Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

Here she is! Here’s my sister! Climbing up on Bunty, all arms and soft legs and sweet bedtime smells, crawling her way up the Eiger of Bunty’s body and pressing her sleepy face into Bunty’s chilly neck. Bunty unclenches the little fists that have fastened on to her hair, and deposits Gillian back on the floor.

and then a third bowl. Who can that be for? Goldilocks? Not for me surely? No, indeed not – for here’s a surprise – I have another sister! This is good news, even though she looks a little on the melancholic side.

Gillian is gobbling hers down like the greedy duck in her Ladybird book The Greedy Duck.

But now we are freed from our enslavement to the counter (Bunty has just sold the Shop Cat, but she doesn’t mention this to George. Poor cat.)

First we have to go through the ritual of dressing Gillian so that she’ll be able to survive in the alien atmosphere outside the Shop. Bunty doesn’t trust the month of May so Gillian has her liberty bodice securely strapped to her still cherub-new skin.

(Bonny and blithe and good and gay, for Gillian was indeed born on the Sabbath day and still had some of these qualities in 1951. Unfortunately she soon lost them.)

Albert had an extraordinary capacity for happiness.