This relationship needs a touch of magic, you say. So when your back is turned, I sprinkle flour down the gap beside the cooker. Next, I add a dash of mixed spice and finally a gloop of olive oil to clump the grains.

You turn back in time to see me upset a packet of rice. ‘Clumsy,’ you frown, green eyes flashing, when the peas and lentils I’ve been weighing skitter like marbles across the floor. Some I swish beneath the cooker when sweeping up. Variety, as you say, is the spice of life. All day, I add food fragments. Biscuit crumbs, fish batter, shavings of crisps. Especially crisps. 

When I scamper down at night, my specially prepared larder will sustain me until dawn.

The magic happens while you sleep. My metamorphosis requires concentration and focus. The freedom of my new form excites me, as does keeping it secret from you. My only difficulty is the hunger pangs which grip my gut, the downside to being so tiny. Foraging for leftovers isn’t easy in your spotless house. 

Tonight, a tempting smell tickles my nostrils from across the kitchen, and I can’t resist the lure of a sweating cheese cube. A squeal of delight escapes my careless mouth.

When you flash on the lights on, I become myself at once. Standing full height in the kitchen, a mouse-trap wire bites into my fingers and I blink in pain and shock.

‘I set that trap,’ you explain, gently unhinging it from my damaged fingers, and holding my hand under cold water. ‘I thought we had mice.’ 

Beside the sink is a saucer with a thin skin of milk. I peer at it, then at you.

When you smile, a bead of milk glistens on your chin.