Of Things Gone Astray. Janina Matthewson

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       Delia.

      THERE WAS A ROOM IN Delia’s house that Delia never went into. It had been her room when she was a child, and for all her trips home after she moved away to study.

      It was still decorated in the style she’d chosen when she was thirteen. Redecoration had been her birthday present that year and she’d spent hours deciding on and second-guessing colour choices. Three of the walls (luscious cherry 037) were almost entirely obscured by posters of pop singers and movie stars, many of which had come unstuck in key top corners. The fourth wall (bruised concrete 109) had a series of doodles in white paint that had started as a rebellion and grown into a meandering, wordless story. The curtains (dark purple brocade) had been closed for years. The bed (single, patchwork mainly in pink) was unmade. The last time Delia had slept in it had been the Easter holidays, a few weeks before the accident that would bring her home for good. She was supposed to wash the sheets and remake the bed herself, having never officially lifted the Keep Out Agreement of 97, but she’d been late for her train and had left them.

      But it wasn’t the garishly twee decor or the depressing insight into adolescent Delia’s psyche that kept grown-up Delia out of the room.

      When Delia had moved back home, she’d taken the seven boxes marked ‘Master’s Degree’ and stacked them in the middle of the room. She’d piled sketches and paintings on the bed, she’d dumped her easel, her box of paints and brushes, and her blank canvases on the floor and closed the door on them. She’d taken over the room that her mother would no longer be able to use.