Then he remembered something that Judith had said to him the day that they had met. She had mentioned walking in Killara to look for little folk. Judith had assumed she’d found another one. He felt so special to have become, as far as Judith knew, the very thing that she had been keenest to find. He decided to say nothing, so as not to spoil her enjoyment of having apparently found one of the little folk. This way, she would take him home with her and he could stay with her all the time and never have to miss her again.

As she drew nearer to the Swain Gardens, he realised that he was also going to be free of school forever too. Judith would not expect him to go, now that he was so small. He continued looking up at her face in admiration until she put the picnic basket down on a low garden wall and sat down beside it. Peeking through the spaces between the pieces of the picnic basket’s wall, he saw the beauty of Swain Gardens and realised that Judith had been planning to come here with her picnic food.

He saw Judith look into the basket and remove the lid from a large plastic bowl and set it on its side in the picnic basket, so that the lid took up less space. Judith’s lovely hand then opened a smaller container and poured some sliced onions from it into the large bowl. She must have been preparing a salad for her lunch, he realised.

Then Judith’s hand closed around him and lifted him up, so that he could see into the large bowl. The onions had fallen onto some cut lettuce leaves. Judith lowered her hand gently into the bowl and released her grip on Kim. He watched as her hand withdrew from the bowl, and saw her eyes turn away from him and onto another part of the picnic basket.

Kim briefly considered the possibility that Judith was inviting him to help himself to the lettuce and onion in abundance, but he was overwhelmed by the evidence of other factors. Judith had wanted to find one of the little folk, and had mistaken Kim for one of them. Yet she had not introduced herself, had simply picked him up without a word and put him in her basket, walked to the Swain Gardens with him and then deposited him into her salad bowl. She had done exactly the same thing with the onion slices, and she certainly wasn’t inviting them to eat the lettuce.  Kim was 99 per cent certain that Judith was preparing to eat him as part of the salad lunch that she was making.

He could not see her tummy from that position, but he remembered the cuddle from the day that he had first met her. It had felt nice being snuggled against her like that. It had never occurred to him that he would soon be on the inside instead.