each other.

That wasn't what she'd meant.

She pressed the cardboard flat and gave the string more slack. Now a loose length sagged over her drawn table. When she slid the cardboard sideways, the string didn't follow straight away.

Mila wound the loose end once round the other length of string. It sprang back. A second wrap held it better. She added a pencil mark. That was how far the string could move sideways without slipping straight back.

When Grandma returned for her forgotten shopping bag, Mila pushed the cardboard aside to look underneath. She hadn't done anything she wasn't allowed to do. Still, she was glad Grandma only picked up the bag.

At half past ten, Aron was already by the side door. Football boots hung from his rucksack, tied together by their laces. One kept kicking him in the leg.

‘Match this afternoon?’ Mila asked.

‘Training. We've got to get there early. Our keeper's got his wrist in plaster.’

‘Are you going in goal?’

‘Only if they'd rather not have a keeper at all.’

He leant against the wall to shorten the dangling laces. Mila laid her cardboard on the low wall beside him. Its corners curled up. She put her cup on it.

‘This is what happened yesterday. With the blue thread.’

Aron bent over it. ‘Where's the roller?’

Mila drew a circle on each side. She'd forgotten those.

‘And the bit that folded over?’

‘It doesn't have to fold here. Look.’

She pulled very gently on her string. The first space moved towards the second, but the cup held down the bottom edge of the cardboard. It curled again.

Aron lifted the cup. ‘This doesn't work either.’

‘It's only a test.’

‘Yes. That's why I'm telling you.’

She put the cup aside and slid the cardboard along the wall. The two wraps held the end in place. At the far side, the third little room hung slightly crooked.

‘If the thread doesn't slide back, you can put it exactly where you want,’ she said.

Aron took one of his shoelaces and tugged its bow. ‘An extra turn makes this stay put too. Until you want to undo it.’

‘This one comes undone easily.’

It did. On the dry cardboard, the second wrap fell loose at once. Mila threaded the string through the hole again.

Aron looked at the drawn kitchen. ‘I don't want the rain happening at the same time as your story.’

‘It doesn't have to. You can go first. Or afterwards.’

‘Yesterday I was waiting for you to decide you'd finished.’

The door opened. Ilyas was holding a long, flat box at an angle above his shoulder to keep it clear of the handle. Grandma followed with a bag of rolls and two little pots of paint.

‘Help from someone without football boots, please,’ said Ilyas. ‘This edge is still wet.’

Aron took the other end. It wasn't a box, Mila saw now, but a folded piece of scenery standing on its edge. A window had been cut out of the back. Her string trailed over the wall as she followed them in.

Inside, the large cloth was safely rolled up. Mila looked towards it. If she could put the cardboard beside the fabric now, she'd be able to check the distance much better. She didn't need to fasten anything. Only measure it.

Grandma put the bag of paint on the table. ‘The ordinary window first. Then we'll see how the three parts of the show fit together.’

‘Can I borrow the tape measure?’

Grandma passed it over. Mila measured the opening in the wooden frame, not the magical cloth. Then she tried to mark the same width on her cardboard. The cardboard ended too soon.

She turned it diagonally. Now she could just fit the mark beside her rain cloud.

‘You need to make it longer,’ Aron said. He'd put the scenery down and was looking over her shoulder.

‘For a proper template, yes.’

‘So this one's too short.’

‘This one's a drawing.’

He shrugged. ‘All right. But don't use it for the blue thread. You'll get that weird fold again.’

‘I know.’

Mila pushed the tape measure back to Grandma. She made two small pencil crosses on the cardboard where she thought the thread should go. She knew a diagonal measurement wasn't the same as a straight one. But if she could shift the drawing a bit, surely the two points wouldn't have to be further apart?

Aron had gone over to the other table. He was drawing thick lines of rain on a sheet of paper. Mila wanted to show him her idea for sliding things across, but he'd already picked up his tin and the newspaper.

‘Listen to this,’ he said to Ilyas. ‘No talking first.’

He rolled the tin gently and brushed the newspaper along the table edge. Mila could hear a shower coming. Perhaps the sound alone could make you feel you were indoors. She didn't say so. She wound the string round itself once more: one turn, then another. It stayed exactly beside the pencil cross.

Then she slipped the cardboard under her coat. At the end of the afternoon, she'd take it home. It was only her own drawing. Nobody had told her to throw it away.