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In her absence, the rain and tide shed all façade of gentleness.
Thunder, just moments ago glowering like a petulant child, now boomed with abandon. Inky waves broke against the plunging cliffside, sinking tonnes of rock with each mighty assault. The rain was ceaseless, coming down in dense sheets upon sheets, less watering than utterly diluting the ground. It was a wonder their topiaries were intact.
I processed everything alright, stuck in a loop for who knows how long – lying down, then sitting up as though finally stitching myself together, only to lie back down and succumb to another round of ... confusion? Dejection? I don't know the word, but never in my life had I felt so lost and utterly clueless.
I read once in one of Pa's medical journals, one of those heavy annuals from Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, that the human heartstrings could snap when one was inflicted enough stressors. I wondered then if I might literally die of a broken heart, like some operatic character.
A grandfather clock below tolled seven times. Bang bang bang bang. The sound was so loud in my delirium, that it felt like another one of these peculiar gimmicks. A human megaphone, perhaps, or a stolen clock tower shrunk to fit in the living room.
Miss Peregrine could revive a week-old corpse over beef bourguignon for all I cared, and I'd still rather watch raindrops race on the window. If my brain had to process any more, it would shrivel and die.
But I doubted I could afford to test the woman's generosity any further, having damn near shattered her skull with a vase. Worse than being stranded at a freak house was having no house at all.
I hastily dressed in borrowed, old-fashioned clothes from Miss Peregrine – a handsome starched blouse over a navy walking skirt. My hair had become a nest, matted in places and limp with scalp grease in others. I tried to salvage what I could, agonizingly combing the mess with my fingers until the floor where I stood blackened with fallen hair. I put my hair in a presentable knot, wrenched on the sellotape-bound gardening gloves and made my way downstairs.
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The dining room already bustled when I arrived. There were ten or so children milling about a long wooden table, the younger ones clamouring for chairs and the ones my age fetching and serving dishes amid the chaos. It was loud – the shrill scraping of chairs on hardwood, the clangs of dropped cutlery, giddy laughter mingled with tired shouts of "you're going to make me drop the bloody pie!"
The chandelier above bathed the scene in restful orange, and the little gathering looked so much like a real family and I, an intruder.
