Jenny flinched like I had raised a hand to her. “He kept on and on saying it! Back at the beginning of summer it was just once in a while, and it was only because Pat was encouraging him—they’d come downstairs and Pat would be all, ‘See, Jen, I’m not going loopy. Jack heard it just now, didn’t you, Jack the lad?’ And of course Jack would be like, ‘Yeah, Mummy, I heard the aminal in the ceiling!’ If you tell a three-year-old he’s heard something, and if he knows you want him to have heard it, then yeah, of course he’ll end up convinced that he did. Back then I didn’t even think it was a big deal. I just went, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s only a bird, it’ll go out again in a minute.’ But then …”

Something jerked her body, so hard that I thought she was going to be sick. It took me a second to realize it had been a shudder. “Then he started saying it more and more. ‘Mum, the aminal went scratch scratch scratch in my wall! Mum, the aminal jumped up and down like this! Mum, the aminal, the aminal, the …’ And then this one afternoon in I guess August, towards the end of August, I took him over to play at his friend Karl’s house, and when I got back to pick him up, the two of them were in the garden, yelling and pretending to whack something with sticks. Aisling—that’s Karl’s mum—she said to me, ‘Jack was talking about a big animal that growls, and Karl said they should kill it, so that’s what they’ve been doing. Is that OK? You don’t mind?’”

That racking shudder again. “Oh, God. I thought I was going to faint. Thank God, Aisling took it for granted it was just something Jack had made up—she was just worried in case I thought she was encouraging them to be cruel to animals, or something. I don’t know how I got out of there. I took Jack home and I sat down on the sofa with him on my lap—that’s what we do for serious talks. I went, ‘Jack, look at me. Remember how we talked about the Big Bad Wolf not being real? This animal you told Karl about, it’s the same kind as the Big Bad Wolf: it’s makey-up. You know there’s no real animal, don’t you? You know it’s only pretend. Don’t you?’

“He wouldn’t look at me. He kept wiggling, trying to get down—Jack always hated staying still, but it wasn’t just that. I held onto his arms harder—I was terrified I was actually hurting him, but I had to hear him say yes. I had to. Finally he yelled, ‘No! It makes growls inside the wall! I hate you!’ And he kicked me in the stomach and pulled away, and ran.”

Jenny smoothed the blanket carefully over her knees. “So,” she said, “I rang the preschool and told them Jack wasn’t coming back. I could tell they thought it was the money—I wasn’t happy about that, but I couldn’t think of anything better. When Aisling rang after that, I didn’t answer the phone. She left messages, but I just deleted them. After a while she stopped ringing.”