That evening, the five of them gathered around the table again.
Clara laid out every sheet of paper she had written on since they arrived.
Looking at them all together, she realised they had learned quite a lot.
“Should we put it all in order?” Clara asked.
Arthur eyed the papers covering the table.
“Put what in order?”
“Everything we’ve found out,” Clara said.
“I know where to start.” Lucas leaned forward and raised a finger.
“First, we don’t have much food.”
“Right,” Clara said.
“And there are mice,” Theo added.
Arthur stared at him.
Why were the mice second on the list?
Clara wrote it down anyway.
“Third,” Lucas continued, “we’re poor.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that,” Arthur told him.
“But it’s true,” Lucas said.
“I know it’s true.”
“Then why can’t I say it?”
Arthur paused.
“Go on.”
Lucas looked pleased.
“Fourth, people in the village know us, but we don’t know them.”
Everyone fell quiet.
Arthur remembered the man calling him by name while he stood there with no idea who the man was.
Yes, that deserved a place near the top.
“So when we meet someone who knows us,” Helena said, “we listen more than we talk.”
Clara added it to her notes.
“Fifth, the town isn’t too far away.”
“And things are expensive,” Lucas said.
“So is soap,” Theo added at once.
Lucas looked at him.
“Why do you always bring up soap?”
“Because we need it,” Theo replied.
“What about meat?”
“That’s expensive too,” Lucas said immediately.
“You remember that very well,” Arthur said.
“I’m only remembering the price.”
Arthur didn’t believe him for a second.
Clara continued sorting her notes.
“We’ve counted the money at home, too.”
“That’s important,” Arthur said.
At least they finally knew how many coins they had.
But when Theo heard the word money, he thought of something else.
“Coins are dirty,” he said.
Arthur closed his eyes for a moment.
“We don’t need to write that down.”
Clara held her pen above the paper.
“So I’ll leave it out?”
“Yes,” Arthur said.
Theo frowned.
“But you have to wash your hands after touching them.”
“We know,” Arthur replied.
“And wipe the table,” Theo said.
“We know.”
“And don’t put the money pouch beside the food.”
Arthur turned to Helena.
“Why does he remember every detail of this?”
“He takes after you,” Helena said easily.
Arthur had no reply.
Lucas and Clara both laughed.
Theo didn’t see what was funny.
He was busy checking whether the money pouch was far enough from the food.
Once Clara had stopped laughing, she looked down at her notes again.
“Anything else?”
They thought for a while.
“There is one thing,” Arthur said.
He pointed to the papers.
“We still don’t know where we are.”
The room went quiet.
He was right.
They knew there was a village nearby and a town they could walk to.
They knew the Bennett family had recently separated from the rest of the household.
They even had some idea of what flour, salt, and soap cost.
But they still didn’t know where in this world they had landed.
Lucas was silent for a moment.
“Then what have we been doing all this time?”
“Staying alive,” Helena said, holding back a smile.
Lucas thought about it.
Fair enough.
Clara looked over everything she had written, then added a line at the bottom:
Most important for now: keep this family going.
Arthur nodded.
“That’s right.”
“And keep the mice out,” Theo said.
Arthur looked at him.
Clara looked at her father.
“Should I add it?”
Arthur took a breath.
“Go ahead.”
The bottom of the page now read:
Most important for now:
1.
Keep this family going.
2.
Keep the mice out.
Arthur studied the two lines.
Somehow, the second one seemed like the more specific plan.
Lucas was laughing against the table, and Helena turned away to hide her smile.
Theo, however, was completely satisfied.
As far as he was concerned, one of the most useful things they had learned was simple:
When you barely had enough food for yourselves, you certainly couldn’t afford to share it with mice.