Homey

The bed was the wrong shape.

That was the first thing Homey noticed. The bed was the wrong shape, and the light came in the wrong side, and the house made a noise at about nine o'clock that Homey's own house had never made in its life.

Everybody else was asleep.

Homey lay in the dark and got achy. It starts in the throat, homesickness. Then it goes down into the chest and sits there, and it is not quite sadness and not quite fear, and there is nothing whatever to be done about it because you cannot get home in the middle of the night.

Homey had said it would be fine. Homey had been looking forward to it for a fortnight.

Then, in the dark, Homey remembered the kit.

It is a small bag and there are four things in it, and Homey's family put it together years ago. A blanket square, cut off the old blanket when it wore out. A photograph, quite creased. A smooth stone from the garden. And a jumper that still, faintly, smells of home.

Homey got the jumper out and held it, and breathed in, and the ache did not go away but it stopped being so sharp.

Then Homey did the last bit, which is the one that works.

Homey thought about the kitchen at home. Actually thought about it: the chair that wobbles, the mark on the door where the shelf slipped, the sound of the tap. All of it still there, exactly as it was, waiting, about four miles away.

It's all still there. I'm just not in it tonight.

Homey slept.

In the morning the bed was still the wrong shape and Homey did not mind nearly so much, and by the second night the noise at nine o'clock had become quite a friendly noise.