Carter family home

Rooms

• The kid's bedroom upstairs: the bed, the wardrobe and the desk with Dad's old laptop.
• The bathroom: the toilet, the sink and the shower.
• The kitchen and the dining table, where the family has breakfast and dinner.
• The living room: the sofa facing the TV, and the cream-coloured telephone on the wall.
• The garage: Dad's car, which he drives to work on weekdays.

Saturdays

On Saturdays Tom is home all day and around the house: in the garage, under the car, and in the garden once the house has one.

The spare room

An empty spare room upstairs is to become the nursery for the family's second child. It fills slowly across the chapter days: empty and bare in summer 2000, then paint cans and half-painted pastel walls, a sanded second-hand crib by the winter, and curtains, bedding and a mobile by spring 2001.