Page 27 of Matilda’s Summer of New Beginnings

There is a space dead opposite the flat where you’d think another house would be, but instead of a house, there is this sort of gap-toothed grin going on in the crescent of terraced properties. I think the property must have been lost to the Blitz or something, but it does mean that the light streams through the gap and right into the front bedroom, and there’s a good sense of light all day. It’s great for my sewing ventures as well, and my machine sits happily in the corner, with boxes of fabric and paper patterns piled up around it.

Rosie is a bit like a dormouse — she likes to sleep in a small, dark, quiet space, whereas I’m often up as soon as the dawn breaks, possibly slapping paint around or running up seams before breakfast, and enjoying the sense of being the only person awake, feeling like the early-morning time is mine and mine alone.

So the room swap had worked and we were both very happy with the arrangement — in fact, we wondered why we hadn’t done it sooner . . .

But I digress. Let me go back to my night-time visitor.

I am a fairly light sleeper and as soon as I sensed someone was in my doorway, I sat up and screamed. The intruder cursed, and the bedroom light went on.

Rosie has a very special knock that she uses to gain access to my room if she needs to alert me to something during the night, and she’d already alerted me to the fact she had returned from her work’s night out. So I knew it wouldn’t be her.

And she definitely wouldn’t have cursed in a deep voice and snapped my light on. Snapping my light on would have been unforgiveable.

‘Good God!’ bellowed the interloper, when the worse curse words had been exhausted. ‘What the hell?’

‘Damien!’ My neurons fired as the tall, dark shape in my doorway became clearer and resolved into that extremely annoying personage. ‘What the hell to you. I mean, what are you doing here? In my house. In my room?’ I was enraged.

‘Steady on!’ he yelled, trying to reverse out of the room. ‘I made a mistake, is all. I got the wrong door.’

‘What?’ I snapped. ‘How could there possibly be a correct door for you to use? And, actually, what are you doing here in the middle of the night anyway?’

By this time, our heated exchange had roused my vampiric friend Rosie — no longer a friendly dormouse. She hates being woken up, and her personality changes in, quite frankly, a terrifying fashion. She appeared, snarling, at the door so recently vacated by Damien, who was now in the hallway peering around the door, into the bedroom. Rosie’s hair stood out around her head in a cloud of wild curls. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes sparking fire and brimstone on us, and, to complete the illusion, she was wrapped in a shroud.

Okay it wasn’t a shroud — it was her duvet.

‘Night-time,’ she snarled. ‘Bedtime. Quiet time.’ She stood breathing heavily and angrily in my doorway. ‘Bedtime.’ She reiterated. She turned, silently, and drifted away, back to her own bedroom, the duvet trailing behind her ominously.

We both stared at her, silenced by the vision.

‘I’m not sure what the most terrifying thing is here,’ said Damien. ‘Rosie being woken up. Or you being woken up.’

‘I’ll tell you what is most terrifying,’ I said. ‘It’s you. You in my house. In my bedroom. Uninvited! What are you doing here? Did you nick a key?’

‘No!’ he was indignant. ‘I bumped into Rosie on her night out. She said I could come back here — we’re headed in the same direction for work tomorrow, so it made sense. Your place is closer than mine.’

‘How have you even got clean clothes to go to work in?’ I muttered — and then, oh God — I realized he was dressed only in his boxer shorts.

‘Oh my God!’ I said. ‘Not only are you in my room—’

‘—not in your room any more. In hallway.’

‘You’re encroaching back in. Not only are you almost in my room again,’ I made a slight concession to him there, ‘but you are semi-naked. Get out! Get out!’

‘Steady on!’ he grumbled, and I swear he sucked his stomach in. ‘I couldn’t sleep in my clothes, could I?’

‘No. I suppose not. But the fact is, you are here. Ugh. Out. Out!’ I waved my hand in a “get out” sort of gesture.

He ignored it.

‘Like I say. Wrong room. I went to the bathroom, and I was half asleep and thought this was the lounge.’

‘Oh shut up,’ I said, pulling my covers back up and lying down again. ‘Switch the light out on your way back to the couch please.’

I pulled the cover up over my head to make a point, but I could see through the fabric that the light remained on. I could tell, also, that he remained in my doorway. I squeezed my eyes shut.

‘Hey, they’re good,’ he said, randomly. ‘Interesting.’

What on earth? Remaining under the cover, I opened my eyes again. I tried to process what he could be talking about.