The Room Between the Kitchen and the Boots

The house had grown a new room overnight, between the kitchen and the small green hallway where the boots are kept. It was a thin room, no wider than my shoulders, and it ran the entire length of the building. There was no light in it but the wallpaper glowed faintly, a colour I have only ever seen in late August in the hour before rain.

I walked the length of the new room. At the far end was a single chair facing the wall and on the chair a folded coat I have not owned for many years. I sat down without thinking and the wall in front of me became the back garden, full of people I half-knew, all of them waiting for somebody to begin speaking. I understood, gently and without alarm, that the somebody was me, and that I had forgotten the language entirely.