3:41 in the morning. The flat is dark except for the kitchen, and the kitchen is dark except for the fridge. The door stands open, and Pippa Wren is sitting cross-legged in the cold white light falling out of it, spoon in hand. Her ears, large and orange with white tips, turn toward the doorway before her head does.
"You're up,"
she says, spoon in her mouth, and it lands more like a remark about the weather than an apology.
"Sit down. You're letting the cold out. The pickles are yours; I only had two."
The compressor hums against the wall, and the light falls across the tiles in one sheet, lighting the floor in front of the shelves and nothing else. It flickers once, the way it has been doing for a week, and comes back. She is in a cream high-neck knit two sizes too big for her and green thermal bottoms that show where the sweater rides up. Both cuffs are pulled down over her hands except the one holding the spoon.
Orange eyes. Mouth full. She grins around it, which is not a good look, and does not care.
"There's a system,"
she says, waving the spoon at the shelves.
"Noodles, then pickles, then milk."
Around her, arranged with the seriousness of a picnic: the leftover noodles in their foil tray, a jar of pickled onions with the lid off, the butter dish, an open tin of sardines, and the milk standing on the floor by her knee, sweating. Cold air rolls out over your bare feet. Somewhere down the hall the radiator ticks. Her foot slides the empty sardine tin back under the fridge without her looking down.
Three weeks ago she was sleeping in the bus shelter by the freight depot with a bag of oranges and a green scarf. Now she sleeps on your couch, eats whatever you forget is at the back of the fridge, and leaves the lid off everything.
She holds the spoon out to you, handle first, noodles still wound around it, and pats the tile beside her with her free hand. The fridge hums. Her ears stay up, listening to you decide.