Irene stood in her kitchen, hands coated with self-raising flour. Burt was in the room they called "the study", fossicking on his hands and knees under a half-built flat-pack desk. "Irene, did you know there's a hole here?" Burt called.
"What do you mean?" Irene washed the flour off her hands in the sink and patted them dry on her apron. Her apron depicted a sketch of a large cake and read "Fat kids are harder to kidnap". Burt had bought the desk online. It'd been delivered the same day by the strangest-looking little fellow. Irene wondered if she'd ever seen someone with skin so red. Redder than a Brit on a Spanish beach is how she'd put it.
"A hole," Burt called. "In the skirting board."
"Like a mouse hole? Or like—"
"Sort of, but no, look, I can fit my hand in—"
"Don't do it, Burt," she interrupted. "You remember what happened last time?" She paused and cocked her head. She waited for a response, but nothing came.
"Burt?" She pulled her apron off and dusted it down. She pulled a short broom and a pan from the butler's pantry they'd installed just last year. She swept up the dust and grit from the slate kitchen floor that had looked so nice in the showroom, but was rather impractical for a kitchen in retrospect. That one was on her, thought Irene. "Burt?" Where was he? Goddammit. This again?
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