Free The Night Rainbow by Claire King Page B

brown, grey and blue and girls have to wear the beautiful colours.
    4. You don’t ask grownups to come out to play.
    5. Only do the things that make Maman happy.
     
    I wonder if she’s out of bed yet, I say. And then I spit out the lavender because it tastes scratchy in my mouth, and stare back up at my turbine.
    I bet Sylvie’s brought the bread, says Margot.
    I don’t say anything.
    I bet it’s warm and crunchy on the outside, and soft and crumby on the inside.
    I smile a little bit. It’s time for our second breakfast.
     
    We are sitting by the letterbox – still two baguettes – with tummies full of bread, listening to the quiet of the house. A tiny aeroplane leaves a long cottonwool trail across the sky. I try to imagine the people on the plane, with their suitcases and sunglasses. Maybe they are the coming ones, and we will see them next week at the market. Or maybe they are the going ones, with red noses and homesickness.
    Come on, says Margot, I’m going to teach you a game.
    Here?
    No, in the orchard. Come on! she says. It’s our running day, so run!
    We race round the sunny side of the house and off into the orchards. Margot is very fast and I can’t keep up.
    Boo! She jumps out at me from behind a tree.
    Boo! I say back, just because.
    OK, says Margot, now this game is complicated so you have to listen carefully.
    I’m too busy for complicated games, I say. We’ll do it later.
    Don’t be silly, says Margot. Listen. First, she says, you have to put everything upside down, like this. And then she folds in half, putting her hands on the ground, and looks backwards and upwards between her knees. Then, she says, we have to race, like crabs.
    You try it, she says.
    I bend down and put my eyes between my knees. Up in the sky are the red balls of peaches in amongst the green teardrop leaves. The peaches look wrong and it’s not just the upside-downness of them. There are shadows and black dots. I unfold myself to have a look.
    The peaches are covered in holes as though someone had been shooting at them. Thick lines of ants are marching up and down the trees and into the peaches. They are stealing our fruit, one ant-bite at a time.
    Pea, you have to concentrate, says Margot. Race! So I do the crab thing again and we scuttle about between the trees, making ourselves dizzy and sometimes squashing some of the ants.
    Scrunch-unch-unch up the path, a bumping of tyres is coming our way. A white truck stops by the side of the track and the man who buys the peaches steps out. He isn’t wearing a shirt or a hat. His skin is brown and he has hairy nipples. He has a belt on his trousers.
    This is the peachman. Every few days he comes to pick our peaches. Last year he collected them together with Papa, on hot afternoons without their shirts on. Afterwards they would sit in the shade and drink pastis, which is not for little girls, and Maman would take them olives. These days the peachman just comes to the door and gives us some money, then takes the peaches away to sell. Maman makes me answer the door; she doesn’t want to be disturbed.
    The peachman has left the car running, with the door open and the radio on, but it is nothing we can dance to, just people talking about boring things. He unties a stepladder from the roof and walks into the orchard.
    We crab over to where he is, and look at him upside down from between our legs, his head floating like a grey cloud in the blue sky.
    Hello, I say.
    How are you? says Margot.
    The peachman does not answer straight away, but pulls off a few more of the fruits. Normally he picks out the ripe peaches and sets them in careful rows in wooden crates. Today he is just picking off all the ones with holes, which is most of them, and throwing them on to the crates in a heap. It’s ruined, he says.
    What happened to the peaches? I say.
    The hailstones happened, he says.
    Are they all broken? I ask.
    Margot stares at him upside down and opens her eyes wide and white. I