Homey's Day

I knew by about six o'clock that I was not going out on the path, and I spent until about eight pretending otherwise.

It is not that I did not want Rainbow home. I wanted Rainbow home more than most. It is that the news arrived and within an hour the whole land was a different shape — the lane full of ladders, the orchard full of shouting, the route I walk every single day of my life suddenly covered in hooks and string and fluffs I do not normally see before lunch.

My chest does a thing when everything changes at once. It goes tight and small and stays that way, and no amount of being told it is exciting shifts it.

So I stayed home.

I want to be honest that nobody asked me to and nobody noticed.

I was on my own from about half past seven until the middle of the afternoon, and I did not talk to a single fluff, and it was the most useful I have ever been on a day I was not present for.

I folded the blanket. That is the first thing in a comfort kit and it is not a small thing — you want the one that smells right, not just any blanket, and mine went into the bag with the corner turned over the way I like it.

I found the good cups, the six that match, because there would be fifty-five fluffs at Winky's tonight and cups run out long before fluffs do.

I made bread. It takes four hours and most of that is waiting, and waiting in my own kitchen while the land goes mad outside is very nearly my favourite thing in the world.

And all the while I was doing the thing I always do when everything is shifting, which is carry home about with me in my head — this cup, that corner, the sound the back door makes. You can take that anywhere. It is the whole trick. But it is easier to pack when you are standing in the middle of it.

At two o'clock I went out, and only as far as the Candyfloss Garden, with Mopsy and Hushy, because the blossom is quiet and nobody there wanted anything from me.

I said the thing out loud down there, sitting in the pink. That it was not the work. That it was everything being different.

"You don't have to want the loud bit," said Hushy. "You're allowed to want the doorway."

Mopsy said almost nothing for two hours and stayed the entire time.

We walked back at a quarter to four and found every lantern on the path standing two feet lower than we had left it, and nobody with a spare second to explain. We got about nine words. Apparently Memo had remembered something. I am still not completely clear on it.

Here is the part I did not expect.

At six o'clock I was sitting on the bridge wall with both arms round both knees, deciding to go home for good — properly this time, bed, no party. Mopsy came and sat down and did not argue with me, which is the only reason I stayed long enough to work out what I actually wanted.

What I actually wanted was not three hours of noise. What I actually wanted, very much, was to be there when Rainbow came up the path and got to the door.

"Is there a job at the door?" I said.

There was. Snoozy had been keeping it all day — the last lantern of the whole route, the one that had been sitting cleaned on Winky's table since six that morning, the one that goes over the door and says here, this is it, you're home.

I lit it at ten past six, standing on a chair, with my blanket already folded on the window seat for later.

Then I stood in the doorway with a hot cup, which is the best place at any party, and watched the whole lane come alight from the far end down.

I was in the doorway for most of the evening. Fluffs kept arriving past me and I said hello to every single one of them, which is more fluffs than I have spoken to in a month. Blushy said the welcome line at the door and got it right, about four feet from where I was standing. I heard Beamy read the envelope out from there. I had bread in my bag and it went in about nine minutes.