Where Did the Day Go?

"Right," said Mum, pulling the curtains. "The day's gone. Time for bed."

Kofi sat up. "Gone where?"

"Just gone," said Mum. "That's what days do."

Kofi did not think this was a proper answer. Things that were gone had to be somewhere. His shoe had been gone last week, and it had turned out to be in the dog.

"I'm going to find it," said Kofi.

"Find what?"

"The day."

Mum looked at the clock, and then at Kofi, and then at the clock again, and said, "Five minutes," which is what grown-ups say when they mean it.

Kofi took Koala, because Koala had good eyes, and started with his pockets.

Not here.

He looked under the rug, where the lost things went.

Not there.

He looked in the biscuit tin, in case the day had got hungry. There was one biscuit in it, which Kofi ate, to be thorough. The day was not in the biscuit tin.

Not here.

He looked behind the sofa. He looked in the dog's bed, which the dog did not like. He looked in the fridge, just quickly, because Mum was watching, and the fridge light came on, and for a second Kofi thought that was the day, hiding in there with the butter. But it was only the fridge light, and it went off again when he shut the door.

Not there.

"Three minutes," said Mum.

Kofi went to the window and pulled the curtain back a little. Outside it was dark blue, and the garden was all one shape, and the sky had a few stars in it, scattered about like somebody had dropped them.

"Koala," said Kofi, "I think it went out."

He pressed his nose to the glass. Right at the bottom of the sky, behind the roofs at the end of the street, there was a thin line of light. Not much. Just a stripe, the colour of a peach, as if someone was closing a very big door very slowly and the last of the brightness was slipping out through the gap.

"There," whispered Kofi. "There it is."

He watched it. The stripe got thinner. The door, wherever it was, kept closing.

"Where's it going?" he asked.

Mum had come up behind him. She knelt down so her chin was on his shoulder, and she looked at the stripe too.

"Round the other side," she said. "To the children who are just waking up. It's their turn now."

Kofi thought about that. Somewhere, right now, a child was pulling back a curtain and the day was coming in, the same day, his day, with the biscuit and the dog and the fridge light still in it somewhere.

"Will it come back?"

"In the morning. It always does. It just goes round."

The stripe went out. The door closed. The sky was all one dark blue now, with the stars dropped in it, and Kofi found that he did not mind. The day was not lost. It was just busy.

"Found it," he told Koala, and let the curtain fall.

He got into bed without being asked, which Mum noticed and did not mention. He put Koala on the pillow facing the window, to keep watch.

"Night, Kofi."

"Night, Mum. Night, day."

And the day, which was on the other side of the world by then, being a morning for somebody else, did not answer, but Kofi had the feeling that it had heard.