In the orange moonlight I could see an old woman—I was almost certain it was Old Mrs. Hempstock, although it was hard to see her face properly—walking up and down. She had a big long stick she was leaning on as she walked, like a staff. She reminded me of the soldiers I had seen on a trip to London, outside Buckingham Palace, as they marched backwards and forwards on parade.
I watched her, and I was comforted.
I climbed back into my bed in the dark, lay my head on the empty pillow, and thought, I’ll never go back to sleep, not now, and then I opened my eyes and saw that it was morning.
There were clothes I had never seen before on a chair by the bed. There were two china jugs of water—one steaming hot, one cold—beside a white china bowl that I realized was a handbasin, set into a small wooden table. The fluffy black kitten had returned to the foot of the bed. It opened its eyes as I got up: they were a vivid blue-green, unnatural and odd, like the sea in summer, and it mewed a high-pitched questioning noise. I stroked it, then I got out of bed.
I mixed the hot water and the cold in the basin, and I washed my face and my hands. I cleaned my teeth with the cold water. There was no toothpaste, but there was a small round tin box on which was written Max Melton’s Remarkably Efficacious Tooth Powder, in old-fashioned letters. I put some of the white powder on my green toothbrush, and cleaned my teeth with it. It tasted minty and lemony in my mouth.
I examined the clothes that had been left out for me. They were unlike anything I had ever worn before. There were no underpants. There was a white undershirt, with no buttons but with a long shirttail. There were brown trousers that stopped at the knees, a pair of long white stockings, and a chestnut-colored jacket with a V cut into the back, like a swallow’s tail. The light brown socks were more like stockings. I put the clothes on as best I could, wishing there were zips or clasps, rather than hooks and buttons and stiff, unyielding buttonholes.
The shoes had silver buckles in the front, but the shoes were too big and did not fit me, so I went out of the room in my stockinged feet, and the kitten followed me.
To reach my room the night before I had walked upstairs and, at the top of the stairs, turned left. Now I turned right, and walked past Lettie’s bedroom (the door was ajar, the room was empty) and made for the stairs. But the stairs were not where I remembered them. The corridor ended in a blank wall, and a window that looked out over woodland and fields.
The black kitten with the blue-green eyes mewed, loudly, as if to attract my attention, and turned back down the corridor in a self-important strut, tail held high. It led me down the hall, round a corner and down a passage I had never seen before, to a staircase. The kitten bounced amiably down the stairs, and I followed.
Ginnie Hempstock was standing at the foot of the stairs. “You slept long and well,” she said. “We’ve already milked the cows. Your breakfast is on the table, and there’s a saucer of cream by the fireplace for your friend.”
“Where’s Lettie, Mrs. Hempstock?”
“Off on an errand, getting stuff she may need. It has to go, the thing at your house, or there will be trouble, and worse will follow. She’s already bound it once, and it slipped the bounds, so she needs to send it home.”
“I just want Ursula Monkton to go away,” I said. “I hate her.”
Ginnie Hempstock put out a finger, ran it across my jacket. “It’s not what anyone else hereabouts is wearing these days,” she said. “But my mam put a little glamour on it, so it’s not as if anyone will notice. You can walk around in it all you want, and not a soul will think there’s anything odd about it. No shoes?”
“They didn’t fit.”
“I’ll leave something that will fit you by the back door, then.”
“Thank you.”
She said, “I don’t hate her. She does what she does, according to her nature. She was asleep, she woke up, she’s trying to give everyone what they want.”
“She hasn’t given me anything I want. She says she wants to put me in the attic.”
“That’s as may be. You were her way here, and it’s a dangerous thing to be a door.” She tapped my chest, above my heart, with her forefinger. “And she was better off where she was. We would have sent her home safely—done it before for her kind a dozen times. But she’s headstrong, that one. No teaching them. Right. Your breakfast is on the table. I’ll be up in the nine-acre field if anyone needs me.”
There was a bowl of porridge on the kitchen table and beside it, a saucer with a lump of golden honeycomb on it, and a jug of rich yellow cream.
I spooned up a lump of the honeycomb and mixed it into the thick porridge, then I poured in the cream.
There was toast, too, cooked beneath the grill as my father cooked it, with homemade blackberry jam. There was the best cup of tea I have ever drunk. By the fireplace, the kitten lapped at a saucer of creamy milk, and purred so loudly I could hear it across the room.
I wished I could purr too. I would have purred then.
Lettie came in, carrying a shopping bag, the old-fashioned kind you never seem to see anymore: elderly women used to carry them to the shops, big woven bags that were almost baskets, raffia-work outside and lined with cloth, with rope handles. This basket was almost full. Her cheek had been scratched, and had bled, although the blood had dried. She looked miserable.