Enjoy your bedroom? My heart sinks. Very slowly I stick my head around the door. A huge pile of nylon fluffy things with plastic eyes fills a corner of my bedroom just as it has since the Jupiter episode. Woodland Friends are strewn across the floor.
Perhaps she’s just winding me up.
Eric sits on my bed and takes off his shoes while I rummage around looking for a suitable victim for Dad. Eric pours what looks like a shoeful of water down the basin. ‘See?’ he says. ‘Water, for no reason, loads of it.’
‘Borrow my shoes,’ I say, pulling Frizzy McBurst, a blue fluffy monkey toy, from the arms of Bun Bun the pink dragon and tossing them across the room.
‘Are these yours?’ Eric points under my bed.
‘Should be. Tilly’s clothes are in Mum and Dad’s room.’
Eric leans down and pokes at my shoes. ‘It’s just that they’re full of … stuff.’
‘Stuff?’ I say, pulling out a cheetah, a skunk, a blue donkey, a unicorn and something I can only describe as a purple werewolf. They’re all too small to be cut in half. ‘Like what?’
‘Like, worms … earth?’ says Eric, poking them. ‘Oh, and they’re glued to the carpet.’
‘What?’ I say, stepping over to look. He’s right; they’re brimful of animal life, and I can’t pick them up, not without taking Grandma’s rug too. ‘Mum’ll kill me. Grandma’ll kill me twice. I mean, what a … ’
‘Tilly?’ asks Eric.
I nod.
He wrenches one shoe from the rug. A trail of purple threads hangs from the sole.
‘It’s not going to make me change my mind,’ I say, yanking more soft toys out of the cupboard. ‘It’s not just that shrinking things can have such huge consequences, it’s because it’s for Tilly of all people. I mean, honestly – what a waste of a power. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life shrinking cakes.’
‘Terrible waste of cake, too,’ says Eric, kneeling down beside me to trawl through the fur and fluff. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure she’s got it out of her system. Anyway, what are we looking for?’ he says, carefully lining the toys up as if they were real. He strokes a fluffy egg case, laying it between a purple zebra and a nylon snow leopard. On contact with the floor, the egg case pings open, letting out a high-pitched siren, and a small alien dinosaur springs up to bare its furry teeth.
‘Yow!’ Eric squeals, dropping it.
‘We’re looking for a kangaroo-monkey thing, with eight arms and a lion’s tail. It’s called Koyo.’
‘It’s not here,’ says Eric, poking his nose into the cupboard.
I sit back on my heels and study the bedroom. Koyo is far too big to hide. But something above my head catches my attention. There it is, glued to the ceiling over my bed. A three-foot pink monster, glaring down at my pillow; its eyes mad and round and plastic.
‘Eric.’ I point at the ceiling.
He looks up. ‘Oh, Tom,’ he sighs. ‘I can’t help feeling she’s only just begun.’