A Room That Went No Further

When Mila returned that evening, the roll was exactly where they had left it. Ilyas had put a note beside it: NOT FOR SCENERY! He had added an exclamation mark.

‘Who’s that for?’ Mila asked.

‘Me,’ he said. ‘I was looking for something to use as a tablecloth this afternoon.’

Grandma straightened the cover. She checked the edges and ran her fingers along the frame. Then they carried the cloth outside. Ilyas had swept the path and spread out a clean groundsheet. Now the whole cloth lay open between the planters.

Up close, Mila could see just how big it was. The yellow stitches ran along one side, the green across the middle, the dark ones along the other side. She counted three closed shapes, each different from the others.

No light yet.

Grandma set the kitchen timer they had found that morning for twenty minutes. Mila sat on the low bench. The moon stood above the garden wall, paler than the street lamp that had just come on.

‘Does it matter about that lamp?’ she asked.

‘It won’t do anything.’

‘But how will I see when it starts?’

Grandma sat beside her. ‘You’ll see.’

Mila picked a bit of fluff off her sleeve. Ilyas went inside and came back with three empty cups on a tray. He filled them with tap water. They could drink on the bench, well away from the cloth.

At the end of the garden stood a plant with large leaves. One leaf shone. Mila looked back at the cloth. A pale line ran along its edge now, but unlike the shine on the leaf, it stayed where it was when she moved her head.

She put her cup down.

Slowly, the grey weave turned silver. The yellow stitches stayed yellow. They stood out from the surface more than she had thought they did that afternoon.

The timer rang so loudly that Ilyas almost dropped his cup.

‘Not so loud,’ he told it.

Grandma and Ilyas lifted the cloth. Mila took the empty cups to the separate table, then went ahead to open the doors. In the side room, they eased the cloth onto the rollers, with the yellow shape in the middle.

Grandma held two edges straight. No needle, no nails, no sticky tape.

The space between the wooden uprights grew deeper.

Mila stepped back.

A moment ago, she had been looking at silver threads. Now she looked past a table towards a door with six little panes. A pale line lay beneath it, exactly where the draught came in under Grandma’s old kitchen door.

She knew that table.

One corner had a dark mark, round with a narrow tail, where Grandma had once put a hot pan. Mila always sat on that side, because on the other side the drawer hit your stomach when you opened it.

‘Grandma.’

Grandma kept her hand on the wooden frame. ‘Have a look.’

Mila glanced sideways. The side room was still there. Ilyas’s bucket stood against the wall. The empty cover lay on the real table. Straight ahead was the kitchen.

She put her hand through the space inside the frame.

No fabric touched her fingers. Cool air brushed her wrist. She took one step, then another, and found herself in front of the old worktable.

Behind her, she could still see the opening to the side room. Ilyas held his cup in both hands. He always did that when a drink was hot, but it only held cold water.

Mila laid her hand on the tabletop. It gave a little, as though there were a thin cushion beneath the wood. The burn mark felt smooth.

She crouched to look in the drawer. No pencils. No elastic band with her name on it. A kitchen-roll holder she didn’t recognise hung on the wall, and by the door stood a three-legged stool.

‘That doesn’t belong here,’ she said.

Grandma stepped beside her. She only had to duck a little to come through the opening.

‘That was my mother’s. I gave it to your aunt later.’

‘When?’

‘Before you were born.’

Mila looked at the stool. In her head, Grandma’s old kitchen had only become empty when she moved out. Yet this table had once stood among things Mila had never seen.

Grandma ran her hand along a chair back. ‘My mother captured this room when she was alive. It took her all night. We weren’t allowed in. The door was open and we still had to knock.’

‘Where is she, then?’

Grandma looked at Mila.

‘I mean in this room.’

‘Nowhere. Only the empty room was kept.’

The window above the sink showed a patch of garden. A clothes peg hung crookedly on the line. It was strange that it never moved. Out in the real garden, Mila had just seen the big leaves turning.

She went to the back door and took the handle.

Her fingers closed round something cool. The door opened partway. Beyond it, the light grew thin, as though someone had rubbed out the room where a passage ought to begin.

‘There’s nothing further,’ said Grandma. ‘Stay by the table.’

Mila let go of the handle. When she stepped back, the door was shut again. She looked for a clock, but where Grandma’s clock belonged, there was only a pale square.

Ilyas held his real cup through the opening. ‘In case anyone gets thirsty in there. I don’t trust that tap.’

Mila took it. His hands had warmed it. She set it on the old table. The ordinary white plastic looked harsh against the soft outlines.

‘Can Aron and I do a play in here?’ she asked.

‘I want a proper look at it first,’ said Grandma.

‘But we could.’

Grandma sat on the chair, smoothed her skirt and got up almost at once.

‘That back was always uncomfortable.’

Mila picked up the cup and stepped into the side room. Nothing stopped her. Her coat, the cup, her shoes: everything came with her. She put the cup on the real table and went back in once more, just to touch the burn mark. Then she stepped out beside Ilyas again.

When Grandma took the cloth off the frame, the kitchen disappeared. The light stayed in the threads. Suddenly, Ilyas stood on the other side of an ordinary piece of fabric, his hand at the back of his head.

They carried the cloth into the garden again. This time, Mila could see what was happening without anyone pointing it out. The same outside edges darkened. Slowly, the glow retreated towards the middle. About fifteen minutes later, even the yellow stitches were just ordinary stitches on grey.

Ilyas helped Grandma wind the cloth onto the wide roll. The frame stayed in the side room. The large cloth, in its cover, went onto a shelf in the storeroom.

Outside, Mila put her hands in her coat pockets. The little cloth wasn’t there; it was in the cupboard back at the flat. But she could still picture the table exactly.

‘Aron can come tomorrow, can’t he?’ she asked.

Grandma pulled the door shut behind them. ‘Ask him if he wants to first.’