Breathing is impossible now, my heart is racing. I have to get it out of my kitchen.

‘What shall we do with it?’ Bonnie asks. She can’t take her eyes off it.

The way it’s running around in the bucket is awful. I should have drowned the bloody thing. Now it’s stuck in there and terrorising me. I’d planned to leave it until Liam came to pick up Bonnie on Friday, but I can’t have it in here. I just can’t. I won’t be able to come into my kitchen. I have to get it out of the house.

‘We have to let it go,’ I say to Bonnie. For a second or two, wondering how terrible it would really be to flush it down the loo.

‘In the garden?’ Bonnie asks.

‘No, it will just come back into the house.’

‘The park?’

‘No Bonnie, it’s too far.’

I’m going to flush it down the toilet.

‘Where then?’ She looks up at me. Her eyes desperate, her pretty little face so adorable I can barely take it. She so rarely looks at me like this; she is softened by the presence of another heartbeat in this house. It’s just such a horrible shame it’s a rodent.

‘Please Mummy?’

I’m transfixed by her for a moment, the sweetness in her tone, the delicacy of her face. It makes me respond exactly how I should, rather than how my brittle nature has often decided is normal.

‘OK,’ I say, stepping up. ‘Go and find your shoes. We’ll take it to the park.’

I put on some Marigolds and get a roll of clingfilm out of the drawer. I remove the stick and throw it out of the kitchen window. I roll out some clingfilm to about twelve inches longer than the perimeter of the bucket, trickier than it looks whilst wearing rubber gloves, and lower it slowly. A wrong move from me and I could tip the bucket. My hands are in such terrifying proximity to the mouse that I want to close my eyes, but that could result in the mouse crawling into my clothes. I turn my head to the side, but stretch my eyes so I can just about see, and I lay the clingfilm over the top, pressing down the sides to seal it.

Exhale. That was round one. I then add layer upon layer of clingfilm, longer each time so it doesn’t come away. I squash it to the sides, making it as tight as I can. I finish the whole thing off with a huge layer of kitchen foil that I scrunch into place and poke some tiny holes for air circulation with a pin. I now can’t see the mouse. That is better.

I lift the bucket and put it into the bottom of the buggy. It miraculously fits.