Chapter One

Zee had put the things her mother was keeping on the table. Everything else stayed on the counter until Maren had looked at it.

So far, the table was winning.

“You’ve got three of these.”

“They’re different sizes.”

“Two of them are the same size.”

“One has a better lid.”

Zee tried both lids. Her mother was right. She put the good one on the table and the other beside the sink.

They had been working for nearly an hour. There was room now to close the drawer without lifting the cutlery tray first. Zee opened and shut it twice.

“That’s been bothering me for months.”

“You could have said.”

“I’ve been lifting it for months.”

Maren smiled. She folded another sheet of packing paper.

Zee’s phone lit beside the kettle.

Your daughter has fired me, Sam had written. Please collect my things.

She laughed and turned the phone so her mother could see.

“The film?”

“Apparently he keeps looking at the camera.”

“What’s he supposed to look at?”

“Whatever Lena tells him to.”

Her husband had offered to help the children make their film while she was here. The last she had seen of him, he was looking for a coat that made him appear untrustworthy. Kit had rejected two perfectly good coats on grounds he refused to explain.

Another message arrived.

Rehired. They need the coat.

Zee sent back a kiss and put the phone down.

“You can go when you need to,” Maren said.

“We’ve got the afternoon. Sam’s fine.”

“I can finish this cupboard.”

“You could. But I want to see whether you’re actually going to let anything leave.”

“There’s a whole box by the door.”

“That’s paper.”

“It’s going.”

Zee took another bowl from the cupboard. Something rattled inside it: a little metal attachment neither of them could identify. Maren turned it over and set it with the things she was keeping.

“Mum.”

“Until we know what it is.”

Outside, a vehicle slowed and moved on. Maren flattened the paper beneath her hands.

“It’ll be easier when I’m in the new place. You won’t have to keep coming over to sort things out.”

“I come over to see you.”

“I know you do.”

Her mother had already reached for the next bowl.

Zee wanted to say that she didn’t mind the other things. But there had been evenings when she had minded, and calls she had watched ring while she finished something she couldn’t put down. When the recommendation arrived, she had read through the help available at the new place twice. That night she had slept better.

She picked up the stack of blue plates.

“Those can go,” Maren said.

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

Zee carried them to the counter. There were four, with a smaller plate tucked underneath. A chip interrupted the rim of the bottom blue one.

“Oh, that one.”

Zee stopped.

“Keep that one.”

She slid it out and handed it over.

“You kept the broken one?”

“Apparently.”

Maren turned it in her hands. Then she laughed.

“What?”

“Your father was going to mend this.”

“Did he?”

Maren held up the chipped edge.

“Not that afternoon.”

She put the plate on the table but kept a hand on it.

“My mother had been for lunch. He’d been waiting to get at it since before we ate. The minute we’d finished clearing up, he went straight for it.”

“That sounds right.”

“I caught hold of his shirt.”

Zee looked up.

“I wanted him to come and sit with me.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes.”

Her mother smiled down at the plate.

Zee could picture her father reaching for it, already considering what he would need. Her mother catching hold of him was harder. She looked at Maren’s hand, still resting on the rim.

“What?” Maren asked.

“Nothing. I’m trying to imagine you.”

“Well, I wasn’t always standing in this kitchen with you.”

“I know.”

Maren gave her a look.

Zee laughed. “I do know.”

They wrapped the remaining plates. Maren held the paper while Zee folded the corners underneath. The blue one stayed where it was.

“Does that need wrapping?” Zee asked.

“In a minute.”

Her mother sat down. Zee brought their cups over from the counter.

“I’d like to see him,” Maren said.

Zee kept hold of her cup.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

She sat opposite her mother. “Have you been thinking about that?”

Maren rubbed a crease out of the packing paper.

“Yes.”

Zee had been over to her father’s place twice since the autumn, once with the children. They called between visits. He sent her photographs of things he thought Kit would like and sometimes rang back after a conversation to add something he had forgotten. She knew how to reach him.

