She was hot and dry and resolved to new goodnesses, in her father’s memory. She was also newly thin, so bony she could almost smell her own marrow, and very hungry. She stroked Kezia, who had scampered, shrieking with excitement, to greet her. “Food, Kezi!” she said as they ran up the path. “Let’s get us some food. What shall we have? Raisins? Bread? Cheese . . . ?” But everything had changed. Will stopped and stared. The house shone with a coat of yellow paint, and there were lace curtains at the windows, and the bushes of gooseberries that clustered round the kitchen door had been hacked into a neat, subdued line. And worst of all, when Will reached the storeroom and pushed against the heavy metal door, she found it locked. Which meant she would have to ask for the key, she knew, and that would mean going into that newly curtained main room, which, before, uncurtained, had been her own sitting room, where she had taken refuge during the rains. She had played there with her father, the two of them throwing gooseberries and grapes at each other, catching them in their mouths—and once, marvelously, she had been upside down in a headstand, and her father had dropped a raisin down her nose.
What do You think about Cartwheeling In Thunderstorms?
