Prin looks up at Mum again. She is busy wiping the wet from her cheeks.

‘But,’ says Prin, her voice louder now, ‘she is!’

Daddy shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘She’s cutting an onion.’

Prin looks all around the kitchen. On the table, on the draining board, on the granite island in the middle. She can’t see an onion anywhere. ‘Where?’ She is still holding the pieces of doll.

Daddy stands up; he’s very tall when he stands up straight. He goes to the fridge and opens the door. It looks so nice and cool in there. Mum is still standing by the sink. Daddy pulls out a clear plastic bag and sets it on the draining board beside Mum. Prin can see that there are onions inside: four of them, brown and crackly. Daddy takes one out, then lifts the chopping board from behind the toaster and sets that down next to Mum too, the onion on top. And he takes a knife out of the knife block. ‘There,’ he says, when it’s all laid out. ‘Do you see?’

She looks back and forth from Daddy to Mum and back again. Grown-ups know things, Prin understands this. They are always trying to teach you lessons, and Prin always tries to be quick to learn. And here it is: another lesson. No tears in this house! And she knows just how much Daddy likes things to be fine. And suddenly Prin sees, it, just like Daddy said. It’s as though all the little pieces come together. It’s just like the zoetrope, and playing with the dolls, and all the stories she writes in her head. She gets it! Why, she says to herself, feeling more grown-up than she ever has before, it’s just Make-Believe! Who would have thought? Make-Believe is a grown-ups’ game too! They Make Believe and then it’s real. How clever! she thinks. How clever is that?

She smiles up at Daddy and he smiles back. He stands next to Mum with his hand on her shoulder. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘what is it you were hollering about?’

Prin looks down at what she’s holding in her hands. She brings her left hand and her right hand together. Body and head join back up. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘Nothing. I can hardly remember. I think everything is just perfect after all.’

It feels very strange, and new, but very clever.

Daddy smiles down at her, his big crinkly smile, and Prin smiles up at him, right back.

Back upstairs, Prin sets the doll down on the floor with the others. If she lies it down, it looks just fine. She tells Jane not to move that one. She’ll think up another part for that doll in her story. Sleeping Beauty, something like that. Jane is just happy not to be in trouble. She’s quite happy to play Prin’s story-game now.