“Before the move?”

“I hadn’t got as far as when.”

“We’d have to—”

Zee stopped. Her mother was looking at her.

“Sorry. What were you going to say?”

“I don’t know whether he’d want to.”

Neither of them touched the next box.

The last time Jack had eaten at Zee’s table had been Lena’s birthday, the previous autumn. He and Sam had talked for ages after the children went upstairs. There was nothing about remembering that afternoon that should have made calling him difficult.

“I can ask him,” she said.

Maren moved the plate a little farther from the edge of the table.

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

Zee took a drink of her tea. It had gone cold while they were working.

“I’ll make another,” she said, and her mother held out her cup.

---

She called the following morning, after Sam and the children had left.

Jack answered with a grunt, followed by a clatter.

“Have you got a minute?”

“Yes. You’ve saved me from this thing.”

“What thing?”

“A screw somebody’s put in sideways.”

“Somebody?”

There was a short silence.

“Could have been me.”

She laughed. He had been looking at the school photographs she sent him.

“Kit looks like he’s been arrested.”

“That was the one he chose.”

“What were the others like?”

“Worse. There’s one where you can see what he had for lunch.”

“Send me that one.”

“You can ask him yourself.”

She could hear him moving something, then the sound of a chair.

“How’s your mother getting on with the packing?”

“Slowly. She keeps telling me we don’t need to keep everything, then taking things out of the boxes.”

“What sort of things?”

“Yesterday it was a plate. Blue. Chipped.”

“Oh, God. She’s still got that?”

“She told me you were going to mend it.”

“I probably was.”

“She remembers what stopped you.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Yes,” he said. “So do I.”

Zee turned her mug by its handle.

“She’d like to see you, Dad.”

“She said that?”

“Yesterday. I said I’d call.”

Something scraped at his end. She waited.

“I’d like that,” he said. “Bring her over. I’ll make lunch.”

Her week was already on the screen beside her. When she asked for an afternoon with Maren, the system showed her two spaces that would work and the arrangements already around them. She chose Saturday. The journey home fitted before the evening meal, and Sam had the children.

Jack said Saturday was fine. He suggested something to cook that her mother no longer liked.

“Since when?”

“Years.”

“Well, don’t tell her I suggested it.”

“I’m definitely telling her.”

He asked what she liked now. Zee told him, then added that he didn’t need to make a lot.

“There’ll only be three of us.”

“I can count.”

“I’ve seen you cook.”

When she called Maren afterward, her mother asked what time they were going, whether she should take anything, and what Jack had said.

“He’d like to see you.”

“Right.”

Zee waited while Maren wrote down the time.

“You’ll stay?” her mother asked.

“Yes. If you’d like me to.”

“I would.”

“Then I will.”

---

Jack opened the door before Zee had finished putting her phone away.

He had rolled his sleeves unevenly. One stopped below his elbow; the other had come loose and hung against his wrist. Maren looked at him, then reached out and caught a little of his shirt between her fingers.

“Hello,” she said.

His eyes went to her hand. Then he put his arms around her.

Zee stood beside them with the bag her mother had insisted on bringing. There was a cake in it, although Jack had said he had everything. She could see the back of her mother’s head and her father’s hand, spread between her shoulders. Maren said something Zee couldn’t hear. He bent his head toward hers.

When they separated, Maren smoothed the place where she had held his shirt.

Jack turned to Zee.

“Come here, you.”

She went straight into his arms. His hand came up her back, and she put her cheek against him. He smelled faintly of cooking. She was smiling when the pleasure of it caught in her throat.

Oh, shit.

She hadn’t expected to need this.

She let go and stepped back. He was still looking at her. For a moment she thought he was going to ask something.

“I’ve cooked too much,” he said.

“You said you could count.”

“I can. It’s the potatoes.” He looked past her at the bag. “Please tell me that’s something to take them home in.”

Maren lifted it from Zee’s hand.

“It’s cake.”

“Right. Well. We’re going to have to pace ourselves.”

