The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,61
in my wardrobe and pulls out the lilac dress that was my favourite last summer.
This is your favourite, right? You can wear this.
I smile and take the dress. It is a dress for the four-year-old me. When I put it on it is much too tight, but somehow I like how it makes me feel.
While we are having our breakfast, the mouse skitters out from behind the curtain, right behind Maman. I hold my breath. Margot pouts. We like the mouse. But grownups don’t like mice and Maman probably is going to want to kill it.
We’re right. Maman sees the mouse out of the corner of her eye and leaves the table to fetch a mousetrap from the pantry. She takes down a sausage from its pointy hook and a sharp knife from the sink. She gives it a wipe. Then she chops off the end of the sausage, leaving on the metal clip and the dangling string, and loads it on to the mousetrap. The mice in our house like sausage.
Maman draws back the curtain so she can put down the trap, but straight away there is a funny smell. It doesn’t smell like mice, which actually don’t smell much at all. It smells more like our basket of dirty laundry, full of damp towels and dirty clothes still waiting to be washed.
Oh I don’t believe it, she says.
What is it, Maman?
A leak, she says. The kitchen sink is leaking.
We are watching her face to see what to do. It hasn’t decided yet if it is a fighting face or a face for tears.
Peony, could you bring me a spanner from the barn, please?
OK, I say, hopping down.
Do you know what a spanner looks like?
A big metal dog bone?
More or less.
The barn door is open and we step around the sticky mess, all covered in ants and flies. Inside the barn is shady and cool and in the corner are Papa’s tool drawers, where all his tools are put away neat and tidy.
Top, middle or bottom? I say to Margot.
Middle.
I open it and she is right.
Good guess! I say.
I find a spanner quickly. In fact I find three, one small, one medium and one big, but as I am shutting the drawer, the smallest one slips from my fingers and clatters to the floor. When I pick it up I notice something lying nearby in a white crack of light. It looks like a hand.
Agh! I make a little scream and jump back.
That’s not a hand, says Margot.
What is it?
That’s a glove.
I stare at the fingers and along the back of the hand to where it stops, with the scratchy fastener around the wrist.
A glove. Papa’s glove. I pick it up and hold it in my fingers as though I were holding Papa’s hand. It is too soft and floppy, but it smells right.
I am going to keep it, I say. I hide the glove under a rock by the barn; it can go and live in the girl-nest later.
When I get back to the kitchen Maman is kneeling on the floor, getting her dress all dirty. But her belly is too big. She cannot get under the sink to fix the leak.
Her face makes up its mind and she starts to cry.
We could phone somebody to come and fix it, I say.
And pay them with what?
I don’t know, I say. I’m sorry.
She drops the spanner down by the sink and pulls the curtain back across. She leaves the mousetrap by the side.
Don’t touch it, she says, and she goes heavily back upstairs.
We sit at the table for quite a long time, thinking that Maman is going to be back soon. I stare at the mousetrap hoping that the mouse isn’t. For a long time, nothing happens. The clock ticks to eight o’clock and goes ting.
I’ve had a very good idea, says Margot. She has something very important to say, you can tell. An announcement. She is waiting until she has got my full attention.
OK, I say, what is your good idea?
I know how to win the challenge, says Margot. What we need is a new papa, and Claude can be it. She smiles proudly. It is a very big announcement.
A new papa? Can you get those?
I think anyone can be a papa. We need someone who can fix things in the house, and who can make Maman smile. If we had a papa she would have to do proper cooking again to make his dinners.