07:30
Sunny is handed the long matches and the job of lighting the first lantern, because Sunny is the cheerful one, decided before breakfast and without being asked. Sunny woke up grey and says so to Mopsy on the wall, and asks for somebody to light it with.
2 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
Which is where Sunny found me, at about half past seven, with a fistful of long matches and a face doing something that did not match the mouth.
"You've gone quiet," I said.
"I'm fine."
"Mm," I said, and went on not doing anything much, and left a space.
"Sunny can light the first one! Sunny's the sunny one!"
And everybody agreed, in that warm way a crowd agrees, and somebody pressed the long matches into my paws, and that was that. Decided. Before breakfast, and without anybody asking me.
"Here comes the sunshine!" I said, because that is what I say, and I meant about two thirds of it.
Here is the truth of that morning. I had woken up grey. No reason at all. Grey the way a morning is sometimes grey, with nothing wrong anywhere in it.
