There are adults clustered around the church, but they aren’t doing anything useful. A couple of Egyptians are worshipping a tombstone, and someone’s having a Victorian picnic by a vaulted grave.
Two men standing in the tower, wearing not much more than cardboard headdresses, blow into scraps of bamboo and bang on an oil drum. I’m guessing this is ceremonial Aztec unmusic.
I look along the roof. There’s honestly nothing stopping the children falling, except some guttering and their fingernails.
‘How did they get up there?’ asks Henry.
‘There’s a staircase in the tower, and a door – they use it for maintenance,’ says Maria.
Ursula points her camera at the roof and starts filming. ‘They’re mostly year ones,’ she says. ‘How did she get hold of them?’
‘I suppose their mums and dads took them to school,’ says Maria.
‘Or forgot to pick them up,’ I say, staring up at the roof and trying to think of a way to get them down.
The sky loses a little more light. It’s weird, like someone’s pulled a grey curtain over the day. Birds cluster in the tall yews, and fall silent.
The only bird sounds now come from the tower.
‘Do you know how long the eclipse was supposed to last?’ I ask Henry.
He shrugs. ‘Nope, but it’s not a proper one, only a half- one.’
I look up. Miss Primrose is gazing at the sky, clutching a huge curved knife that might or might not be cardboard. The little kids are gazing at her, transfixed and in most cases crying.
‘Are they on both sides of the roof?’ I whisper to Maria.
She slips off around the church to check and comes back with the good news that they’re all on our side.
‘Mattresses,’ I say. ‘I think the best bet would be loads of mattresses. Have you any at the vicarage?’
‘There’s all the camping gear, for the scouts.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I say, handing my Derf gun to Henry. We run back through the bushes in the odd half-light.
‘Maria, what did you say about your parents and the coffee?’
‘Oh yeah – they always buy it from the supermarket.’ We crash through the front door and Maria charges down the cellar steps and wrenches open a cupboard door. ‘Here.’ A pile of foam rubber mats falls out on the floor.
‘Always from the supermarket?’ We grab armfuls of the mats and struggle back up the stairs.
‘Almost always. But,’ she says, ‘my uncle, the same one that gave me the computer, brought them a packet the other day, expensive beans; it’s in the kitchen.’
‘I’ll be with you in a sec.’ I dump the mats in the hall and dodge past Maria’s mum, who’s serenading herself in the hall mirror. There on the kitchen top is a large white paper bag, MUSEUM CAFE, ONE KILO, Ground Colombian Roast printed across it. I pull open the top. At least half has gone. A cafetière stands on the counter top, mostly drunk. I put my hands against it and it’s warm. So they’ve had at least two cups each since we came back.
‘YES!’ I say to the vicarage cat. ‘YES!’ He looks up at me as if I was an alien, and slips out through the cat flap.
I take the bag of coffee and empty it over the flower beds outside.
‘YES!’
I sniff the empty bag. There’s nothing odd about it, it just smells of coffee. I open the cupboards and check for other things. There’s a bar of museum chocolate, also half eaten. I sniff it, tempted to take a bite, and bung it in the bin.
And then I have another thought. Chocolate? Wasn’t that ice cream that Mum gave me home-made? It tasted great, but perhaps that’s why I had that strange dream? And Finn, he’s been stuffing the chocolate down – every time I’ve seen him recently he’s had chocolate around his face. That’ll be why he mummified the cat.
‘YES!’
I run back into the hall, fill my arms with the mattresses and head towards the church, meeting Henry and three of Marcus’s friends coming back with Maria for more padding.
‘I’ve solved it,’ I shout. ‘It’s coffee and chocolate!’
‘What?’ says Henry, running along beside me.
I reach the church and dump the mattresses next to Maria’s.
‘From the cafe. You don’t necessarily have to eat it there, but bringing it home is just as bad. Maria’s parents had a huge bag of coffee – and some chocolate.’
‘C’mon,’ says Marcus. ‘Stop faffing around with those things; let’s get up there and take out the guys in the tower.’
‘No, let’s wait,’ I say. ‘Otherwise the tinies’ll fall off and there’ll be nothing to break their fall.’
‘So? It’s collateral damage,’ says Marcus, looking as mad as Maria’s dad.
‘Marcus! This is real – wake up. Those are real children up there crying.’
Marcus swallows, clicks the chamber on his Derf gun and nods. ‘Fair enough – so what are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to coax her down.’
‘How?’
I look behind to see Henry and Maria dragging a double mattress over the gravestones.
‘Henry? Do you think you could be the sun at last?’