The Girl Who Swapped (15+) SAMPLE ONLY

The Social Media Bore

The Berkleys' House, Sunday

Following Sean's revelation, we'd driven home, or to the place that now appeared to be our home, at a terrifying rate of knots, appalled by the fact that we had left a four-year-old all on her own.

"But Lottie, this is bonkers!" Josh said, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. "Why are we old gits and parents too? I'm totally freaked out."

I had no answer to that. All we could do for the moment was rescue a child and work the rest out later.

After a mad dash from the garage to the house and then upstairs to try to find said four-year-old, we stumbled upon a smallish room, done out in white, silver and shades of pink, complete with luminous stars on the ceiling.

There was also a bunk bed, a small, sleeping child occupying the bottom bunk. The room smelled slightly yeasty, of talcum powder and small child sweat. I kind of liked it.

By this stage, Josh and I were out of incredulity—or so we thought. But again, a perusal of this child's sleeping face revealed certain likenesses to our own features. Child number two also had curly hair, closer in colour to my own dark hair, and a broad face with a nose that belonged, in a bigger form, to Josh.

He stared at me in disbelief.

"What–" he began to say, but I guess the whole lot of 'What's' he could have asked felt too overwhelming, so he settled for simply putting his head into his hands.

Luckily for us, the small child was still sleeping so did not seem to have experienced any ill effects thanks to her exposure to inadvertent parental neglect. I thought I'd better check it out for sure, so I prodded her gently.

"Tildie, Tildie..."

The child shuddered slightly and frowned without opening her eyes, a gesture I recognised as one of the 'do not disturb' types. I persisted anyway.

"Tildie, Tildie wake up!"

Tildie responded by pulling the duvet (illustrated with various Disney princesses) up over her head. I pulled it gently down again, uncovering a little body, dressed in mauve pyjamas.

There was a small sigh.

"Mummy!" She sat up, a look of indignation on her little features. "I was having this dream, a dream that I was on a horse and we were galloping and galloping, and escaping from the Narker Man."

I'd been expecting the 'Mummy' bit, but it still jolted me.

"Who's the Narker Man?" I asked, settling on something more addressable.

The little girl (my little girl?) looked, well, narked. "Mummy, you talk about the Narker Man all the time! He's that dragon king. He breathes fire. He comes to get me if I don't go to bed early and he will steal all my food, and I will starve to death if I don't eat all my dinner at night. You remember?"

Josh pushed himself from the wall he'd been sloped against and stared at me, hard. Bloody hell, what kind of monstrous person was I, frightening small children with tales of hideous creatures who starved kids to death?

"Do we, Tildie?" I sat down beside her on the bed. "Do you know? I think maybe the Narker Man has gone away—ooh I know!"

Inspiration struck "Do you know what, your daddy–" I flashed a look at Josh, daring him to disagree, "had this ginormous fight with the Narker Man last night. He attacked him with a rubber spatula," –Josh mouthed "A what?" at me—"and the Narker Man is gone for good. Daddy chased him out of the house, and he's set up invisible guards who will stop him coming back."