Chapter 5

At midday I went down to the kitchen to prepare my own lunch, as instructed. Mother hadn’t said anything about making lunch for Clarabelle, but I made her a spam sandwich too. I also made one for Mother, cutting off the crusts carefully, just the way she liked. I tossed the crusts in the bin, thinking about when she’d taken some toast outside before. I couldn’t work out why she’d done that. She hated birds. And then I’d heard her saying something, like she was talking to someone, but that didn’t make sense either. There was no one out there to talk to – except for birds and bugs – and I doubted Mother would talk to animals. I probably would if I ever got the chance, but Mother was different.

Unable to stop frowning, I scanned the room. Mother hadn’t wiped down the kitchen, which was odd as she was usually so strict about keeping the house clean. To be helpful, I washed the dirty dishes, dried them and placed them in their cabinet, hoping Mother would be pleased. The problem was that it was hard to predict how Mother would react. I often wondered if all grown-ups were like Mother. In my books some of the adults were straightforward and predictable, but that was made up. That wasn’t real life. That was the perfect thing about books: you could turn reality into anything you wanted it to be.

If I wrote a book, every bit of the story would be set outside and the main character would be a girl who lived outside and had lots of brothers and sisters, a mother and a father. The girl wouldn’t be allergic to the light, and she’d be able to turn into a bird whenever she wanted to and fly all over the world and have wild adventures in all kinds of wonderful places. I sighed and finished wiping the surfaces with a dreamy smile on my lips.