The quaver of a sound was still in the air. Had I screamed? The door creaked open. It was only Gypsy, nosing the gap. I sat up. Gypsy slugged her weight onto the bed; she could no longer jump. Her grey muzzle pushed into my shoulder and she fell into an immediate, fitful sleep. She could no longer hear—how did she know? I shaped my body to the curve of her spine and lay listening to the beetles butting at the window. When I was small, Trudy used to kill my monsters. She never told me they weren’t real, like Ma, who’d stumble into my bedroom, switch on the light and revel in my squinting. In the morning there was a punishment for waking her. It was the same, every time: Ma, saying ‘See? There’s nothing here’, her arms wide to show me that there was truth and safety in light. But Trudy, whose bedroom was next to mine and who usually heard me first, would never flick the switch. She’d creep in, crouched and ready for combat, because it was entirely possible a monster was eating her sister alive and to hell with it, she was coming in.
