I knew STRAIGHTAWAY that something was WRONG on Monday morning when Mum didn’t wake me up for school. Instead, I was woken ABRUPTLY by my sister Rose shrieking SO LOUDLY it would have roused everyone else in London at PRECISELY the same time.

‘It’s eight o’clock,’ I heard her scream. ‘Why didn’t anyone wake me?’

Rose is my older sister. She is what scientists call ‘A TEENAGER’. This basically means that she has to get up extremely early every day in order to get ready for school on time. She spends approximately FIVE HOURS in the bathroom each morning. And when she comes out, she looks exactly the same as when she went in.

‘We are going to be sooo late,’ she wailed. ‘Mrs Crumpton is going to kill me. This is the end of my life. Oh my God. I AM GOING TO DIE.’

Mrs Crumpton was Rose’s form tutor and she wasn’t a great one for TARDINESS (i.e. being late). This is when I decided that something was NOT QUITE RIGHT. Although Rose is a total drama queen at the best of times, it did seem very strange that Mum was literally nowhere to be seen. I decided I needed to investigate the situation more closely.

I launched myself out of bed, and still in my planet pyjamas, walked silently across the landing so as not to disturb the teenager when she was in FULL-ON MEGA MELTDOWN MODE.

‘Mum?!!’ I heard Rose screaming from her bedroom. ‘Mum? Where are you?’

By now I had reached Mum’s room. The door was shut. This was A BIT ODD as usually she leaves it slightly ajar, but I didn’t feel it was a cause for great alarm at this stage. I knocked tentatively in case she was in one of her moods again but there was NO REPLY.

This was an interesting development but again not highly unusual. I opened the door carefully and peered inside. Nothing was out of place. The bed was neatly made, and the curtains were tightly drawn. I decided to look under the bed.

I didn’t really think Mum would be under there, but it was where she usually hid the Christmas presents. And there were only nine days to go until the big day. It was completely bare. Not even a dusty tumbleweed in sight. THERE WERE NO PRESENTS!!! This really was a DISASTER OF THE HIGHEST ORDER now.

‘Mum?!’ Rose continued to HOWL like a deranged werewolf.

‘Mum?!!’ Her voice was SO LOUD it definitely could have woken the dead.

Whilst Rose continued to wail frantically, I decided to take matters into my own hands and look downstairs. Meanwhile Rose flounced into the bathroom like a highly strung show pony and slammed the door aggressively behind her as she went.

We live in a maisonette. There are twenty stairs down to the ground floor and I took them one at a time in order to give myself OPTIMUM (a lot of) time to think. I was only on the fifth stair when I heard a strange rustling, shuffling sound coming from the kitchen below.

I took the next four steps two at a time, landing on the tenth step, when I heard an even weirder noise coming from the kitchen. I paused cautiously for a moment. It sounded like a pig was in there. A WILD BOAR. It shuffled and rustled and then it snorted. REALLY LOUDLY.

Everything went eerily quiet for a moment, which usually means something is NOT OK, and by this point I had reached the bottom of the staircase. I needed to investigate further.

Suddenly the creature let out another LOUD SNORT. The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. I looked around for something large to arm myself with. Alas, all I found was an old umbrella which was quite big but not exactly LIFE THREATENING.

The SNORTING continued.

What if it had eaten Mum?

I gulped nervously before tiptoeing stealthily to the end of the corridor, brandishing the somewhat broken umbrella in one hand, and peered anxiously into the kitchen.

I was quite scared at this point of the story in case you were wondering.

I took a very deep breath and swept through the door, hoping to take the WILD BOAR BY THE HORNS and startle it into submission.

And there.

Asleep in her chair.

Snoring like a warthog.

Was GRANDMA.

It was not a dangerous, death-defying creature after all. Just a sleeping old lady. I put the umbrella down gently and tried to recover my wits.

Meanwhile, Rose was still in the bathroom.

And there was still NO SIGN OF MUM.