The room was dark, with only a soft glow coming from the bed.
Daisy was reading her book under the bed covers with a tiny torch. Her mother didn’t like her reading this late, and this was the only way she could manage it. It was very hard not to keep reading as the characters and the stories were so good.
She felt her eyelids getting heavy. She stopped reading for a moment and wondered what would happen if…
…it was a beautiful sunny day.
There were brightly coloured flowers everywhere. It was an idyllic pastoral scene, but somehow more than a little unreal. To tell the truth, the whole place looked as though it had come straight out of some child’s picture book.
The only people to be seen didn’t help either. They were certainly an incongruous group. Had anybody been there to see it, not that there was any nobody else around, it would have been seen as a very strange little gathering.
They all sat round a large wooden table, and to add to the oddness of it all, they all appeared to be half asleep.
Heads were nodding, eyes were barely half open and the man would snore gently from time to time. He was rather well dressed in a business suit, with one arm resting on a large leather bag that looked very expensive. The other five sitting there were much younger, in fact they were all children; three boys and two girls.
One of the girls had a long, wooden stick with a hook on the end, lying on the ground behind her, while the other had her hands cupped around a bowl.
The boys didn’t seem to have anything other than themselves, except one did seem to be holding something, this small object was also made of leather. He was the first to wake up. “I don’t have a penny to my name!” he said, looking at his purse, breaking the silence and causing the others to stir and slowly open their eyes.
The all sat looking around in bewilderment.
The man spoke. “My trousers are wet! How did any of us get here? I’m a doctor and I’m sure I have house calls to make”.
One of the other boys said “I’m not sure who I am but I have jam on my hands!” He went back to licking his fingers.
The third boy piped up with “I’m very good at jumping”. He had taken off his shoe and was looking at his sock. “Although, I think I’ve burnt my sock!”
The girl with the bowl giggled. He turned to her and said “Why are you holding that, it’s empty?”
She stopped laughing and looked down at it. “I’m not really sure, but I’m quite certain it tasted very nice”.
The final one to speak was the other girl. She had been sitting quietly, looking as though she would burst into tears at any moment. They all stared at her, waiting for her to speak. “I’ve lost something and I’m probably going to get into a lot of trouble”. She took out a handkerchief and began to sob.
“I think I can help… if you don’t mind”. The voice seemed to come from nowhere.
Slowly the image formed. Daisy was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table. She stood up and looked around at all there amazed faces. “I’m sure I can” she went on. With that she jumped down from the table and started to walk around them in a wide circle. One by one there heads turned, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“Grown-ups first, that’s the rule isn’t it? You are Doctor Foster, it was raining in Gloucester when you went there and you didn’t watch out for puddles”. She shook her head, as if she were telling him off; pretending to be a grown-up herself.
She moved on. “Hello Jack. I know you, you’re Jack Horner, and you’ve been eating Christmas pie!”
She next laid her hand on the shoulder of the girl holding a bowl. “And you Miss Muffet; you’d still be eating, if spiders didn’t bother you so much”. She patted her shoulder to console her, then added in a very grown-up voice, “I don’t like them either”, and moved on again.
“Jack, you really must be more care when you jump over candlesticks!” she told the boy holding his sock. “But you are a very good jumper”. She smiled and gave him a friendly nod.
“As for you Simple Simon” she said, as she went round a little further, “You really shouldn’t expect to be sold a pie when you have no money!”
She came now to the final person at the table, one of her favourite characters. She had always felt very sorry for her and had so often wanted to make her feel better.
“And you are Bo-peep. It’s your sheep you’ve lost, but you shouldn’t worry you know… you shouldn’t worry…”
Daisy’s mother crept into the room leaving the door open a little. She made her way to the bed in the half light and pulled back the covers. “Oh! Not again!” she whispered, and smiled.
The girl’s eyes opened and looked up. “Mummy, what do you think would happen if… if…” the eyes closed again.
The mother switched off the little torch and pulled up the covers. She took the book of nursery rhymes and stood for a moment, running her fingers across its pages. It was an old book now, dog-eared with fading colors that had once belonged to her. She smiled again as she closed it very softly.