I was far from happy, and not in the slightest bit sleepy. Lettie leaned across the table and took my hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
And with that the door opened, and my father and my mother were in the kitchen. I wanted to hide, but the kitten shifted, reassuringly, on my lap, and Lettie smiled at me, a reassuring smile.
‘We are looking for our son,’ my father was saying, ‘and we have reason to believe …’ and even as he was saying that, my mother was striding towards me. ‘There he is! Darling, we were worried silly!’
‘You’re in a lot of trouble, young man,’ said my father.
Snip! Snip! Snip! went the black scissors, and the irregular section of fabric that Old Mrs Hempstock had been cutting fell to the table.
My parents froze. They stopped talking, stopped moving. My father’s mouth was still open, my mother stood on one leg, as unmoving as if she were a shop-window dummy.
‘What … what did you do to them?’ I was unsure whether or not I ought to be upset.
Ginnie Hempstock said, ‘They’re fine. Just a little snipping, then a little sewing, and it’ll all be good as gold.’ She reached down to the table, pointed to the scrap of faded dressing gown tartan resting upon it. ‘That’s your dad and you in the hallway, and that’s the bathtub. She’s snipped that out. So without any of that, there’s no reason for your daddy to be angry with you.’
I had not told them about the bathtub. I did not wonder how she knew.
Now the old woman was threading the needle with the red thread. She sighed, theatrically. ‘Old eyes,’ she said. ‘Old eyes.’ But she licked the tip of the thread and pushed it through the eye of the needle without any apparent difficulty.
‘Lettie. You’ll need to know what his toothbrush looks like,’ said the old woman. She began to sew the edges of the dressing gown together with tiny, careful stitches.
‘What’s your toothbrush look like?’ asked Lettie. ‘Quickly.’
‘It’s green,’ I said. ‘Bright green. A sort of appley green. It’s not very big. Just a green toothbrush, my size.’ I wasn’t describing it very well, I knew. I pictured it in my head, tried to find something more about it that I could describe, to set it apart from all other toothbrushes. No good. I imagined it, saw it in my mind’s eye, with the other toothbrushes in its red-and-white-spotted beaker above the bathroom sink.
‘Got it!’ said Lettie. ‘Nice job.’
‘Very nearly done here,’ said Old Mrs Hempstock.
Ginnie Hempstock smiled a huge smile, and it lit up her ruddy round face. Old Mrs Hempstock picked up the scissors and snipped a final time, and a fragment of red thread fell to the tabletop.
My mother’s foot came down. She took a step and then she stopped.
My father said, ‘Um.’
Ginnie said, ‘… and it made our Lettie so happy that your boy would come here and stay the night. It’s a bit old-fashioned here, I’m afraid.’
The old woman said, ‘We’ve got an inside lavvy nowadays. I don’t know how much more modern anybody could be. Outside lavvies and chamber pots were good enough for me.’
‘He ate a fine meal,’ said Ginnie. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘There was pie,’ I told my parents. ‘For dessert.’
My father’s brow was creased. He looked confused. Then he put his hand into the pocket of his car coat, and pulled out something long and green, with toilet paper wrapped around the top. ‘You forgot your toothbrush,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d want it.’
‘Now, if he wants to come home, he can come home,’ my mother was saying to Ginnie Hempstock. ‘He went to stay the night at the Kovacs’ house a few months ago, and by nine he was calling us to come and get him.’
Christopher Kovacs was two years older and a head taller than me, and he lived with his mother in a large cottage opposite the entrance to our lane, by the old green water tower. His mother was divorced. I liked her. She was funny, and drove a VW beetle, the first I had ever seen. Christopher owned many books I had not read, and was a member of the Puffin Club. I could read his Puffin books, but only if I went to his house. He would never let me borrow them.
There was a bunk bed in Christopher’s bedroom, although he was an only child. I was given the bottom bunk, the night I stayed there. Once I was in bed, and Christopher Kovacs’ mother had said goodnight to us and had turned out the bedroom light and closed the door, he leaned down and began squirting me with a water pistol he had hidden beneath his pillow. I had not known what to do.
‘This isn’t like when I went to Christopher Kovacs’ house,’ I told my mother, embarrassed. ‘I like it here.’
‘What are you wearing?’ She stared at my Wee Willie Winkie nightgown in puzzlement.
Ginnie said, ‘He had a little accident. He’s wearing that while his pyjamas are drying.’
‘Oh. I see,’ said my mother. ‘Well, good night, dear. Have a nice time with your new friend.’ She peered down at Lettie. ‘What’s your name again, dear?’
‘Lettie,’ said Lettie Hempstock.
‘Is it short for Letitia?’ asked my mother. ‘I knew a Letitia when I was at university. Of course, everybody called her Lettuce.’
Lettie just smiled, and did not say anything at all.
My father put my toothbrush down on the table in front of me. I unwrapped the toilet paper around the head. It was, unmistakably, my green toothbrush. Under his car coat my father was wearing a clean white shirt, and no tie.