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Of a love that is innocent The Night Rainbow Pea's solitude is oppressive. Not yet six, she imagines situations and even creates a four-year-old sister Margot as she comes to grips with the loss of her father and that he wasn't even her real papa — a truth brutally flung at her by her mother. The innocent games she conjures to fill her loneliness are endearing, quietly ruminative of a childhood that is deprived of a mother's indulgence. The singular thought that dwells in her baby head is to please her 'Maman'. Struggling to wash soiled laundry, mop the kitchen floor, pick flowers, rustle up a quick meal, Pea does it all, just to make her mother love her like before. She misses, only as a child would, the little joys she knew when her father was around — the tucking in at night, sleep-well kisses, the warm embraces, a secure world. She plays girly games in the meadow and shares her feelings with Claude, a man who has endured much himself, having lost his two girls and wife in a terrible accident that leaves him scarred and broken. She can tell from his overwrought expression that he is sad, as sad as her mother, and “it is called having a broken heart”. If two broken people come together they would heal, make a whole; perhaps he could put her mother back together? For this, she decides, she will have to get a new papa (Claude) who must "make Maman smile and sing". Claude's own need for a family is stoked with his closeness to Pea. He builds a girl-nest for her atop a tree, where she seeks solace and is a child once more. Margot is her tough alter ego, who comes up with grownup ideas to get out of trouble — a wind that blows her along. The emotional breakdown she suffers is inevitable when Claude is rudely dismissed by her mother. Her frustration builds up and finds release in a gush of tears and hollering — a desperate attempt to be seen and heard by her mother, an emphatic reaching out by a child for love. As her emotionally drained mother slaps her, Pea hits back. Only this time the hurt within leaves no room for remorse. It takes a medical emergency, where Pea is pushed to near-death, for things to fall into place. Delicately woven, the story builds tempo gradually, with most of the space dedicated to playtime and big and small concerns surrounding Pea's life. Just as the story nears the end, the pace gains speed and tumbles to a quick tying up of loose ends. One wishes for a languorous coming together of the characters as friends and family, but it all ends in a rush and one is left wanting more.
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Loneliness, for a child and adult alike, weighs heavy on the spirit. And who would know it better than a little girl who has lost her father and whose heavily pregnant mother has no time for her? 