2

There was a whisper’s edge of envelope in the parking meter.

It flashed white in the sunlight and Madeleine pressed down on her bicycle pedal.

Three days now she’d cycled by, and three days it had been there.

The crack of white light.

If you took a rainbow in your hand and snapped it together like a fan, it would make a crack of light.

That was Isaac Newton, still in her head: I have often with Admiration beheld, that all the Colours of the Prisme being made to converge . . . reproduced light, entirely and perfectly white, and not at all sensibly differing from a direct Light of the Sun.

She cycled to the end of the street and the colours of last night’s party wheeled before her eyes.

The sweet yellow of the ‘get well’ freesias that Jack had brought along for Holly. The bright red of the raspberries that Belle handed over without looking at Holly’s head—then Belle looked sideways and let loose a string of swear words, ending, ‘You got better!’

The even brighter red of the rims of Denny’s eyes when he heard how they had almost lost Holly.

The candy pink of the bracelet beads that Darshana’s little girls hid behind their backs, making people guess: ‘Which hand is it in?’ The confusion on their faces when people chose right. ‘Choose again!’ before holding out a bare palm, triumphant. Or giving up the game and flinging Belle’s swear words around the room like streamers, while Darshana advised, ‘Just ignore them. Just ignore them. We are ignoring you, little ones!’

The dove-grey of Federico’s shirt collar as he danced, his eyes closed, smiling slightly, swaying his hips side to side, a quick turn, remembering himself and sitting down.

Madeleine stopped.

She stood astride her bike at an intersection and something swooped past all the colour of these memories and into her mind.

As a boy, Isaac Newton had placed a candle in a lantern, attached the lantern to a kite and set it free into the night. The villagers were much affrighted by the sight, said the account that she had read.

She realised something.

Exchanging her past life for this real life here in Cambridge didn’t mean the colours had to go.

Nor that colours could only be dismal and grey.

They could be bright and beautiful, a trail of light; imagination.

She could, if she wanted, be a kite trailing a lantern. She could be the candlelit lantern itself. She could fly with the comets and stars.

She swung her bike around and rode back to fetch the letter.