He moved out of the doorway to let them in. Zee followed her mother, taking off her jacket as she went.

The table had been pulled away from the wall. Three places were set, and a fourth chair held a stack of papers and a folded towel. Jack took the bag into the kitchen. Maren followed him to explain that the cake needed to come out of its tin before it was cut.

“I was going to try eating through it,” he said.

“You’d chip a tooth.”

Zee put their jackets over the chair by the window. She had sat there the last time she came. The cushion had acquired a cover, green on one side and striped on the other. She turned it over, then put it back as she had found it.

“Tea?” Jack called.

“Please.”

“Your mother’s having some. It’s nearly ready.”

She went through to the kitchen. He was taking three cups from a shelf. Maren stood at the counter, peeling the paper away from the cake, and Zee found the milk where it had been on her previous visit.

They talked about the journey and the work on the road near Maren’s place. Jack had come that way the other day. He had an opinion about where the diversion should have gone, but when Maren said she couldn’t follow which turning he meant, he abandoned the explanation and asked her how much milk she wanted.

Lunch was a pie with leeks in it, carrots, and the potatoes. He had also cut bread.

Maren sat facing the window. She held up a hand to shade her eyes, and Jack reached past her to turn the blind a little.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The pastry broke as Jack lifted the first piece. He tried to collect the loose corner with the serving spoon, but Maren held out her plate.

“Put it on here. It all goes in the same place.”

“I’d hoped it might arrive together.”

She took a forkful while he served Zee.

“It’s good.”

He looked at her, then went back to the dish.

There was room to stretch her legs under the table. Zee hadn’t realized until she did it that she had been sitting with her feet tucked beneath her chair. She moved one foot forward and caught her mother’s shoe.

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

Jack wanted to know whether Lena had enjoyed her school trip. She had sent him a photograph of herself in front of an enormous engine, and he had been trying to work out what it had powered.

“She told me,” Zee said. “I’ve forgotten.”

“That’s helpful.”

“She’ll tell you again. At length. There was a man there who let her ask questions.”

“Brave man.”

“They nearly missed the transport back,” Maren said.

Zee looked at her. “She didn’t tell me that.”

“She said nearly. They didn’t actually miss it.”

Jack was smiling. He asked Zee to remind Lena to send the other photographs. Then he wanted to know how Kit was getting on with the books he had lent him.

“He likes the one about things that live underground.”

“That was my favourite.”

“He’s been telling us what’s underneath the house.”

“Quite a lot, probably.”

“Yes. We’ve heard.”

They talked while they ate. Maren told them about a woman who had taken three bags of clothes she was giving away and returned two because her sister had sent her to collect the wrong ones. Jack asked how much was left to sort.

“The kitchen’s nearly done,” Maren said. “I keep finding things I thought I’d already dealt with. I opened a box yesterday and there were all the things from the drawer we emptied last week.”

“That was the keep box,” Zee said.

“I know that now.”

“Have you decided what furniture’s going?” Jack asked.

“Most of it. There’s less room, so there’s no point taking things I can’t use.”

“And you like the place?”

“I do.” She set down her fork. “There’s a workroom downstairs. A long window all across one side. You should see the light in there.”

Zee knew the photograph. Maren had sent it after her second visit: a row of empty tables, pale floorboards, the bright shapes of the window panes falling across them. There had been other photographs too, of the courtyard seen through the glass. Maren had started choosing colours for it before she had decided which armchair to keep.

“For painting?” Jack asked.

“For anything you want, really. There’s a sink, and somewhere to leave a canvas while it dries. I took some pictures.”

She reached for her bag beside the chair.

“Is it shared?”

“Yes. There are six tables.”

“What happens to yours?”

“The table? It won’t fit in the flat.”

Jack looked at Zee, then back at Maren.

“I could make you something smaller. Something that folds down, even. Then you’d still have somewhere of your own.”

“I’d have the room downstairs.”

