Sometimes when I had to work things out, or I wanted to make myself small and invisible because I was in trouble, I crawled into our wardrobe and sat in the dark. This seemed like a good wardrobe day, and I took off my shoes, pushed things around to make a kind of nest, climbed in and closed the door behind me. Thinking in the quiet can help when the world gets a bit too big or busy. I screwed my eyes shut and made a low humming noise, so I wouldn’t notice doors closing and people’s voices and Ruthy coming in and out of the bedroom. I tried thinking about the palace I’d live in when I became a knight. I would choose only pink and blue and white flowers – no orange ones. And I’d move Sixpence’s grave to the garden and put a special arbour over it. I don’t think an arbour counts as an idol, so it shouldn’t cause trouble with the Arranging Brethren. And because I am a very selfish child, just as my mother says, I started to think that if Caleb could just stop getting sick, I might one day have a guinea pig.

CHAPTER 13

Things were pretty frosty in our house for the next couple of weeks.

Usually within a few days of a fight, Mum and Dad made up and it would be okay again for a while, but Mum wouldn’t thaw this time, and Dad seemed to have given up. We heard them speaking in clipped, urgent voices in their room at night, and that felt strangely better than when there were no words coming from their room at all. Dad didn’t say goodbye to Mum in the mornings as far as I could tell, and sometimes he forgot to say goodbye to us too. I took to standing by his car door when I’d had my breakfast so I could at least see him before he left, and although he always looked sad, he would at least mess up my hair and smile at me before telling me to go inside before my mother started to look for me.

Mum didn’t go to church for two whole weeks. In fact, she didn’t go anywhere much for two whole weeks and was rarely out of her nightdress. She said Caleb was too sick for her to leave the house. Dad said Caleb would be fine wrapped up warmly in the middle hall.

Mum said, ‘There you go – you don’t really care about us. You just want to make sure you get to your precious meetings with all your friends and that monster of a sister-in-law.’

Dad said, ‘That monster of a sister-in-law was like a mother to me.’

Mum said, ‘Well aren’t you lucky you have her around given my mother is thousands of miles across the sea and I’ll probably never see her again.’

Dad said, ‘I’m not sure I could deal with two of you anyway.’