Afternoon in Abbotsford

My five-year-old niece sprawls on her unmade bed, silken, boyish bob flopping over her pale face. It is a Raphaelite angel’s face, smooth and glowing with an almost bloodless whiteness.

Suddenly, she flares her nostrils, contorts her red rubber mouth and twists her porcelain hands into rigid claws. The angel vanishes. We now have a laughing demon. I throw a pillow on her head and she forces out a hyperactive cackle, leaving the pillow in its absurd landing place, waiting for a reaction.

“Oh no,” I sigh nonchalantly, “now you’ll have to stay like that forever.”

“Ohhh, fooorrrevvverrr?” comes the muffled reply, a squeaking, posh old lady accent. I mimic the tone.

“Yes, most definitely forever.”

A sparking eye, more hazel than green, flashes out from under the pillow.

“Yoooou meeeeean,” she hisses, “forever until the day I die?”