When Moni opened her eyes, she wondered if Adam had got bored and left. She didn’t want him leaving without the cookies. This thought propelled her out of bed and into the kitchen. No, there he was, still sitting at the kitchen table eating the cookies. There was even more of him, he was taking up more space, growing before her very eyes. She gasped at what she was seeing. Adam was ballooning, becoming wider, taller, fatter. He seemed unperturbed by this and continued chewing, half a cookie in his hand, and it was as if every crumb were making him grow. He was now her own size and yet still the child features: smooth chin, chubby cheeks, the missing tooth in his mouth. He was bigger than her, too big. Moni felt she must do something to help him. She must call the emergency services, she must contain this terrible growth one way or the other. Poor boy, poor boy. Yet he smiled when he saw her as if everything were normal, as if this was just another visit and she had just popped into the bedroom and returned to the kitchen again.

This isn’t right, this isn’t right. The kitchen chair collapsed under his weight. She screamed. He looked more startled by her screams than by landing on the floor. She ran towards him to stem the tide of flesh rising and overflowing, to hold back what would harm and hurt him. This was too much for his own good, too fast, unnatural. He was now too big for the kitchen so that she had to back out. The kitchen was full of his springy, healthy flesh, his smooth skin and softness; and there was no space for her, she was squeezed out to the corridor. The bigger he grew, the smaller she was becoming, crushed and forced. He was now too big for the cottage. Out, Adam, out. You have to leave. You have to go. He stood up and banged his head on the ceiling. He moved forward and got stuck at the door, his head jammed at the top, his arms cutting the frame. He whimpered in pain. He sat down and his head, still growing, reached the top of the door. He was now taking up the whole width of the kitchen, his elbow wedged underneath the kitchen tap, his hair touching the ceiling. In the vestibule, there was less and less room for Moni. She was hemmed in by his expansion, squashed by his need for more space. She was squeezed by what he had become, and she knew that she hadn’t acted fast enough. If only she had got him out of the cottage in time, or if only she had run to save her own skin. Instead they were both trapped. And if he went on growing, the cottage would explode.