The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,31

cannot reach the lock.

Things go down into the cellar and we don’t see them for a long time. Things come up from the cellar to surprise us. At Christmas, Papa comes up from the cellar with tinsel and baubles and a small stable with a manger and sheep. When Maman and Papa were happy, they would bring bottles of wine up at night-time, dusty and smelling like not-washed hair. Papa would wipe them carefully, then pull the cork out, ploc. They would sit next to each other, at the kitchen table, twizzling their grownup glasses and wrapping their feet together when they thought I wasn’t looking. One day, after the baby died, everything from the baby’s room disappeared and was swallowed by the cellar.

The sun is high above the courtyard now and baking hot. Maman is asleep or trying to be asleep in her room, with all her peach juice washed away and there are no more animal sounds. There is not going to be lunch today, so I get a drink of milk. Milk is great because it is good for thirstiness and hungriness at the same time, and because I can reach it out of the fridge. Then I go to the toilet.

Margot is already there and she is leaning against the violet tiles wearing a great big smile.

My good idea has got even better, she says, while I do a wee.

What is it? But then she doesn’t even need to tell me because I see for myself.

See? Génial! she says. Shall we?

I nod. Génial! I whisper.

The door is propped open by a cardboard box. The light has been left on and a metal staircase like one of Maman’s long curls twists down into the fusty cellar smells. Margot goes first and I follow. I forget to flush the toilet.

The staircase makes a clanging noise as we go down. I try to walk more softly, on cat paws, but you can still hear a soft clank with every step. Margot gets bored and pushes to the front. She leads the way down fast, not paying any attention to her feet at all. As we go deeper into the cellar the air gets cold and salty. The coolness is a very nice surprise. I didn’t know you could find anywhere this cool at midday in August.

The cellar is enormous, and very quiet. There are no windows, no outside noises. No birds, or crickets, nothing. There are cobwebs and corners. The walls are grey and unfriendly. There are boxes stacked high, and big black bags bulging in rows.

Shall we open some? says Margot. But I can already feel my heartbeat thumping on my chest like banging on a door.

I look up; above my head must be the toilet, the kitchen, the pantry, the living room, everything. What if it just falls down?

It won’t fall down, says Margot.

I tiptoe around a corner and the cellar is different again. There are two gigantic wooden barrels, lying on their sides, with holes in the front big enough to crawl through.

I will if you will, says Margot.

Through the cobwebs? I say. Yuck.

Grey cobwebs like curtains drape from the ceiling to the top of the barrels and then down to the concrete floor. The cellar smells horrible.

Margot is poking around a pile of shoeboxes. Some of them have names that I cannot read, but one of them, right on top, is labelled just ‘old’. The lid lifts off easily, it is not taped down. The box is only half full. Inside paper photographs are stacked neatly. The top one is a baby in a yellow laundry basket. It is awake and looking right at me. The baby is wearing a little yellow dress, but it doesn’t come far enough down. You can see its nappy, and its fat baby legs sticking out like chubby scissors. It has not very much orange hair, stuck up in funny points, and green eyes, with bits of blue and brown like a kaleidoscope. Like Maman.

I hold the photo for a while, then put it to one side and look at the others. There are more baby pictures, and pictures of Maman on her own looking happy. In one photo Maman is standing under dark clouds by a lake, rain is coming in sideways at her and her hair is blowing the same way as the rain, a few strands of it plastered across her face. Her hair is the only colourful thing in the photograph. She is wearing a