50

Mouse suddenly dives in, hunger getting the better of him. His siblings cheer as he works his way from the custard first to the rice last and then one by one they flop back onto the bed, and laugh. Basking for a moment in the fabulousness of transcending; believing, for a moment, in that Salt Cottage certainty: that everything will be all right. Because yes, the table’s soaked in their parents’ gleeful touch. So yes, they must have planned it. And yes, the three of them are hidden away in here, warm and safe.

Your youngest burps in satisfaction (the little bugger) and now they’re all doing it (the little buggers) and no one’s stopping them and they’re suddenly laughing endlessly, can’t stop. Tidge’s then singing ‘Food, Glorious Food’ in burps and placing a silver dome on his head and now they’re all marching around the room and clanging the domes with knives and jumping on the bed because no one is stopping them and they can, they can. The three of them finally crash onto the mattress in a jumbly heap and are quiet, breathing deep, and their little cage of a room suddenly has such a tranquillity soaked into it, like a place where you’re put to recover and rest, to clean yourself of the past. A metre from this room the grown-up world starts but not here, not now, not yet. This, for the moment, is the wonder house. Sanctified by joy.

Tidge gets all cackly again. Turns to his brother and hugs him and as he clamps him tight he whispers, ‘Mummy,’ then again, urgently, ‘Mummy,’ catching the smell of you, your gardenia perfume, on his brother’s skin and clothes and hair. It’s everywhere, as if you’ve rolled each of them in your love before letting them go, like flour into dough, folding it through them.

‘I can feel her here,’ Tidge whispers in wonder.

‘Me too,’ Soli says, ‘she’s like salt in a fishing village. All over the place.’

She turns in that vivid air but you’ve caught it. Her eyes blinking like a semaphore signal. The crack in the mask.

They stand not still, they never close their eyelids, those sentinels of Gods who wander round us.