Watercolour light bulb on forearm

The lines went down at four, and by six the snow had buried the east windows to their sills. Mam says we'll not see the road until Thursday, so we have the house to ourselves: the six guests, the dog, and the one lamp still working on the upstairs landing. It is the last good bulb in the box. She has told me three times not to waste it on reading.

Tomas, the Pryce boy from room four, has been folding paper all afternoon. He tore a page from the back of his father's gas bill and made a boat, red on one side where the printed sums had bled through like a sunset, and he set it on the sill beside the lamp. "It needs a harbour," he said, and would not explain. When the bulb flickered at nine I thought the boat would tip over, but it sat there, lit from inside, and for a moment the whole landing looked like the inside of a sunset on water.

Then the filament gave a little cough and went dark. Nobody moved. Mr Pryce struck a match, and Tomas looked up at me with his mouth open, ready to cry, and instead he laughed and said the boat had gone out to sea.

I have the bulb now, cooling in my palm, the screw base warm and gritty with ash. The paper boat is still inside the glass where Tomas balanced it, its colours gone grey in the candlelight. I will keep it until the thaw.