“I know. I meant for when it’s busy, or you don’t feel like company. Somewhere you can leave a mess without worrying about it.”

“Sometimes I’d quite like the company.”

“Of course. I wasn’t saying—”

“We looked at a table, Dad,” Zee said. “There’d be nowhere to sit once it was up. She’d have to move the armchair every time.”

Jack laid his knife across his plate.

“I haven’t seen the room.”

“I can show you,” Maren said.

She had her phone out now. She found the plan and held it across the table. Jack took it, turning it so the window was at the top. For a little while he studied the measurements.

“Yes,” he said. “That would be tight.”

“It would.”

He handed the phone back.

Maren closed the plan. The photograph of the courtyard appeared beneath it for a moment, and then she put the phone in her bag.

Zee looked at the serving dish.

“Does anyone want the rest of this?”

“You have it,” Maren said.

“There’s another piece.”

“I’m all right.”

Jack took the dish and divided what remained between his plate and Zee’s. The pastry had softened into the filling. She ate it while her mother asked where he had bought the bread.

There was a baker’s on the corner. Jack had gone down one morning and found the owner unloading flour through the front door. He had stayed to help, and by the time they finished he had forgotten what he went for.

“You didn’t buy any bread?” Maren asked.

“He gave me some.”

“Well, there you are.”

“It was yesterday’s.”

“You should have carried faster.”

He laughed, and Zee laughed with him. Her mother reached for another piece of bread.

When they cleared the table, Zee took the plates through while Jack found a tin for the leftover potatoes. Maren wiped a small ring from beside her cup and picked up a folded programme from under the salt.

“What’s this?”

Jack looked over from the doorway.

“The films at the hall. Thursdays.”

“Do you go?”

“Sometimes.”

“How many times is sometimes?”

He considered it. “Most Thursdays, lately.”

“You never told me,” Zee said.

“I thought I had.”

She couldn’t remember him mentioning it. He had told her about the draught under the hall door, which he had been asked to look at. That must have been when he started going.

Maren read down the programme.

“The Other Brother. I remember that.”

“That was last week.”

“Did you work it out?”

“Eventually. I spent half the film thinking the policeman and the brother were the same person.”

Maren laughed properly then, her head going back a little.

“Jack. One of them had a moustache.”

“I thought he’d shaved.”

“In the middle of questioning himself?”

“I was having a difficult time with it.”

Zee leaned against the doorframe. He was grinning at Maren, pleased with how much she was enjoying this. Her mother had forgotten the cloth in her hand.

“They all wore those coats,” she said. “Every man in it. You couldn’t tell who was coming through a door until he took his hat off.”

“Thank you.”

“But I did know which one was the policeman.”

“So did I by the end.”

He brought the cake through and went back for the tea. Maren read the description of the next film while Zee cut three slices.

“Is it on a proper screen?” Maren asked when he returned.

“Yes. It comes down from the ceiling.”

“And you can hear it?”

“Very well. The man who puts it on can’t, so the rest of us get the benefit.”

She folded the programme along its existing crease.

“Can I take this?”

“Of course.”

“What will you do?”

“Turn up on Thursday and see what happens. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing.”

Maren put it in her bag. When he sat down, she asked him what else he had seen. Zee ate her cake while they talked. Her father could remember the plots better than the titles. Maren tried to identify one of them from his account, rejected her own first suggestion, and made him start again.

“Was the dog in it from the beginning?”

“I’m not sure the dog was meant to be in it at all.”

“You make these things very difficult.”

“I’m telling you what I saw.”

Zee took her plate into the kitchen. By the time she came back, they had moved on to a film neither of them liked. Her mother shifted her chair to give her more room at the table.

They stayed until the time Zee had arranged. When the car was on its way, Jack helped her fit the tin of potatoes into the bag beneath the cake. Maren went to collect her jacket.

“Thanks for doing this,” he said quietly.

Zee looked up. “She wanted to come.”

“I know.” He pressed the lid down at one corner. “I’m glad you did too.”

