What happens in the video
Outside a house, a girl in a yellow top and green skirt stands beside a small blue rolling suitcase. A man in a white shirt gestures and speaks to her. She keeps a hand near the handle while they talk. An older woman in lavender watches from the open doorway, and both turn towards her near the end.
Continuation:
Dad had promised to collect Nia at ten. At ten on the dot she came down Grandma’s path with her blue case, her shoes tied and her mouth set in a line he knew well.
“Ready?”
“I am. Are you?”
He looked at his watch. “I’m on time, aren’t I?”
From the doorway Grandma made a small sound that might have been a cough or an attempt to swallow a laugh.
Nia unzipped the case just enough for him to see a folded green cloth. He recognised the corner. It was the picnic blanket he’d slept under in the garden as a boy.
“Dad. You’re supposed to be staying here.”
The plan, from Nia’s point of view, was perfectly straightforward. Grandma was moving to a flat next week. This was their last chance to camp in her garden. She and Dad had discussed it in the car on the way to school. He had said *that sounds lovely*. Later, when she’d asked about collecting the camping things on Saturday, he had said *ten o’clock*.
From his point of view, he was picking up his daughter after a night with Grandma. The tent was at home in the loft. His Saturday shopping list was eleven items long.
Nia pulled the zip closed. “You do know you can say no when I ask you something?”
That stung more than tears would have done. He crouched to her height. “I remember you telling me. I think I was listening halfway.”
Grandma finally ventured down one step. “I washed the blanket. There are also sausages in my fridge. If nobody’s camping, I’m going to have a very peculiar week of breakfasts.”
Dad looked through the gate at the patch of grass where he’d once pitched a tent so badly that his mother had pegged it back down around him while he slept. He rang a neighbour to ask for help lifting the tent out of his loft. Then he gave Nia the shopping list.
“What do we really need before tomorrow?”
She considered it seriously and circled milk. Underneath his handwriting she added marshmallows.
That evening the three of them ate sausages in the garden. Grandma retired indoors at nine, explaining that she had spent forty years paying for a comfortable bed within sight of where they were sitting.
A little after midnight, rain sent father and daughter scrambling inside with the green blanket over their heads. They slept on the sitting-room floor.
In the morning Grandma took a picture of them among the cushions, muddy shoes lined up by the door. It was the first photograph Nia put on the fridge in the new flat. Whenever someone asked about the blue case in the corner of the picture, she’d say, “That was the day I had to collect my dad.”
