The Lighthouse That Lost Tuesday

How it begins

On Wednesday morning, Mabel found Tuesday in her postbag.

It was folded into a blue envelope between the electricity bill and a postcard from somebody's aunt. She knew it was Tuesday because the envelope hummed the tune the bakery played on Tuesdays, and because it smelled strongly of the soup George made only once a week.

"That's unusual," she told the puffin on the wall.

The puffin stole a corner of her sandwich.

Mabel checked the village calendar. Monday had been crossed out. Wednesday had a circle around the dentist. Between them was a perfectly clean white space.

She went back to the post office and checked the big calendar behind the counter. The same space waited there. Even the little calendar on her emergency biscuit tin had lost its Tuesday.

This was inconvenient. Tuesday was when she watered the fern, visited her friend Lucy and remembered to order more stamps. She had done none of those things, which explained the fern but did not explain the envelope.

At the top of the hill, the lighthouse clock struck thirteen.

Mabel picked up her bag.

George was waiting on the lighthouse steps with a screwdriver tucked behind each ear. He had been the keeper for thirty years and looked as though somebody had recently asked him a very difficult sum.

"Before you say anything," he began, "I haven't touched the big cog."

"Why would I ask about the big cog?"

"People usually do."

She showed him the envelope. Inside it was a birthday invitation addressed to Lucy, dated Tuesday, with a small drawing of a cake.

Mabel had promised to deliver it herself.

George's eyebrows rose until they nearly met his cap.

"Ah," he said.

"Is that a useful ah?"

"Possibly."

He led her up the spiral stairs. In the clock room, six brass boxes sat around the great wheel. Between Monday and Wednesday stood an empty shelf.

On it, in tiny handwriting, someone had left a note.

You said you would make time.