The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss

she’s gone, I go and sit on one of the benches over by the bus stops to wait for Dad. I
don’t have to wait long before he appears through the automatic doors, clutching the car seat, this time with The Rat in it. It’s a shock seeing her. She’s changed so much. She
doesn’t look like an alien any more. She’s still tiny and scrawny, but she looks like a baby now, with dark hair and big eyes as she looks at the outside world for the first time.
There’s nothing cute about her though; no rosy cheeks or dimples. We walk to the car in silence.
    As soon as we’re in the car, she starts to yell. It’s a weird noise, a kind of hoarse scream, over and over again. In the small space of the car it’s incredibly loud.
    ‘I expect she’ll stop once we get moving,’ Dad says. ‘She’ll probably go to sleep.’
    But she doesn’t. She doesn’t stop screaming for a single second of the journey home.
    ‘Perhaps you should take her back to the hospital,’ I say. ‘There might be something wrong.’
    ‘Babies cry, Pearl,’ Dad snaps. ‘She’s fine. It’s just new for her, that’s all. She’s probably scared.’
    It’s new for me too, I want to say. I’m scared too.
    Once we get home, Dad takes The Rat out of her seat and at last she stops crying. But every time he tries to put her down again the yelling starts up just as loud. In the end she falls asleep in
Dad’s arms. I leave them sitting together in the sitting room, both exhausted on the sofa.
    But I can still hear the sound of her crying in my ears.
    I’m running. I’m running down corridors, identical green corridors, but the further I run the longer they get and I’m trying to run faster, but I
can’t move my legs and I’m not going to get there I’m not going to get there . . .
    I sit up in bed, heart pounding, head still half in the dream. I try to breathe slowly. The corridors fade, leaving blank darkness. For a second relief floods through me; but that second
disappears into the dark too and now I feel that there are tears on my cheeks and I remember why. I scrub them away with my sleeve and I hate myself for forgetting, even for that tiny moment, just
like I do every morning. Except – I stare into the darkness, slow to catch up . . . Except this isn’t morning. The clock says 3:17.
    Something is strange. It takes me another moment to work out what it is.
    It’s the silence. Every single one of the ten nights since she came home the noise of The Rat has filled the house. But tonight there is nothing except the pipes clanking and a dog barking
in the distance. My brain is still half in the panicky dream. Perhaps something has happened while I’ve been asleep. I get up and pad across the cold floorboards along the landing to
Dad’s bedroom. I push the door open a crack. His bedside lamp is on and he’s in bed, propped up on some pillows, fast asleep, with The Rat also asleep on his chest. His hand rests
protectively on her tiny back. They seem to glow in the circle of lamplight.
    I stare at them for a moment longer; somehow I feel like I’m intruding on something private. I force myself to look away and head back to my room, but I can’t stop thinking of them,
together on the other side of the wall, their gentle breathing.
    Eventually, I give up on trying to sleep and go downstairs to make a cup of tea. I bring it back up with me and go to sit in Mum’s study. I don’t expect her to be there this time. I
just want to feel less alone.
    I put my tea down on the desk and carefully open up the STELLA’S STUDY (PERSONAL) box again.
    There are old letters from Nanna Pam, Mum’s mum, and more recent cards from Mum’s best friend Aimee in Australia and other people I don’t know. There’s a photo of Mum and
Dad looking young and happy, one with me on Dad’s shoulders at London Zoo. There’s an old biscuit tin with things from when I was a baby: the hospital wristband, some little soft shoes,
a tiny knitted hat. I hold the