the entrance feeling dizzy and ready to cry again.
Are you OK? Claude asks.
We nod, miserably. Although Claude is a grownup, he doesn’t seem to know what to do next. For a minute he is just standing there, panting like a dog. The hailstones are thumping down on the roof and on the wooden shutters where the windows would be. Claude throws the raincoat down on to the stone floor of the barn and turns to close the door.
Have you got any towels? I ask him.
He keeps his back to me and doesn’t answer. Then he turns and stares hard.
Could we have some towels, please? I ask again.
Claude looks around. Right at the back of the barn are some bales of hay stacked up against the wall.
Sit down over there, Pea, he says. I’ll find something. And he goes back out into the storm, slamming the door behind him.
The hay smells fusty and is scratchy on my bare legs. I tuck them up under my wet dress and wrap my arms around myself, shivering.
Let’s have a look around, while he’s gone, says Margot.
I daren’t, I say. What if he comes back? He told us to sit here.
Not me, just you, she says. I’m not scared. And she hops down from the hay to go exploring. I follow her with my eyes.
Against one wall there is a big pile of logs, stacked neatly in rows. Margot sniffs at them, but I can smell them from here. They smell like just the firewood we have at home, which is chopped-up oak trees. By the door where we came in there are two sacks of dog food, some paint tins with drippy lids, white and yellow, and a stack of black buckets. Margot looks in the buckets and shrugs. Empty.
On the other wall there is an old armoire by the shuttered window and lots of tools hung up on nails, just like Papa has at home: saws and knives, spades and rakes and hammers.
The hay takes up half of the other wall, and then in the space that is left, not far from where I am sitting, is a corner cluttered with big things that wouldn’t hang up on nails. Margot stops by the corner and points.
Look, Pea! Look!
There is a wheelbarrow, a ladder, some ropes and tarpaulins and right at the back there are two shiny little red bikes.
Chapter 5
Can we ride on them? The bikes have taken my mind off the bruises coming up on my neck and back.
Claude, who has just walked back through the barn door holding towels, looks over at the bikes.
Ah, he says. Listen, we’d need to ask your maman first. He passes me a towel and I wrap it around me. He drapes another one over my head so I look like I’m getting married.
She won’t mind, says Margot.
Really, Maman won’t mind at all as long as we don’t bother her, I add.
Claude scowls at the bikes. He crouches down and brings his rained-on head close.
These things have to be done properly, he says. His voice sounds like the rumble is coming up from his tummy. These are very special bikes, you know. I don’t share them with just anybody who asks. He winks at me. Claude winks a lot. He’s very funny.
But they’re too little for you, says Margot.
And also, there are two of them and only one of you.
A very good point, says Claude. Can you ride a bike?
I don’t know, I admit.
I bet you could if you tried, he says. You look like the kind of girl who’d be particularly clever at bike-riding. Maybe I’ll teach you. Claude frowns slightly. But not today.
Why not today?
You’re all wet. You’d make the handlebars go rusty.
Merlin has come into the barn, maybe to see what the fuss is all about, and he trots over. I am wrapped in the towels, but my dress is still wet and I’m cold. I hug Merlin up against me. His tail thumps against the bale of hay. It feels cosier now. The banging on the roof has stopped and there is just a dripping noise. A bird chirrups outside the window. A blackbird, I think.
Claude scratches his head. His hair is slicked back, showing his ugly part.
Claude, what is wrong with your head?
Claude looks very surprised, as though he just saw himself in a mirror for the first time. His hand goes up to touch where the hair isn’t.
Didn’t you know? I say.
Well, yes, says Claude. But you’re the first person