Then he turned and walked to the door. He unlocked it and reached on to the stairs. When he came back into the room he was holding a shoebox. He took off the lid and held it up to show Maggie what was inside.

There was a large, white rat. Its pink nose sniffed the air.

‘No,’ Maggie croaked. ‘Please, no. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ he said.

He picked up the rat and pulled the chin of the helmet towards him, then put the head of the rat in the gap between her neck and the helmet. She tried to twist away but he grabbed her neck with his free hand, and, seconds later, she felt tiny feet scrabbling on her cheek.

And then a pink nose came into view and she screamed.

‘Don’t do that,’ the man said. ‘You’ll upset him.’ He tilted her chin up so she was looking at him. ‘This is James,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d like the name. And he’s very hungry.’

7

Sometimes the rat – James, he had called it, and even though she knew he was using her brother’s name to punish her she couldn’t get the name out of her head – slept, or was still. Sometimes it moved slowly, walking around her head and mouth and lips and nose in steady circles.

Sometimes – and these were the worst – it scuttered around, making sinister, high-pitched noises.

She waited for it to bite her, waited in the darkness for its needle-sharp teeth to pierce her cheek, waited to feel her blood flow as the rat lapped it up.

And when she thought she could bear it no longer, when she thought she was going to lose her mind, the light came on and the door opened and the man came and took the rat and the helmet away.

He stood by the door, his arms folded.

‘Don’t do that again,’ he said. ‘Got it, Fruitcake?’

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

Three Days to Go

1

Max sat on the end of the mattress, trying to balance the tinfoil ball on top of a Duplo tower. It was a precarious situation; even if he got it to stick, as soon as he moved, the mattress shifted and the ball fell down.

Every time it fell, Max burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter. Maggie wasn’t sure why he found it so funny, but she was glad he took so much joy in it. It wasn’t unexpected; Max was one of those people who always saw the light side of everything. Whatever happened, however simple the pleasure, he was almost always happy.

That was how she would remember him. Despite the tininess of his world, the lack of fresh air and friends and sweets and ice cream and all the things a child should have, despite everything he had to put up with, he was happy.