LITMIR.BIZ

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overnight flight, stuck in the middle seat of the middle row for eight very long hours.

      I pushed open the flimsy door.

      It was not a shed.

      It was every item from my childhood bedroom, taken out of the house and painstakingly reconstructed in a damp, prefabricated structure at the bottom of my parents’ garden. Double bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers, Postman Pat beanbag and all.

      ‘I – I don’t get it,’ I stammered, looking back into the garden where my parents beamed back at me. How had they got my enormous knotted pine bedframe into this tiny space? ‘Why is all my stuff in here?’

      ‘You know your dad loves a project,’ Mum said, gazing up at my father with an expression I’d only ever seen in our house that time we all watched Memoirs of a Geisha. It was an uncomfortable evening and I didn’t care to be reminded of it. ‘He built this all by himself!’

      ‘Peter Mapplethorpe helped a bit,’ Dad corrected reluctantly.

      ‘Are they repeating Grand Designs again or something?’ I asked. I lingered in the doorway, key still in hand, so confused.

      ‘Yes but that’s not the point,’ Dad replied, gently but decisively shoving me inside. ‘What do you think?’

      What did I think?

      All my books were there on my bookcase, from Enid Blytons to my Sweet Valley Highs, via a few well-worn Virginia Andrews and a copy of Judy Blume’s Forever that had a spine so cracked only I could tell which book it was without looking at the cover. All my CDs were stacked up next to my boombox and a legion of cuddly toys stared at me from the top of the wardrobe. Even my beloved terracotta oil diffuser from the Body Shop was in there. I wrinkled my nose at the tiny bottle of Fuzzy Peach oil that stood sentry beside it. It was practically rancid at the time, God only knew what it would smell like now.

      The whole thing was altogether too much for my jetlagged brain to handle, like I’d walked out of the garden and into 1997. Wait, was that what had happened? I wondered. What if this wasn’t some sort of bizarre art installation, ‘Child’s Bedroom in a Shed’, but actually a time machine Dad had built at the bottom of the garden? He did spend an awful lot of time by himself and he was very handy.

      ‘If you go through that door, there’s a bathroom,’ he explained, sliding past me and the pine wardrobe that matched my bed in both design and gargantuan proportions. ‘It’s small but perfectly formed, just like your mother.’

      My mother tittered appreciatively. I did not.

      ‘It’s a compostable toilet,’ he went on from behind the concertina door. ‘Good for the environment. And the water from the shower goes into the garden! Waters the tomatoes. It’s genius. Come and have a look.’

      ‘It’s really impressive, Dad,’ I said, fighting back a yawn as I clambered over my bed to peer into the bathroom out of politeness, immediately finding myself wedged in between the bed and the chest of drawers. Shuffling free, I whacked my hip on the oversized round knobs I’d fought for in the middle of DFS so many moons ago. ‘So, what’s the plan, you’re renting it out? Doing Airbnb?’

      ‘Oh.’ Dad emerged from the bathroom with a slightly crestfallen look on his face. ‘No.’

      ‘You know we’re very excited to have you home,’ Mum said as Dad and I shuffled awkwardly back and forth until he clambered on my bed and shuffled over on his hands and knees. ‘And we know it might take a little while for you to get back up on your feet—’

      ‘I’m not off my feet,’ I replied quickly. ‘This is just a fork in my road that will lead me on an unforeseen pathway to fulfilment.’

      My flight had been delayed for so long, I’d caved and bought one of those inspirational books everyone raves about on Instagram from the airport bookshop. Starting Over: A Woman’s Guide to Getting It Right the Second Time Around. It turned out to have more to do with getting over a divorce than anything else but, still, there were some very catchy sound bites in there. It really was dangerous to leave unattended humans in an airport for more than five hours at a time – another half an hour and I’d have been chatting with the nice-looking lady giving away biscuits and trying to talk to people about Scientology.

      ‘I know my coming home was a bit of a surprise and I know not having another job waiting for me isn’t exactly ideal but I’m so absolutely, one hundred percent fine.’

      ‘Well, that sounds very nice but, regardless, we thought while you were here, it would be nice for you to have your privacy.’ Dad coughed to clear his throat before looking to my mother for help. Mum looked at Dad and Dad looked at me and I looked back at both of them.

      ‘If all my furniture is in here, then what’s in my room?’ I wondered out loud, too tired to get it.

      ‘The thing is, Rosalind, you’re not a child any more,’ Dad said firmly as the pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t been prepared for began to fall into place. ‘And while we’re happy to have you home for as long as you need to be here, I think we would all appreciate a bit more space and a bit more distance and, well …’

      Oh.

      Oh no.

      They hadn’t put my bedroom in a shed.

      The shed was my bedroom.

      ‘You want me to live in here?’ I asked, hoping they would laugh and bring me back inside with a clap on the back. Good joke, everybody laughs.

      But no.

      Dad slapped his hands together, breaking the tension with a thunderclap.

      ‘I’ll get your bags, will I?’ he said brightly. ‘I think they’ll fit under the bed, otherwise you’ll have to bring them in once you’ve emptied them and I’ll put in the loft until you leave. Not that there’s a rush for you to leave.’

      ‘Everything works except the WiFi,’ Mum said proudly as I adjusted to the reality of my situation. The reality of living in a shed. ‘And the reception on the telly comes in and out but that’ll all be fine once we’ve worked out the WiFi. There’s a man coming next week.’

      ‘Great,’ I replied, steadying myself on my bedframe. ‘No rush.’

      After all, who needed television or the internet, especially when they were unemployed and looking for a new job?

      ‘Thing is, we turned your room into an office so your dad can work from home a couple of days a week,’ Mum said, fussing with the curtains, straightening the nets. She might have her daughter living in a shed but she was not a savage. ‘And you said you wouldn’t be back for long and it’s so nice having him around more.’

      ‘And Jo’s room?’

      ‘Jo only left a month ago!’ She turned to stare at me, positively aghast. ‘We couldn’t very well upend her room when her bed was still warm, could we?’

      ‘I suppose not,’ I replied, definitely not thinking about how they moved Jo into my room the same day I left for uni because she needed a bigger room. When she was four.

      ‘Exactly.’ Mum cleared her throat. ‘But I have put all her furniture in one corner and I’m using it as a yoga studio. I’m really getting there with my downward dog.’

      What I wouldn’t have given to see my sister’s face at that moment.

      ‘If you cook anything, be careful,’ she went on, picking things up then putting them down. My Pikachu piggy bank, an unopened bottle of bath pearls from Christmas 2004, a framed photo of Justin Timberlake that Sumi had given me for my birthday in the first year of uni that Mum had given pride of place, clearly mistaking JT for an actual friend. ‘We took the batteries out of the smoke alarm because it kept going off every ten minutes and we could hear it up in the house. Very distracting.’

      No WiFi, no TV and no smoke alarm. I could see it now: exhausted

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