The Table We Set for Eight

Tessa wrote the eight names on the back of an electricity bill. Then she wrote them again in a different order, as if that might solve the evening before it happened.

Tessa. Rafi. Arthur. June. Owen. Pia. Nell. Samira.

Six guests, two people who lived in the flat, eight places. She circled her own name and drew an arrow towards the kitchen.

Rafi saw the arrow when he came in with bread.

"Are you attending this dinner or managing it?"

"Both."

"Ambitious."

They had shared the ground-floor flat for six months. Rafi repaired guitars at a workshop across town. Tessa worked in an office where people gave her untidy requests and expected tidy answers. They were friends, not a couple, a distinction her cousin Owen sometimes remembered only after a reminder.

Tessa had promised a housewarming meal when they moved in. First the boxes had been in the way, then work, then a wet weekend that had somehow become a reason not to invite people indoors.

Now it was Saturday. Everyone had accepted. Her father Arthur was coming from the next town. June from upstairs, Samira from opposite, Nell from work, Owen and his wife Pia from the far end of the city.

Tessa wanted them to see the same person when they looked at her.

She had bought no matching plates. June had lent two chairs. The menu, however, had been rewritten neatly enough to suggest a restaurant with a printer.

Rafi put the bread away.

"If you need me, ask. Don't leave clues."

Tessa smiled as if that were a joke, then wrote bread knife beneath his name.

By four o'clock, the table had eight settings and one problem.

The chair at the far corner could not be pulled out. A low bookcase stood behind it. Tessa had pushed the table towards the wall to make space for her arrangement of branches in a jug, and now there was room to look at the place but not to sit in it.

"That's mine," she said when Rafi pointed it out. "I'll be up and down anyway."

"You still need a chair."

"I'll manage."

He did not move the furniture without asking her. He took his guitar case from the hall so people could come through with their coats.

June arrived early with the two borrowed chairs. One had a yellow seat, the other blue. She had taught children for thirty years and could look at a room without immediately trying to improve its occupants.

"Where do you want these?"

Tessa showed her. June tested the blue one, then sat down on the yellow to catch her breath.

"This table used to be in my sister's kitchen," she said. "Your landlord bought it from her."

"Did she have eight people round it?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes she put the ironing on it."

Tessa glanced at her folded napkins. She had imagined the table arriving with a tradition she ought to keep up.

June stood.

"I'll go and change. Do you want me to bring anything?"

"Nothing."

"That's an answer. It doesn't have to be the answer."

After she left, Tessa took the branches out of the jug. Then she put them back. They looked very good from the doorway.

Arthur arrived at half past six carrying a bag of pears. He used a walking stick and asked for the chair with the firmer back, at the quieter end of the table.

Tessa had put him beside Owen so they could talk about football. Arthur had never liked football very much. She changed the arrangement without announcing why.

Owen and Pia came next. Owen complimented the flat, then asked Rafi how long they had been together.

"Sharing? Six months," Rafi said. "Friends? Longer."

"I knew that."

Pia took Owen's coat before he could explain how well he had known it.

Nell brought sparkling water. Tessa had asked everyone what they ate and drank; Nell had said she did not drink alcohol, and Owen had said he was vegetarian. Neither had been required to explain.

Samira came with the beans Tessa had asked her to bring. She put the covered bowl in the kitchen and asked where to leave her bag. June returned wearing a green cardigan with one different button.

For a moment, the room was exactly as Tessa had hoped: all the separate parts of her life under one roof.

Then Owen asked Nell what Tessa was like at work.

"She labels things," Nell said.

"That's not all I do."

"No. But you do label things."

Everyone laughed, including Tessa, a beat late.

She went into the kitchen to check the aubergines. The edges had blackened far beyond the colour she had planned. While she stood looking, the pan she meant to use for the sauce gave a thin smell of scorched onion.

In the other room, people were finding things to say without her.

Tessa turned off the heat, set the pan aside and stood very still.

She had other food. Rice, salad, Samira's beans, Rafi's bread. It was enough for dinner. It was not the dinner written on the menu.

She picked up the menu and folded it in half.

Nell appeared at the doorway.

"Can I do anything?"

"No, it's fine."

Nell looked at the pan, then at the paper in Tessa's hand.

"I didn't ask whether it was fine."

At work, Nell was the person who asked what a request actually required before Tessa turned it into an entire afternoon. Tessa sometimes resented how much time this saved.

"The aubergines are burnt. And the sauce."

"Then we won't eat those."

"There were supposed to be more dishes."

"There are supposed to be eight people."

Tessa heard Rafi explain to Arthur how a guitar could look undamaged and still refuse to stay in tune. Arthur asked a question instead of pretending to understand. Nobody sounded disappointed by the absence of a sauce.

"Could you cut the bread?" Tessa asked.

"Yes."

It was such a small exchange that she nearly missed what had changed. Nell took a knife. Tessa put the burnt food aside rather than trying to hide it beneath something else.

She carried out the jug of water.

"Dinner will be simpler than advertised," she said. "I've burnt part of it."

Owen opened his mouth. Pia put a piece of bread into it before his helpful suggestion could emerge.

Tessa laughed on time.

They began bringing dishes to the table. Rafi carried the rice. Samira brought the beans. June put the pears on the sideboard for later.

Tessa kept finding reasons to remain in the kitchen.

A spoon. A cloth. A clean plate she did not need. If she stayed busy, no one would have to notice whether she fitted among them.

Arthur looked towards her place.

"You haven't got a way in."

"I'll sit in a minute."

"Not through that bookcase, you won't."

Rafi put down the rice.

"We can turn the table."

"It'll look crooked."

"It will be crooked."

For a moment she hated him a little, with the unreasonable affection of someone whose escape had been politely removed.

"The jug's in the way."

"Would you like to move it?"

Tessa looked at the branches. They had occupied more space in her afternoon than the people they were meant to welcome.

She carried the jug to the kitchen counter. Rafi and Owen shifted the table a little away from the wall and turned it diagonally. They moved the settings first and left a clear passage to the door. No grand rearrangement, only enough space to pull out the eighth chair.

Pia steadied a glass. June caught a slipping napkin. Nell put down the bread knife and sat where Tessa asked her to.

The room no longer resembled the picture Tessa had arranged from the doorway.

It contained eight people who could sit down.

Tessa took her place. Samira handed her the beans before she could ask whether everyone else had enough.