Sara moved the balcony chair.
Not far.
That was the annoying bit.
If she’d hidden it, or broken it, or sold it to someone with better emotional balance, at least I could have made a proper thing of it.
But she just moved it from the corner near the wall to the other side of the terrace, beside the dead basil plant and the basket of pegs.
I noticed immediately.
Obviously I did.
It’s my chair.
Or it had become my chair without anyone officially approving it. That’s how these things happen in a family. You sit somewhere twice and suddenly it is your station. Your post. Your little lookout point where you pretend you are thinking about the sea when really you are checking your phone and not smoking.
I said, “Why’s the chair over there?”
Sara was cutting bread.
“Which chair?”
That was deliberate.
“The chair.”
She looked out at it.
“Oh. I moved it.”
“Yes. I can see that.”
“It was in the way.”
It was not in the way. Nothing happens in that corner except me standing near it pretending not to need a cigarette.
Leo walked through at exactly the wrong moment, because teenagers have a gift for appearing when your dignity is already limping.
“Dad’s chair has moved,” he said.
Sara didn’t look up.
“Yes.”
Leo looked at me.
“Big day.”
Then he took a yoghurt from the fridge and left the spoon on the counter, because apparently judgement and basic household manners live in separate departments.
I tried the new chair position later.
Didn’t work.
Too exposed.
From there you can see the washing line, the neighbour’s garage door, and the bit of wall where one of the twins drew something in chalk that might be a horse or might be a dead rabbit. You cannot stare meaningfully at life from beside a basket of pegs.
One of the twins came out and asked why I was sitting near the pants.
I said I wasn’t.
She pointed at the washing basket.
Fair.
So I stood up.
Then I stood where the chair used to be, which made the whole thing worse because now I was just a man standing in an empty corner.
Sara came out eventually.
She had that face.
Not angry. Worse.
Aware.
“You don’t need a smoking corner,” she said.
“I know.”
“You’ve made one anyway.”
I looked at the floor like there might be a useful answer there.
There wasn’t.
Just a small Lego wheel and a dead leaf.
Later, after dinner, Leo moved the chair back.
I saw him do it.
He didn’t say anything.
Just dragged it across the terrace with that horrible scraping sound and put it almost exactly where it had been before.
Then he went inside.
I sat in it for about three minutes.
Then got up.
Not heroic.
Just didn’t feel like winning.