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Letters from Tara · October: The Rota

The draft she did not send

Danya,

There is a war on our corridor and it is about pans.

Hollie cooks for everyone. I told you about Hollie. She cooks nearly every night, rice and chillies and enormous stews, and anyone who is in the kitchen gets a bowl, and then she washes up, because if she doesn't, nobody does. And there is one person, Joss, who never washes anything. Ever. He comes in at midnight and leaves his plate in the sink and goes to bed, and in the morning there is a note on the fridge in his tiny handwriting that says things like "could the pans be soaked please?" As if we were a hotel.

Hollie cried on Tuesday. Actually cried, over a frying pan. I wanted to go and knock on his door and tell him exactly what I think of him. I think he's selfish. I think he thinks he's better than us because he's doing music and stays up all night. I think

The draft stopped there, as the last one had, in the middle of a line. Tara read it back the next morning and felt hot all over. Not because it was untrue. Every fact in it was true. But she had just written a page about a person she had spoken to perhaps three times, and she had made him into a villain in every sentence, and she had not once asked him anything.

She thought about the Captain at the Whetstone, in his cardigan, losing an argument and stating the other side better than its owner had. She had watched him do it twenty times. She had never once done it herself.

She folded the draft into the back of her notebook, behind the first one.

Hollie's side

The Sunday table had become a thing. It had started the week after the rice: six of them in the kitchen on a Sunday evening with a pack of cards, then dominoes, then Hollie's mysterious family card game, which turned out to involve a great deal of shouting. People came from the floor below. The boy from the end room brought his gran's Crazy Eights rule and made everyone sing when they played an eight.

This Sunday, nobody was singing. Hollie was at the table with her arms folded. The sink behind her was full.

"I'm not cooking any more," she said. "I'm sorry. I love cooking. But I've cleaned up after six people every night for a month, and those pans aren't even mine, and I'm not doing it."

Everybody looked at the sink, and then, without meaning to, at the door to Joss's room, which was shut.

Tara listened. She had always been good at that. And because she was listening properly, and not just waiting for her turn, she noticed that Hollie had not actually said Joss's name. She had said six people.

"Can I say your side back?" said Tara. "To check I've got it?"

Hollie looked surprised. "Go on."

"You cook most nights," said Tara slowly. "For anyone who's around, not just yourself. That's a lot of pans, and it's a lot of work, and it's a kind thing to do. And then, because nobody else washes up, you end up doing both. So the cooking stops feeling kind and starts feeling like a job nobody asked you to take." She stopped. "And the pans in the sink right now aren't yours. They're from a meal you made for other people."

Hollie unfolded her arms. "Yes," she said. "That's it. That's exactly it. Better than I said it."

Joss's side

Joss came out of his room at ten, because he had a shift at eleven. He was a tall, quiet boy who studied music, wore headphones round his neck all day, and had, as far as Tara knew, never sat down at the Sunday table.

He saw the whole kitchen looking at him and stopped in the doorway.

"Is this about the pans?" he said. "I'm sorry. I know it's about the pans."

Nobody said anything. Tara thought about the draft in her notebook, the page that said selfish in it three times. And then she asked him the question she should have asked before she wrote a word.

"What's it like from your side?"

Joss looked at her for a long moment, as if nobody had asked him that since he arrived.

"I work at the café by the station," he said. "Three till eleven, most nights. I get back at midnight. And every night, there's a sink full of pans from a dinner I wasn't at. Six people's pans. I'm not saying I'm a saint. I leave my plate, I know. But I'm not going to wash six people's pans at midnight from a meal I didn't eat." He rubbed his face. "So I leave a note. Because at midnight everyone's asleep, and I don't know how else to say it."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Can I say your side back too?" said Tara.

Joss shrugged, which she took as yes.

"You're out every evening when the cooking happens," said Tara. "So you never eat the dinner, and you never see the washing-up get done. All you see is the sink at midnight, full of other people's pans, and it feels like they're expecting you to clean up a party you weren't invited to. And the notes aren't you being bossy. They're the only time of day you can say anything."

Joss nodded slowly. "Yes," he said. "That's it."

Hollie was staring at him. "I didn't know you worked nights," she said. "I thought you were just up late."

"I am just up late," said Joss. "Because I work nights."

The question

They were both right. Tara could see it, the way she had seen it at the back table at the Whetstone a hundred times: two people, each with the strongest version of their case, and both cases true at once. Hollie was doing too much. Joss was being asked to clean up after a meal he never ate. Neither of them was a villain. The rota was.

There wasn't a rota. That was the problem. There was just Hollie, doing it.

"Can I ask one thing?" said Tara. "Who cooks, and who eats?"

It turned out that was the question. Once they started counting it, the answer was obvious. Hollie cooked. Four or five of them ate, most nights. Joss never did. So the washing-up should follow the eating, not the living.

They made a rota by meal, not by person. Whoever cooked didn't wash. Whoever ate that night shared the washing, in turn. Six of them on the corridor, seven nights in the week: each person took one night to cook or wash, and on the seventh night everybody ate toast and nobody touched a pan. Joss took Sunday mornings instead, because he was never there in the evenings, and said he would make pancakes.

Hollie wrote it on the back of an envelope and stuck it on the fridge, over Joss's last note.

The letter she sent

Danya,

Thank you for your answer. You asked how I'd know if people noticed me listening at the back table, and then you answered it yourself: "Because you were the one who always asked who wasn't there." I've been thinking about that all week.

There was a fight on our corridor about pans. I nearly took a side. I wrote you a whole letter taking one. Instead I tried the Captain's trick: I said each person's side back to them, better than they'd said it. Then I asked one question: who cooks, and who eats? We have a rota now. It's on the fridge.

The person I'd been angry with works nights. Nobody had asked him. I hadn't asked him.

Tell the Captain his trick works on pans.

Tara

P.S. The longer letters are piling up in the back of my notebook. Two now. I think I'm going to keep them all and read them at the end of the year.

The question for your own table

When did you last take a side before you'd heard the other one at its strongest? What did the person you were angry with know that you didn't?

Something to do

Next time there is a quarrel in your house, before anyone answers anyone, ask each person to say the other's side back until the other says "yes, that's it." Then ask one question about who does what. Write down what you agree, and put it on the fridge.

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