The kite was red. Not gentle red — the loud sort, the red of a postbox — and it had a long paper tail with folds in it like a concertina. It belonged to Ivy's friend, who was away at an aunt's house for three days and who had said, very seriously, at the gate, "Be careful with it." And Ivy had said, "I will be careful with it," and had absolutely meant it.
The garden was gusty that afternoon. The grass lay down flat and then sat up again, over and over, as if it could not decide. At the bottom of the garden was the hedgerow, tangled and prickly and full of old birds' nests and one lost sock nobody claimed.
For a while, everything went beautifully. The kite went up on the first try, which almost never happens. Ivy let out string. The paper tail rippled. The wind was being polite.
Then the wind stopped being polite. A gust came sideways over the shed, the string whipped out of Ivy's fist, and the red kite went end over end across the garden and straight into the hedge, where it stuck like a dropped hat.
Ivy ran. It took some careful reaching, and one twig down the collar, but the kite came out. It came out with a tear across the sail the length of a finger, and a paper tail split in two places.
Ivy stood very still, holding it. There was a lot of long grass at the bottom of the garden. A kite could go behind the shed and stay there, and the wind could be blamed, and the wind wouldn't mind. Ivy thought about that for roughly as long as it takes to count to five. Then Ivy carried the kite inside and put it on the kitchen table.
"The hedge had other ideas," Ivy said, in a smaller voice than usual.
Dad looked at the kite. Dad did not say very much, which was the right amount. "Tape," Ivy said. "And the red paper from the drawer. And glue, please, the proper glue."
Mending a kite is slow. Ivy cut two patches, one for the front of the tear and one for the back, and pressed the tape down at the edges so no air could sneak underneath. The tail was fiddlier. Each split needed a dab of glue and a strip of red paper wrapped round like a plaster, and then — this was the difficult part — it needed to be left completely alone.
"Two hours," said Dad.
Ivy checked it after ten minutes, once, and then sat on her hands and let it be. The glue dried pale and hard. It held.
In the morning the kite flew. It was a little heavier on one side and wobbled like a bicycle with someone new on it, but it flew, high over the ruffling grass, and Ivy wound the string in slowly and neatly around the stick instead of in a heap.
That night the kite sat on the windowsill in the moonlight, red gone grey, patched tail smoothed flat, string wound tidy, waiting for tomorrow. Ivy looked at it from under the covers until looking turned into not quite looking, and then into sleep.