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‘What sort of films?’ Irina butted in, turning her eyes away from her cat for the first time.
Maximilian Carver shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Just films. Isn’t it fascinating? We can have our own private cinema.’
‘That’s if the projector works,’ said Alicia.
‘Thanks for those words of encouragement, dearest, but let me remind you that your father earns
his living mending broken things. The machines and I, we share a secret language.’
Andrea Carver placed her hands on her husband’s shoulders. ‘I’m glad to hear that, Mr Carver,’ she said, ‘because someone should be having a serious conversation with the boiler in the basement.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ replied the watchmaker, standing up and leaving the table.
Alicia followed suit.
‘Sit down, miss,’ said Mrs Carver quickly. ‘Breakfast first. You haven’t touched it.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I’ll eat it,’ volunteered Irina.
Andrea Carver disallowed this proposal.
‘She doesn’t want to get fat,’ Irina hissed at her cat, pointing at Alicia.
‘I can’t eat with that thing waving its tail around the place and shedding hair everywhere,’ snapped Alicia.
Irina and the creature looked at her with disdain.
‘What a princess,’ Irina grumbled, as she went out to the backyard taking the animal with her.
Alicia turned to her mother, red-faced.
‘Why do you always let her do what she wants? When I was her age you didn’t let me get away with half the things she does,’ Alicia protested.
‘Are we going to go over that again?’ said Andrea Carver in a calm voice.
‘I wasn’t the one who started it,’ replied her elder daughter.
‘All right. I’m sorry.’ Andrea Carver gently stroked Alicia’s long hair; Alicia tilted her head, avoiding the conciliatory gesture. ‘But finish your breakfast. Please. Or at least try to start it.’
At that moment a metallic bang sounded beneath their feet. They looked at one another.
‘Your father in action,’ their mother commented ironically, as she downed her coffee. Then she glanced at her son, intrigued.
‘You’re unusually quiet this morning, Max. Something the matter?’
‘Uh?’
Alicia smiled to herself slyly as she pretended to munch on a piece of toast, while Max tried not to think about the extended hand and the bulging eyes of the clown, as it grinned through the mist of the walled garden.
4
THE BICYCLES MAXIMILIAN CARVER HAD rescued from their exile in the garden shed were in much better shape than Max had imagined. He had expected two wiry, rusty skeletons when in fact they looked as if they’d hardly been used. Aided by a couple of dusters and a special liquid for cleaning metal his mother always used, Max discovered that beneath the layers of grime both bicycles looked almost new. With his father’s help he greased the chains and the sprockets and pumped up the tyres.
‘We’ll probably have to change the inner tubes at some point,’ Mr Carver explained, ‘but for the time being they’ll do.’
