Bad Rats

You had two kinds of wallpaper then, the bottom half warm terracotta and the upper half a deep, undersea blue and unlike at my house there wasn’t much clutter, and under your bed was completely empty.

You liked to sleep under there sometimes, you said, and I wanted to know what that was like so you closed your curtains to keep the sun out and we crawled under your bed together and giggled, and liked it, and I said something like “this is a lair,” because I always had to use the words I’d learned recently and you already knew it of course so you agreed and said, “yes, our lair. Let’s be Bad Rats,” because what else lives in lairs except two bad rats?

And we were very bad rats, if by bad you mean slipping downstairs in turns, moving slow and sneaky so the grown-ups wouldn’t notice us between the gaps in the bannisters, and if by bad you mean creeping into the kitchen to pinch fresh, round satsumas from the fruit bowl.

And sure, now I’m older I know our parents knew exactly what we were up to and isn’t it funny how the fruit bowl was positioned just right for two pairs of questing paws but I didn’t know that then, all I knew was this was free and this was safe and when I had to go home later I didn’t just leave satsuma peels under your bed I left my heart there too, because better to ache a bit without it than to risk it getting totally trampled where I was going.

And you were such a good Bad Rat, you hoarded it for me until next time, every time, keeping it safe in our lair and I don’t know if I can ever tell you how grateful I am for that.