“You can come with me for now. Until we find a solution.” She drags Lampie back through the doorway and into the living room.
The sheriff and his men are moving things and carrying them around. They have taken everything out of the cupboards and piled it all up untidily in the corner. Pans, cups, the bread bin. The rug has been rolled up roughly and placed on top. One of the deputies comes in with two angrily cackling chickens and releases them into the room. Shards of Lampie’s mother’s mirror lie all over the floor. Her father is slumped in his chair, looking at the floor, not at her. He is still angry—he must be. She picks up a shard of mirror.
“No, no, no, child, put that down. You’ll cut yourself,” says Miss Amalia. She grabs Lampie’s arm. Suddenly Lampie remembers how Miss Amalia used to hit children on the fingers if they fidgeted or giggled. And that it was actually quite a relief when she had to leave the school.
“Did you drop it?”
Lampie nods at Miss Amalia like a good girl, but clamps her fist around the piece of glass. It gives her fingers a little nip.
Mother, she thinks. What on earth is happening?
“Come with me.” The woman takes her by the wrist and pulls her to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sheriff. Gentlemen.”
The men tip their hats. “Miss Amalia,” they mumble.
“Oh, and you’re most welcome,” she says pointedly.
“Oh, of course, of course,” replies the sheriff quickly. “Thank you. Whatever would we do without you?”
“I often wonder that myself,” says Miss Amalia, pulling Lampie outside and into the night.
Lampie looks back over her shoulder one last time. Her father is sitting in the shadow; she can hardly even see him now.
He does not look up.
Miss Amalia’s plan
Lampie lies with her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness. Earlier, Miss Amalia made up the couch for her to sleep on and tucked in the stiffly starched sheets around her. Then she turned off the light and said, “Now sleep well, child.” But Lampie cannot sleep.
The room around her smells strange, of soap or something that is even cleaner. There is very little in the room: a table with straight-backed chairs, a cupboard, a cross on the wall, and a big clock in the corner that ticks really loudly, all night long.
She wriggles one hand out of the tight sheets and lays it on the pillow beside her cheek. Not against it—that would hurt too much. Her tongue keeps touching the spot on the inside of her cheek where the skin feels broken and it tastes of blood. And in her mind, she keeps seeing her father. How he looked and what he said and then what he said next and what he did after that. If only she could talk to him for a moment. Just listen to him breathing or snoring.
Will she be able to go back home tomorrow?
Home to a house with no furniture. Have they taken everything with them?
Oh, but that wouldn’t be so bad. They could always sit on boxes and eat off wooden boards. She could look for things on the beach. When she is home and everything is back to normal. When she has said exactly the right thing to her father and he is no longer angry with her. When she has worked out what that right thing might be.
She squeezes the shard in her other hand, under the sheet. Mother, I don’t know how to put this right.
Ssh. Go to sleep, my sweet child. Tomorrow is another day.
In the dark she hears a sound and something heavy jumps onto her legs. With soft paws, a cat walks over Lampie and nudges its nose into the cheek that does not hurt. Luckily it does not smell of soap, just of cat. The cat lies down next to her head, purring. She can feel its warmth and its soft fur against her cheek, all night long.
And her mother is right: the next morning is the start of another day.
“When can I go home?” Lampie is sitting at the breakfast table, her plate full of little squares of bread. She is not hungry.
“Home?” Miss Amalia peers over the top of her teacup at Lampie—and at Lampie’s cheek, which is very swollen. She shakes her head a few times. “It’s just as well you’re out of that place.”
Lampie tries to hide her cheek behind her hand. “But when can I…?”
“I have an appointment at the town hall later today to decide that.”
“To decide what?”
“What to do with you. What is best for you.”
“I want to go home.”
“So that we can weigh all the interests. Particularly your own, of course.”
“I want to go home.”
“What a child wants is not always the best thing,” says Miss Amalia, eating her bread with dainty bites.
When Miss Amalia has left, Lampie goes to the bathroom and takes a look at herself in the mirror. It’s quite a bruise. The edges are already turning green, and the skin of her cheek is red and swollen. Luckily she is not at home. Luckily her father does not have to see this.
I am absolutely furious with your father, says her mother’s voice inside her head.
Yes, but, Mother, says Lampie. He really didn’t mean to do it.
I’m sure he didn’t.
And he must regret it.
I hope he’s howling with regret, her mother says angrily. My poor child. Your poor cheek.
The cat winds around her ankles. Lampie lifts it onto her lap and strokes it all morning, strokes the warm fur until it crackles.
Miss Amalia is cheerful when she comes home. She has a letter that explains everything, she says. She unfolds a sheet of paper and puts it on the table in front of Lampie.
“Take a look,” she says. “Everything is coming together very nicely.”
She unties her bonnet and takes it out into the hallway.
Lampie looks for a while at the white paper with the black letters on it and strokes the cat on her lap. After a while, she hears the water in the kettle singing, and Miss Amalia comes back holding a tray with tea and cups on it.
“So, what do you think?”
“When can I go home?”
Miss Amalia puts the tray on the table. “That’s all in the letter.”
Lampie can feel herself blushing. She strokes the cat even harder and looks at the table.
“Oh, of course,” says Miss Amalia. “You didn’t attend school for very long, did you? Oh dear. On top of everything else! Well, it’s too late to do anything about that now.” She takes the letter from Lampie. “I’ll just have to read it out to you.”
Lampie would like to listen, but it is not easy. She keeps thinking about everything—all at the same time, about now, about before, about those two weeks in school, years ago, in that packed and stuffy classroom, where she could not understand what was being said and felt so worried. Just like now. So when can she go home?