I wasn’t exactly expecting it, in the middle of the night, but I wanted to be ready when the call came. I hid the com badge under my pillow, where Mum’s prying eyes couldn’t see it. She has this nasty habit of bursting into my room in the morning, all bright and breezy, yanking back the curtains and tugging at the duvet and shrieking at me to get up, get up! I didn’t want her zeroing in and asking awkward questions. ‘What’s this? Where did it come from?’ I decided that if that happened I would simply tell her the truth. ‘It’s a communicator, Mum. The aliens gave it to us. D’you remember? The ones that abducted us?’ And then she would go, ‘Oh, those aliens,’ and give a little laugh, like humouring me. She’d never think it might be true! It must have been the early hours before I finally got to sleep, which meant I didn’t wake up till really late. But that was OK, ’cos it was Saturday. I yawned my way out onto the landing and bumped into Rosie. She was also yawning.
