“But Pat was all, ‘No, listen, you don’t understand.’ He said he’d already tried an exterminator, but the guy told him whatever we had was way out of his league. I was like, ‘Oh my God, Pat, and you just let us keep living here? Are you insane?’ He looked at me like a little kid who’s brought you his new drawing and you threw it in the bin. He went, ‘You think I’d let you and the kids stay if it wasn’t safe? I’m on it. We don’t need some exterminator guy messing around with poison and charging us a few grand. I’m going to get this thing.’”

Jenny shook her head. “I was like, ‘Um, hello? So far you haven’t even managed to get a look at it,’ and he went, ‘Well, yeah, but that’s because I couldn’t do anything that might tip you off. Now that you know, there’s all kinds of stuff I can do. God, Jen, this is such a massive relief!’

“He was laughing: flopped back in his chair, rubbing his head so his hair went all messy, and laughing. Personally I didn’t exactly see anything to laugh about, but still …” Something that might have been a smile, if it had been less crammed with sadness. “It was nice to see him like that, you know? Really nice. So I went, ‘What kind of stuff?’

“Pat leaned his elbows on the desk, all settled in like when we used to plan out a holiday or something, and he went, ‘Well, the monitor in the attic obviously isn’t working, right? The animal’s dodging it—maybe it doesn’t like the infrared, I don’t know. So what we have to do is think like the animal. See what I mean?’

“I went, ‘Totally not,’ and he laughed again. He went, ‘OK, what does it want? We’re not sure—could be food, warmth, even company. But whatever it is, the animal thinks it’s going to find it in this house, or it wouldn’t be here, right? It wants something that it thinks it’s going to get from us. So we have to give it the chance to get closer.’

“I was like, ‘Oh hell no,’ but Pat went, ‘No no no, don’t worry, not that close! I’m talking about a controlled chance. We control it, all the way. I rig up a monitor on the landing, pointing at the attic hatch, right? I leave the hatch open, but with wire mesh nailed over it, so the animal can’t get down into the house. We’ll keep the landing light on, so there’ll be enough light that I won’t need to use the infrared, in case that’s what’s scaring it away. And then we just have to wait. Sooner or later, it’s going to get tempted, it’s going to need to get closer to us, it’s going to head for the hatch—and boom-boom, caught on camera. See? It’s perfect!’”

Jenny’s palms turned up helplessly. “It didn’t exactly sound perfect to me. But, I mean … I’m supposed to support my husband, right? And like I said, this was the happiest he’d looked in months. So I went, ‘OK, fine. Off you go.’”