A Girl Who Used to Live Here

                                                             1.


                                                    FADE IN:

BLACK.

The only sound: a knife on porcelain. Slow. Even. Patient.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - DINING ROOM - NIGHT (MEMORY)

A child's eye-level, low: we are under a long dining table.
A white cloth hangs around us like a curtain. Beyond it,
the legs of adults, motionless.

No one speaks. Only the knife. Even. Even.

A GIRL (6) sits under the table, knees to chest, very
still. A woman's hand -- elegant, unhurried -- lowers into
frame and sets a folded napkin on the floor beside the
girl. Not unkind. Worse: instructive.

                      WOMAN (V.O.)
                (calm)
          Come up when you can sit properly.

The knife continues, somewhere above. Even. Even.

                                                     CUT TO:

INT. HOTEL ROOM - DAY (PRESENT)

Silence. A perfect, empty hotel room. Made bed. Squared
chairs. No people.

A CAMERA SHUTTER clicks, off-screen. Again.

ELIANA (38) stands in the doorway with a camera,
photographing the emptiness. Composed, exact, dressed in
quiet greys. She lowers the camera and studies the room the
way other people study faces.

A HOTEL MANAGER (50s) hovers behind her, anxious.

                      HOTEL MANAGER
          Should I put flowers? People like
          flowers.

                                                             2.


                         ELIANA
             No people. No flowers.

                         HOTEL MANAGER
             It looks a bit... empty.

                         ELIANA
             That's what they're buying.

She reframes. Clicks.

                         ELIANA (CONT'D)
             A room where no one has ever
             happened.

The manager laughs, uncertain whether it was a joke.

It wasn't.

INT. ELIANA'S CAR - MOTORWAY - DAY

Rain-flecked windscreen. Eliana drives. In the back seat,
LENA (6), Eliana's daughter, asleep against a booster seat,
mouth open, entirely at peace.

Eliana taps the phone in its cradle. A VOICEMAIL plays.

                         NOTARY (V.O.)
                   (filtered, formal)
             ...once again our condolences. The
             house is unlocked for you -- your
             mother left everything in order.
             Her words, in the will:
             "Everything is in order."
                   (a small, respectful pause)
             She was a saint, that woman. The
             whole town says so.

The voicemail ends. Eliana drives. Her face gives nothing.

In the mirror: Lena, asleep. Eliana's eyes go to her for
one long second.

Then back to the road.

                                                             3.


EXT. FAMILY HOUSE - DAY

Grey daylight. A large, immaculate house at the edge of a
small town. More museum than home. Hedges trimmed to
geometry.

Eliana stands at the open front door. She does not step in
at once. She raises the camera and photographs the empty
hall before she enters it. A soft mechanical click.

On the step behind her, Lena waits with a backpack.

                      LENA
          Is this where you grew up?

                      ELIANA
          It's where I was raised.

She says it as if the two are different things. She steps
inside.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - VARIOUS - DAY

Eliana moves through the house, photographing it. Empty
rooms are her trade -- she knows how to frame an absence.

The camera clicks. A corridor. A made bed no one will sleep
in. A chair squared to a wall. Plastic still on a
lampshade.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - HELENE'S BEDROOM - DAY

Eliana opens the door. The bed is made hotel-tight, the
corners knifed. On the nightstand: a clock, stopped. A
glass, empty, coaster beneath it.

She opens the wardrobe. Identical blouses, evenly spaced.
White, cream, dove-grey. A centimetre of air between each
hanger.

She photographs the wardrobe. Click.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - HALLWAY - DAY

On one wall, family photographs: HELENE at every age --

                                                             4.


beautiful, composed, faintly sorrowful. A wedding. A
christening. A garden party.

Eliana stops. Looks closer.

In none of the pictures does her mother touch anyone. Not a
shoulder. Not a hand. In every frame, a few centimetres of
air around her, like glass.

Eliana photographs the photographs.

Lena appears in a doorway, delighted, holding a small china
bird she has found.

                      LENA
          Mama, look -- a little bird --

For a moment Eliana almost smiles. Almost crouches to look.
It is there in her -- the warm thing.

                      LENA (CONT'D)
          It smells like a hospital in here.

Lena's elbow nudges a frame on the shelf; it tilts.

                      ELIANA
          Don't touch anything.

It comes out flat. Automatic. The warm thing closes over.
Eliana hears herself -- hears whose voice it is -- and does
not soften it.

In the glass of a cabinet she catches her own reflection.
For a flash the face is too composed, too still. Like the
photographs.

She looks away.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - DAY

The town, in dark clothes, filling the good room. Coffee
cups on saucers. Voices kept at funeral pitch. Lena weaves
between legs, invisible to the adults.

Eliana moves through it with a tray, refilling, receiving.

                                                            5.


Every woman touches her arm the same way.

                      WOMAN IN BLACK
          Forty years next to that man, and
          never once did she raise her
          voice. Not even at the end.

                      SECOND WOMAN
          Not even at the end.

They say it like a litany. An OLD WOMAN captures Eliana's
hand in both of hers, presses it.

                      OLD WOMAN
          You'll keep the house the way she
          kept it. I can see it in you.

Eliana looks down at her captured hand.

                      ELIANA
          Thank you for coming.

She has said it eleven times today, in exactly the same
tone. She hears it. Number eleven sounds exactly like
number one.

Across the room, Lena has stopped under the wall of
photographs, looking up at Helene multiplied. The old woman
follows Eliana's glance.

                       OLD WOMAN
                (misty)
          Three of you now. Like one face
          passed down.

Eliana withdraws her hand. Gently. The way you take back an
object.

INT. FAMILY HOUSE - KITCHEN - DAY

Eliana sets the dish beside the others. Four covered dishes
in a row, squared, evenly spaced.

She looks at the row. Then adjusts the last one two
centimetres to the left. Perfect.

                                                             6.


She sees her own hand do it. Leaves it where it is.

INT. NOTARY'S OFFICE - DAY

A small office, diplomas, a rubber plant. The NOTARY (60s)
slides papers across the desk. Eliana signs. Her signature
is small, exact.

                      NOTARY
          The house, the accounts, the
          contents. All to you. No debts, no
          disputes. In thirty years I've
          never seen an estate like it.
                (admiring)
          "Everything is in order." That's
          all the will says. One sentence.

                      ELIANA
          That sounds like her.

The notary hesitates. Then takes a sealed envelope from the
file. Cream paper. On it, in the neat, patient hand: FOR MY
DAUGHTER.

                      NOTARY
          And this. To be given to you in
          person. Her instruction.

Eliana looks at the envelope. Doesn't take it at once.

                      NOTARY (CONT'D)
          She thought of everything, your
          mother.

                      ELIANA
          Yes.

She takes it. It weighs nothing. It weighs everything.

                      NOTARY
          The estate agent has the key for
          tomorrow, as you requested.