She put the handles together and took the bag from him.

“It was good.”

“Good.”

Her mother came back with Zee’s jacket over her arm. Jack walked them to the door. Maren kissed his cheek and thanked him for lunch, then asked again which day the films were on.

“Thursday.”

“I’ve got it written down. I don’t know why I asked.”

“Thursday,” he said again, smiling.

In the car, Maren rested her bag on her knees. She had put the programme in the outside pocket. One corner of it showed above the zip.

“He did make a lot,” she said.

“I warned him.”

“It was nice, though.”

“It was.”

They passed the roadworks Jack had been describing. Zee looked at the turning and finally understood which way he had meant.

“I don’t want a table that folds down,” Maren said.

“You don’t have to have one.”

“I know I don’t.”

Zee watched the temporary barrier move past the window.

“I think he just—”

She stopped. Maren waited, then looked out at the traffic.

After a while Zee asked whether she wanted help with the next cupboard on Tuesday.

“The bedroom, I think. There isn’t much left in the kitchen.”

“Except the things in the boxes.”

Her mother smiled.

At Maren’s door, Zee lifted out the cake and handed it to her.

“Keep some,” Maren said.

“We’ve got potatoes.”

“You can have both.”

They divided it on the kitchen counter. Maren wrapped Zee’s portion in paper and found a corner of the bag where it would sit flat.

---

At home, a length of silver paper hung across the hallway. Zee ducked under it with the bag.

“Don’t pull that down,” Lena called.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Dad did.”

Sam appeared at the kitchen door.

“Dad needed to leave the building.”

Zee kissed him. He had a dark line along one side of his jaw.

“What’s that?”

“An injury. I’m told it’s convincing.”

She touched it with a finger. “Is it washable?”

“I asked that too.”

He took the bag from her and looked inside.

“Oh, good.”

“There’s cake on top of the potatoes.”

“You’ve had a very successful afternoon.”

Kit ran into the hall wearing Sam’s coat. The sleeves covered his hands. He put them out to stop Zee going into the kitchen.

“We need you to watch it.”

“Let me take my shoes off.”

“He’s not ready,” Lena said from the other room. “He keeps changing things.”

“You took me out.”

“I took the end out. You can’t come back after you’ve died.”

“I might have got better.”

Zee leaned against the wall to unfasten a shoe. Kit steadied her with one long sleeve against her arm, then marched ahead of her into the living room.

The film was six minutes long. In it, Sam played the captain of a ship that had landed on a planet much like their back garden. He inspected a fence, announced that there was no sign of life, and was immediately attacked by Kit from behind a chair. The camera swung wildly. Someone laughed, and Lena’s voice ordered everyone to start again.

“That’s still in it,” Zee said.

“I know. I’m fixing it.”

“I like that bit.”

“Mum.”

She pressed her lips together and watched. Kit’s creature appeared several times, often in places where there had been no time for him to get ahead of the ship’s captain. In the final confrontation he fell dramatically against a planter, rolled across the grass, and lay still with one foot in the air.

Sam, on screen, approached him cautiously.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It can’t hurt anyone now.”

Kit’s foot moved.

The film ended.

“You see?” Kit said. “I was getting better.”

“You were looking to see if we’d stopped,” Lena said.

Sam reached over the back of the sofa and squeezed Zee’s shoulder.

“We tried it four times.”

“It’s good,” she told Lena. “I like the way you made the ship land.”

Lena brought that part back and showed her how she and her friend had done it. Kit wanted to watch the attack again. Sam left them to it and went upstairs. Zee heard the bathroom tap running, then her husband calling down to ask where the bottle marked washable was.

She spent another twenty minutes on the sofa. They watched the landing, the attack, and a discarded scene in which Kit had forgotten he was a creature and answered a question in his own voice. Lena wanted to cut that too. Zee told her she could; it was her film. Then she asked whether she could have a copy of the version with it still in.

“You’ll show people.”

“Probably.”

“You can have it when I’ve finished.”

