Read When God Was a Rabbit for Free Online

dining would come next.
    ‘Maybe we could have a séance later?’ said Nancy, and my mother quickly looked at her – a look I’d seen so often – a look that said, Bad idea, Nancy, and you’d know that if you had children .
    ‘You’re quiet, Elly. Everything OK?’ asked my mother.
    I nodded. If I spoke I felt tears would tumble out onto the backs of my words. I stood up instead, mumbled something about ‘forgetting to feed him’ and went towards the back door. My brother handed me a torch, and with two carrots in my pocket I slipped out into the cold night.
    It felt late but it wasn’t; the darkness of our house made it feel late. The climbing frame cut a weird skeleton in the dusk like a spine bending backwards. It would be demolished the coming spring and used for firewood. I walked down the path towards the hutch. God was already straining at the wire; his nose was twitching, picking up the scent of my sadness as determinedly as a dog. I flicked the catch and he bundled towards me. Wisps of blue and green fur stood out in the torchlight; a good idea left over from a bored weekend when Nancy and my brother dyed his pelt and took pictures of him balanced on their heads. God loved performing as much as Nancy. I pulled him onto my lap. He felt good, he felt warm. I bent down and kissed him.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in his strangled little voice. ‘It’ll all come good in the end. Always does.’
    ‘OK,’ I said calmly; unperturbed that it was actually the first time I’d ever heard him speak.
    I saw the long striding shape of Nancy come down the path towards me. She had a cup in her hand, steam spiralling into the chill November sky.
    ‘So tell me,’ said Nancy, crouching down, ‘how did it go?’
    My mouth made a kind of shape, but I was too distraught to speak, so I had to whisper it instead.
    ‘What?’ she said, leaning towards me.
    I cupped my hand around her ear and whispered it again.
    ‘The innkeeper?’ she said. ‘The bloody innkeeper?’
    I shook my head, convulsions racking my body. I looked up at her and said, ‘The blind innkeeper.’

 
     

     
    It was the day of the performance, and she crept out of the backstage shadows like a giant tarantula rather than the octopus she was supposed to be, and when Miss Grogney saw her, she screamed as if her throat had been cut by the devil himself. There was no time to get Jenny Penny out of that costume and into the camel one, and so Miss Grogney told her to remain in the darkest, furthermost reach of the stage, and should she even see the flicker of a tentacle, she would suffocate her with a large plastic bag. Baby Jesus started to cry. Miss Grogney told him to shut up and called him a wet blanket.
    I quickly peaked through the curtain and scanned the audience to see if my mother and Nancy were there. It was a good turnout, almost full; better than the harvest festival that had clashed so disastrously with a local football fixture, when only twenty people turned up to give thanks for what they were about to receive, which at the time ran to two dozen cans of baked beans, ten loaves and a box of windfall apples.
    Nancy saw me and winked, just before Miss Grogney’s firm hand landed on my shoulder and pulled me back into Christian times.
    ‘You’ll spoil the magic if you keep looking out,’ she said to me.
    I thought, I’m going to spoil it anyway, and my stomach knotted.
    ‘Where are the camels?’ Miss Grogney shouted.
    ‘They’ve got the hump with you,’ said Mr Gulliver, the new teacher, and we all laughed.
    ‘Not funny, Mr Gulliver,’ she said as she wandered off the stage and caught her toe on a sandbag.
    ‘Good luck,’ I whispered to Jenny Penny as she waddled over to the manger, casting an eerie shadow on the back wall. She turned round and gave me a huge smile. She’d even blacked out a couple of her teeth.
    The lights dimmed. I felt sick. Music crackled into the auditorium. I wiped my hands on my red tunic and they left