I found a parcel in the letterbox. I didn’t want to wait to open it, since parcels and packages had been very strange this last year. It was gourmet chocolate, from Rudolph, with a note saying, “Counting down the months.” I quickly stuffed it into my bag.
There was a commotion just inside the gate.
‘Twiddles!” cried Zoë, joyously. She dumped her backpack and wrapped her arms around a solid white neck. “I brought you lots of carrots.”
“Twiddles?” Nick asked, sceptically. I stood there and stared.
Twiddles was about the size of a Shetland pony. He had a very nice horn in the middle of his forehead. I looked. His feet were fully cloven. If we took him to a kosher butcher to get him killed, we could eat him for dinner, I thought, irrelevantly.
“I called him,” Zoë boasted proudly to her br