By the time Zee reached the kitchen, Sam had put the leftovers away and started their supper. A faint line remained on his jaw.

“Permanent?” she asked.

“Persistent.”

“It suits you.”

“I’m glad. I may have to keep it.”

She stood beside him at the counter, watching him cut a tomato. He passed her a piece.

“How was your mum?”

“Nervous, I think. At first.”

“Did she have a good time?”

“Yes. Mostly.”

He waited while she ate the tomato.

“He had some questions about the move.”

“Ah.”

“They weren’t unreasonable.”

“I didn’t say they were.”

“I know.” She reached for another piece. “It was nice, though. They got talking about films. Apparently he goes to the hall every Thursday.”

“Your dad?”

“He’s been watching all these old films. Mum was trying to work out which ones from his descriptions. She took a programme.”

Sam put the knife down to listen while she told him about the policeman and the moustache. She found herself laughing again. From the living room, Kit shouted that he could hear them and asked what was funny.

“Nothing you need,” Sam called.

“I might.”

“You’ll have to wait.”

Sam turned back to her. “You sound as though you had a good time.”

“I did.”

He touched her hip with the back of his hand, then reached past her for the bowl.

“Can you get them to clear their things off the table? I’ve asked twice.”

She went to the living room. There were drawings under the plates left from lunch, a jacket across one chair, and two pieces of fruit that had been used in the film and were no longer considered food. Lena was trying to add music. Kit wanted Zee to hold something while he fetched a strip of tape.

Her wrist lit with a reminder about a school form. She looked at it, then at the things on the table. For a moment she couldn’t work out where to begin. The list for tomorrow was mixed with the things she had meant to finish tonight, and Kit was still holding out the cardboard.

“Just tonight,” she said to the display. “Show me what’s left for tonight.”

The form moved to the morning. Three things remained. The first was supper.

“Table,” Zee said. “Both of you. Film things on the chair over there, plates in the kitchen.”

“This is nearly done,” Lena said.

“Save it. You can finish after we’ve eaten.”

Kit put down his cardboard. Zee took the jacket upstairs and hung it on the hook outside his room. When she came down, he was carrying a plate to the kitchen with both pieces of fruit balanced on it. Lena had made a space at the end of the table and was moving the drawings into a pile.

They ate. Sam wanted to know whether anybody was going to explain the silver paper before he had to walk through it again. Kit began. Lena corrected the first part. Zee passed the bread and listened to the revised explanation.

Later, when the children were upstairs and Sam had gone to find something clean to put on, she opened the photographs from Lena’s school trip. The engine was dark green, with a wheel taller than Lena. Zee forwarded the other two photographs, as Jack had asked.

Sam came back carrying a basket of laundry.

“Have you seen my blue towel?”

“In the film.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Of course it is.”

“I’ll get it.”

She found it behind the sofa and shook it out. A little grass fell onto the rug.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s all right. I’ve stopped believing it’s all inside the basket.”

Zee folded the towel and put it on top. Sam set the basket by the door.

“I was thinking,” she said. “We could ask Dad over. For lunch or something.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

“Next Saturday?”

“I’m doing the longer swim, remember. I won’t be back till the middle of the afternoon.”

She opened the family plan. His morning was there, with the journey and the later return time. She had agreed to take the children out while he went.

“Sunday, then?”

“Sunday’s good. But let’s just cook something easy.”

“I was going to.”

“You said that for your mum’s birthday. I was still washing things on Monday.”

She smiled. “I’ll put something in the oven.”

“One thing.”

“And potatoes.”

“Fine. I’m very happy with potatoes.”

Zee looked at Sunday. There was room for lunch, and for the children to get their things ready afterward. She left the afternoon as it was and opened her father’s messages.

The photographs she had just sent were at the bottom. Above them was the last message about today: he had said he would be there whenever they arrived.

She wrote beneath the photographs.

It was good seeing you today. Would you like to come here for lunch next Sunday? About one?

Zee sent it.