When Daniel’s aunt woke in the middle of the night, she wondered why until she heard Daniel crying out again, his muffled voice coming through the walls. She got up and padded out of her room and down the landing and opened his bedroom door.
Daniel was asleep, curled up like a dormouse in his duvet. His aunt listened when he started crying out again, burbling words and names she did not know, and then, before she knew what she was doing, she went and crouched beside him and started stroking his hair, shushing him.
When he moved sharply in his sleep, the duvet swilling like sea foam around him, her hand froze. Then, without warning, his eyes fluttered open and he blinked up at her.
‘Mum?’ His voice was full of sleep and his eyes were dreamy.
‘Yes,’ she whispered back immediately before she knew what she was saying, instantly regretting it, and holding her breath to see what he might say when he realized it was not a dream. But all he did was blink and nod and seem to decide through some sleepy mechanics of his brain to close his eyes and settle seamlessly into sleep again. She watched him for some time, as if guarding him from the world, listening to him breathing peacefully, the nightmares inside him gone.
After closing the door, she stood on the landing until her hands had stopped shaking in the dim orangey light coming from the street lights outside. When she felt ready, she went downstairs and picked up the photograph of her twin sister off the dresser in the hallway.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after him, I promise. I’ll do the best I can, just as if he was Michael. I won’t let you down. Either of you. I won’t.’