Kitty

Moving Home

Moving Home

Kitty pulled the cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs and knelt on the floor to open it, ignoring the slight creak to her knees. She smiled at the rather dusty collection of Sylvanian Families characters – mice in pinnies, rabbits in dungarees and dogs in frocks. She lifted them out and was instantly taken right back to when Sophie was three.

‘Mummy! Mum! I need you here now!’

Sophie did that: she called out, hollering fit to burst, until Kitty went running to see what the emergency was. It was usually a matter of life-altering importance for her three-year-old, like she couldn’t find the bed for her Sylvanian Families rabbit or she had a lolly stick, formerly attached to an actual lolly, stuck in her hair, or she had switched on the television but The Raggy Dolls wasn’t on and she needed her mum to fix the scheduling.

‘What’s up, Sophie?’

‘I finished!’ She held up the small round melamine plate featuring Babar the Elephant in his green suit and tiny gold crown.

‘Oh, well done!’ Her daughter responded well to praise, even if it was only to acknowledge the fact that she had devoured a whole slice of cheese on toast cut into squares.

‘I want Daddy!’ Sophie had asked suddenly and just like that the moment had seemed right to Kitty.

‘He is on his way home, darling and you know, you are a very lucky little girl.’ Sophie had stared at her. ‘You are very lucky because most little girls only have one daddy, but you, you are so special that you get two!’

‘Two daddies?’ Sophie had asked with a little wrinkle of confusion on her button nose.

‘Yes!’ Kitty grabbed a daddy rabbit and a daddy squirrel and a baby hedgehog. She placed the unlikely trio on the table and pointed at them. ‘There are all kinds of families, Soph. And you have me, your mumma and you have Angus daddy and there is this other daddy,’ she touched her finger to the rather portly looking rabbit, ‘you have Theo daddy too and even though you haven’t met him and you might not for a very long time, he is your dad too!’

‘Is he going to put me to bed?’ Sophie took the daddy rabbit into her pudgy little palm.

‘No. Daddy will put you to bed, just like he always does.’

‘Will daddy Theo get me a present?’

Kitty laughed, knowing it was typical of her child to be thinking along these lines. ‘I don’t think so and you might not meet him until you are much older, but I know him very well and I can tell you that he is,’ she paused, trying to control the catch to her voice, ‘he is really lovely.’

Kitty cradled the small animals to her chest and enjoyed the wave of nostalgia that came over her. That day lived in her memory. She had dreaded having to tell Sophie and yet it happened easily, naturally and this was how it had always been. Not that she had time to sit and procrastinate any longer – the day was marching on and she had scarcely made a dent in her list. She popped the creatures back inside the box and moved it to one of the stacks by the front door. She went back to the cupboard and placed her hand on the wooden floor. Reaching for another box, she felt the dust and dirt with her fingertips and the sensation took her back to another day, when her heart had begun to splinter. Those fragments had lodged in her mind, so much so that with just this touch to the floor of the cupboard, it took all of her strength not to sob.