My aunt said the blue chair had crossed a sea in a container. Saskia said it had come from the shop at the end of our street. I was eight when we moved into this house, and my own memory supplied a van, a man with a beard and nothing I could swear to about the chair.
Saskia had come for four days. On the last night we sat on the floor looking through family photographs on our phones, while the chair held her coat and my aunt's handbag. In one picture it stood beside a door I didn't recognise. Someone had written “the arrival chair” underneath. In another family chat the same picture was labelled “before the move”.
“Ask her,” Saskia said.
My aunt was in bed, and I didn't want her woken for a dispute about a chair. By morning Saskia had a train to catch.
I had swapped my café shift to take her to the station. In return I owed my colleague Friday evening, the night of the neighbourhood film screening I had helped organise. On our way out I pushed the projector cable through a neighbour's letterbox. It caught halfway, so Saskia held the flap while I fed the thick plug through.
At Platform Nine the departure board showed a cancellation. The next train was forty minutes away. Saskia looked up at the board, then down at her suitcase.
“I could have stayed in bed,” she said.
“You could have asked Auntie about the chair.”
“She'd have given us a different answer with breakfast.”
We bought coffee and walked down the corridor past the platform shop. Saskia had been born in one city, raised in another and sent to school in a third. When she visited, my aunt filled her bag with food and asked when she was coming back before she had arrived properly. I lived a bus ride away and was expected to know where the spare batteries were.
“Do you ever get tired of leaving?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Do you get tired of staying?”
I thought about telling her about the film night, but I had made the swap myself. “Sometimes,” I said.
She stopped by a bin and fished a wrapped sandwich from her bag. The bread was warm and flattened. She offered me half, and we ate standing there, passing a paper napkin back and forth.
“I didn't buy the ticket until Tuesday,” she said. “I thought I might stay another week.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Auntie had already told everyone I was leaving on Thursday. I didn't know how to tell her I'd changed my mind without making it into a whole thing.”
“You could have told me.”
“I know.” She screwed up the napkin. “I could have.”
The train was announced before I found anything useful to say. When it came in, she hugged me by the doors with one arm, her suitcase handle trapped between us. I watched her get on and waited until the train had gone.
That evening I found my aunt in the kitchen, counting containers of leftover food. She asked whether Saskia had got away all right. I said she had, then told her about the ticket.
My aunt put a lid on a container and took it off again. “There was plenty of room.”
“I know. I don't think she did.”
She put the food in the fridge. I fetched the blue chair from beside the door and sat down. It rocked when I leaned back.
“Do you remember buying this?” I asked.
“Buying it? Your uncle brought it home.” She inspected the legs. “Or perhaps his brother did.”
I folded a piece of cardboard and pushed it under the front foot. The chair still rocked. My aunt crouched beside me and held it steady while I moved the cardboard to the back. This time all four feet stayed on the floor.
She sat in it to test my repair. I took a photograph and sent it to Saskia: Evidence. Auntie says Uncle brought it home.
Saskia replied with an older picture. The chair was there behind three people on a doorstep, its paint pale in the sun. Ask which uncle.
My aunt took the phone from me and put on her glasses. “Oh,” she said. “That house.” She got up to pull the chair closer to the light. I went to fetch a seat for myself.
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