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Back Things that Fall from the Sky Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. A Walled-In Girl
  4. 1
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  6. 3
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  8. 5
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  10. 7
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  27. 24
  28. 25
  29. 26
  30. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  31. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  32. A Mermaid Splashing
  33. 1
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  35. 3
  36. 4
  37. 5
  38. 6
  39. 7
  40. 8
  41. 9
  42. And That was The End of That
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  55. 13

I had never been in a real secret room before. I had never been to a manor house before, either, and now, suddenly, Auntie had moved into a fairy-tale castle.

Because the secret room seemed like a good place for talking about secret things, the sort you couldn’t mention at nursery, on the bus or at friends’ houses, I decided to ask Auntie Annu:

‘Auntie, how did you know the Double Jackpot numbers?’ To be on the safe side, I said it quite softly.

Auntie Annu nodded, thought for a moment and then looked me in the eye. ‘It was pure chance.’

‘Then why can’t you talk about it, if it was chance?’

‘That’s precisely why,’ Auntie Annu said. ‘It’s so hard to explain.’

We listened to the noises coming from downstairs. Mum was washing up in the kitchen, and Dad was in the hallway, making a racket in the middle of all the piles of boxes. You heard more clatter in the manor house than in the block of flats, because Auntie let us wear shoes indoors. This was because it was moving-in day, but also because the floors were so cold and the stairs were all splintery.

‘Saara! Saara! We’ll be going in a minute!’ Mum’s voice echoed up the chimney flue and through the bedroom stove.

I looked at Auntie Annu, who nodded, meaning we ought to go back downstairs.

We stepped silently out of the secret room and shut the wall panel.

‘Can we keep this as our secret?’ I whispered to Annu. ‘Sure,’ Auntie replied.

Then we went back downstairs.

I felt good all evening, because now I had a lady of the manor for an aunt, and I was the only one who knew about the secret room in the wall.

5

5

MUM NAKED. You can see light through Mum’s thighs as she scoops hot water from the cauldron in the sauna. Mum has long legs, and her knees click every time she bends them. Mum doesn’t have hairs on her thighs like Auntie Annu.

Mum stews on the sauna bench, smelling of coconut. She has coconut-scented conditioner in her hair. Mum’s back is curved. One of her ankles dangles in the air, and she makes it go round and round and round. I pretend I’m a troubadour and draw my finger along the folds on Mum’s tummy as I sing the sounds: plonk plonk plonk plink!

A long scar runs across Mum’s tummy. That’s where I came out.

That’s what Mum looks like naked.