He walked through his front door, hung his coat on a hook and went through to the kitchen. He sagged. It had been Clarabelle’s turn to clean, but Clarabelle had a unique way of doing things that made sense only to her. Her way of cleaning, for example, entailed taking everything that was messy and moving it to another side of the room. It took as much time as cleaning would actually take, but the end result was far less useful.

Light footsteps came down the stairs. Clad in a fluffy pink bathrobe and wearing fluffy pink slippers, on which swayed twin ping-pong balls painted like eyes, Clarabelle’s hair was a furious shade of green. “Hello,” she said.

She didn’t launch into a full-blown babble, which was unusual. Very unusual.

“What did you do?” Scapegrace asked.

A series of expressions flitted across Clarabelle’s face. First, there was indignation, then there was resignation, followed by hope, chased by confusion, and finally knocked down and sat upon by innocence. “Nothing.”

“Did you set fire to something again?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

She frowned, then nodded.

“Where were you just now?”

“Up in my room,” she said. “I was sorting through my favourite socks. I have seven. Snow White had seven dwarves, did you know that? I have seven socks. In a way, I’m kind of like Snow White.”

“Snow White cleaned the kitchen every once in a while.”

“She had little birds and squirrels to help her. All I could find was a hedgehog, but he was useless. I had to do everything myself.”

“Moving things is not cleaning them.”

“Do you want to know what I did wrong?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Clarabelle scrunched up her mouth, like she did when she was figuring out the best way to say something. Before she could confess, the front door opened and Thrasher walked in.

“I’m home!” he called, even though he could see them both standing in the kitchen.

“Gerald!” Clarabelle said, bounding over to him. Thrasher hugged Clarabelle, wrapping her in his massive, muscular arms. “Did you have a good day? Did anything fun happen?”

“Every day is a fun day when you’re doing what you love,” Thrasher said, and flashed an eager smile at Scapegrace. Scapegrace ignored him, walked to the fridge and left them to their chit-chat. He poured himself a glass of milk, leaned his hip against the cooker and drank.