It’s eleven o’clock at night. Lizzie is asleep in our bedroom and I’m doing a wee in our adjoining bathroom (I’d say ‘en suite’ except the bathroom also has a door onto the main upstairs hallway – like some kind of weird, half-arsed ‘Jack and Jill’ set-up).
As I wee, I suddenly hear something… a rustling noise, coming from the fitted, doored cabinets with the sinks on top – just to the left of the toilet.
The rustling becomes more frenzied. It’s definitely coming from the sink-cabinets. More specifically, behind the doors of one of the cabinets.
It occurs to me I should open the doors to have a look at whatever thing is causing the rustling.
It also occurs to me that the thing might run out the moment I open the doors. And it could be a mouse.
Or a rat.
Bravely (and not at all scrabbling for an excuse not to open the cabinet door), I think to myself, I don’t want to wake Lizzie up and upset her.
No. That would never do.
I’ll have a look in the morning.
In the kitchen, the following morning, I tell Lizzie about my experience the previous night – with the rustling mouse or rat in the bathroom cabinets.
Without wasting a second, Lizzie heads upstairs to have a look.
‘OH MY GOD!’ I hear her exclaim, as I stumble into the bathroom after her.
Lizzie is standing in front of the bathroom cabinets. All the doors are open.
She’s holding a bar of soap in her hands – evidently from one of the cabinets.
‘It’s been nibbled!’ she exclaims.
Evidently, the soap has been. It’s covered in bite marks. For a brief moment, I think of the time Jake accidently bit into a bar of chocolate-scented soap at his aunt’s fiftieth birthday party, thinking it was in fact a bar of chocolate.
I don’t think it was Jake this time, however. The nibbles on the soap bar are too small.
Lizzie now takes more items out of the fitted, low-level cabinets… boxes of plasters… boxes of aspirin… more soap… all nibbled.
She brings out a packet of vitamin C tablets. The end has been gnawed off entirely.
‘Well, at least the mouse won’t get scurvy,’ Lizzie shrugs.
P. D. Clifton 
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