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CHAPTER SIX

Louisa

Then

Peeking out from under the duvet I am surrounded by darkness. I know I shouldn’t get out of bed because Mr Moon is still awake, watching over me until it’s time for the world to switch itself back on. Mummy once told me that a man lived on the moon called Aiken Drum. She said he had hair made out of spaghetti and played upon a ladle. I don’t know what a ladle is and I often wonder if his hair is spaghetti like the type I eat at school or spaghetti hoops, which are orange like my hair.

I look for Aiken Drum but I can’t see him. I even jump out of bed and tiptoe across the freezing-cold floor made out of scratchy wood and towards the window where Jack Frost blows me a kiss. But Aiken Drum isn’t there, just like always. I wonder if he’s really real or whether he’s just made up like Santa and Daddy.

Wrapping my Sooty dressing gown tightly around me, I tiptoe down the stairs. I don’t like Sooty any more; he’s for babies and I’m five now, or maybe six.

Once downstairs, I turn on the television with the remote control. If you press the green button, it makes the TV come on. I used to think there were real people who lived in the television but I was very silly back then, not grown-up like I am now. I wish it was that easy to wake Mummy up, to just be able to switch her on and bring her to life. I wonder how she will be feeling when she gets up, whether she’ll bounce around the room like Tigger or have her sad face on like Eeyore.

I pick up a shiny book with thin pages off the coffee table and flick through it. I can’t read the words because I don’t go to school that much and the pictures are rubbish, like photographs of people looking sad and a whole page all about make-up. I like it best when Mummy tells me stories with her mouth and face. She says she just ‘makes it up as she goes along’, but I think she’s a better storyteller than Roald Dahl. Monty and Mary is my favourite. It’s about two twin monkeys who get into mischief. My most favourite of all is a story where Monty and Mary get accidentally locked in the ball pool at Ikea, and have to stay there all night, playing among the multicoloured balls. When Mummy is having an Eeyore day, she says Monty and Mary have gone on holiday and will be back soon. She never tells me where they’ve gone on holiday though.

My belly begins to crumble into tiny pieces and so I go into the kitchen and switch on the light. My eyes flick up towards the calendar, which hangs by its neck from a rusty nail stuck into the kitchen wall. I don’t understand what the numbers mean, but I like looking at my tiny brown handprints, which are supposed to be Rudolph’s antlers, and the picture of me in the middle which Miss Pearson took with her camera at Christmas time. She put some red paint on a paper plate in the middle of the blue table and I was allowed to dip my pinky finger in and dot my nose, which was really fun.

After I look at the calendar, I stand on the kitchen stool, which is a little wobbly, and stretch really far into the cupboard until my hand skims a plastic bag. The bread is a little green in places, like snot, but I pick it out and pop two slices into the toaster. Peter, the man who comes sometimes to check on me and Mummy, said I should never boil water in the kettle, but Mummy never seems to mind, and she always says ‘ta, love’ whenever I give her a cup of tea, even if sometimes she says it’s ‘as weak as piss’. She smiles though and ruffles my hair so I think she’s only kidding.

A few moments later, I juggle the hot cup of tea and a plate of toast in both hands as I make my way towards the stairs. It’s a little hard to carry both things at once but I stick my tongue out and make my eyes really wide so I can concentrate. As I pass the living-room door, I notice The Wizard of Oz on the television. Mummy says The Wizard of Oz is a classic, and that they ‘don’t make ‘em like that any more’. I like it too, but only the colourful bit, and not the witch who tries to hurt Dorothy or the enormous green Wizard who is just a head.

Once I reach the top of the stairs, I put the plate of toast in the bend of my arm and turn the doorknob to Mummy’s bedroom with the other. Mr Moon has gone to sleep now and switched on his bedroom light. This means Mummy’s room is now bright and colourful, like when Dorothy’s house falls from the sky and lands in Oz.

At first I think Mummy is playing a game. But Mummy doesn’t play games very often.

Especially not with my skipping rope.