Dara and the Drippy Tap

Drip.

Dara opened one eye.

Drop.

Dara opened the other.

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

It was the tap. The bathroom tap, across the landing, dripping into the sink the way it did some nights, when it had not been turned off quite hard enough.

"Dad," said Dara. But Dad was downstairs with the telly on, and the telly was louder than Dara.

Drip. Drop.

Dara got up. She took Froggy, because Froggy was good at bathrooms, and padded across the landing, and switched on the little light.

There was the tap. There was the drip, hanging off the end of it, round and shiny and getting bigger.

Drop.

"Stop," said Dara.

The tap did not stop. Dara reached up and turned the handle. It was already turned. She turned it harder, and the tap made a small squeak, and then, after a long think,

Drip.

"Froggy," said Dara, "it won't stop."

Froggy, being a frog, did not mind drips. But Froggy could see that Dara did.

So Dara tried the things that worked on her. She said, "Shh." Drip. She said, "It's very late." Drop. She sang the song that Dad sang, the one about the boat, in her softest voice. The tap listened all the way through, and then,

Drip.

Dara sat down on the bath mat. Froggy sat next to her. The drip was quiet in the gaps, and the gaps were the worst part, because you knew the drip was coming and you had to wait for it.

Drop.

"Maybe it's not naughty," said Dara. "Maybe it's just not sleepy."

She thought about what she needed when she was not sleepy. A drink: no, the tap had plenty of that. A story: she had sung the song. A tuck-in.

Nobody had ever tucked in a tap.

Dara got the flannel, the little yellow one, and folded it in half, and climbed carefully onto the step, and laid the flannel over the end of the tap, over the drip, the way you lay a blanket over somebody's shoulders.

"There," she whispered. "Night night, tap."

The next drip came. But it came into the flannel. It did not go drip. It went nothing at all. The flannel just got a tiny bit darker, and the tap, with its blanket on, was quiet.

Dara waited for the drop. She counted to ten. Froggy counted too, though frogs are not very good at it.

Nothing.

"Stop," breathed Dara.

And it had.

She switched off the little light. She padded back across the landing with Froggy. She got into bed and pulled the blanket up to her chin, exactly the way she had done it for the tap, and lay there listening to the lovely nothing coming from the bathroom.

Drip, she thought, out of habit. Drop. But it was only in her head, and it was getting slower, and the gaps between were long and warm and full of nothing to wait for.

Stop, thought Dara, and did.