A day so still it seems stunned. ‘It must be Sunday,’ Tidge murmurs, trying to work it out. ‘Hang on, no, I — I’ve lost count.’
You too. Your brain is winding down. The children are clotted at the window, pale and translucent. They haven’t been grubby for so long, proper grubby of black under fingernails and sunshine sweat and mud silky soft. Which is the opposite of stillness, which is now.
‘The doll doesn’t look worried,’ Tidge says, peering at it quizzically.
The sky hangs sullen, the colour of wet slate on a roof. Thunder skips across it like a series of bombs being dropped. The tree outside shivers. Mouse peels away.
Wish list: Air that’s got no complication in it. Like at home.
The waiting now is like a dog with its head on its paws. ‘Trust,’ Soli whispers, her hand resting lightly on Tidge’s hip, ‘just trust.’
The sun bursts momentarily through cloud. He smiles. Tugs on the heavy curtains. Swings. Laughs in delight. Your boy’s back!
He’s joined. By Mouse, whooping, ‘To stop the thinking, all right,’ and suddenly the three of them are bouncing off the walls in this place, trampolining on the bed, doing handstands against the walls. And it feels like the first time your youngest has ever done anything remotely resembling physical activity and your daughter says it’s ironic that his arrival in the real world should coincide with being in this place, in which the real world has been left behind.
‘Temp-o-rarily,’ Tidge chants, ‘temp-o-rarily!’ Glee smiling them up, and yourself.
It has not rained light for many days.