‘You get it at school?’
They all nodded.
‘You get telly at school? How is that fair?’
‘Supper doesn’t smell very NUTRITIOUS,’ countered Pippa.
‘Well, that’s because it’s tea, not supper,’ said Carmen. Phoebe entered the kitchen, trailing as always, and scowling as always.
‘It’s pie,’ said Carmen. ‘You’ll like it, won’t you, Phoebs?’
Phoebe looked upset although Carmen had no idea why.
‘I don’t think so,’ she sniffed.
‘Good, good.’
‘Bring some here,’ said Sofia. ‘I amstarved.’
‘BUT IS IT GOING TO SNOW?’ said Jack loudly. Sometimes being the only boy in the house was quite tricky.
‘I don’t know, darling,’ said his mother, tousling his hair and glancing out the back window, but it was pitch-black, only the lights of other houses dimly visible above the back wall.
‘Oh, Mr McCredie thinks it is,’ said Carmen. ‘He said tonight will be bad and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.’
Phoebe frowned.
‘I can imagine a lot of things.’
‘Well, imagine lots of snow and it might happen!’
It wasn’t the boom that woke Carmen up. It was a pair of feet more or less in her face in the narrow bed.
‘WHAAA—?’ she said, starting awake in a panic, then realising through her foggy brain that if it was a murderous rapist, they were very much going about it in completely the wrong way. She had been on the train again, the tiny dusty train, the woman in her hat, the tunnel coming closer, closer …
She glanced at the toes wriggling frantically two centimetres from her nose.
‘Phoebe? Is that you?’
Under the blankets came a tinyeep.
‘What on earth is the matter?’
The little body was shaking.
‘At least turn the right way up.’
There it was then: a boom, and the little body went rigid. Carmen leaned out and switched on her bedside lamp which did almost nothing except make the rest of the dark room even darker. There was something odd about the light, something soft about the noise, but the boom …
‘What was that?’
Slowly, like trying to tempt an animal out of its burrow, Carmen stroked Phoebe’s back and gradually persuaded the child to turn the right way up.
‘You’ll suffocate down there,’ she said, as Phoebe’s stubborn black eyes and shock of messy hair finally emerged over the tip of the duvet. Phoebe didn’t smile. She was whispering.
‘It’s the … thundersnow!’ she imparted.
‘Oh, of course it is! said Carmen. ‘Amazing!’ She frowned. ‘I thought you’d have gone to Skylar.’
