The important thing was that, at this point in the middle of the night, the Trudi who would have spoken to him about her neck and soon after dropped off to sleep had not yet decided to eat him. He moved away from her cheek gently, and checked to see that the withdrawal of his tiny presence from (contact with her lovely face) had not woken her up. There was still one unknown factor. If she had woken up again before morning, would she have decided in the middle of the night, that eating him was her preferred course of action? Or would she have not begun to think about that option until the morning? He knew he could not take the chance on waking her. He had to escape from her, not by time travelling again, but by simply getting out of that house while she was still asleep.

Murray stood up and walked to the edge of the pillow, and then looked at the blanket. It was not tucked in on this side of the bed, he remembered from the way she had pulled the blanket and sheets over herself each time she’d climbed into the bed on this side. The blanket reached most of the way down to the carpet. Murray gripped the felt with his hands and slowly climbed and slid his way down to the carpeted floor. He then ran across the carpet, out the open bedroom door, and made his way through the house and out into the back garden, recalling that there had not been enough room for him to slide under the front door. Fortunately the back door allowed enough space for him to fit under. He ran around to the front garden, and then noticed the first hint of the rising sun in the sky.

He knew that he had woken up in the previous timeline long after sunrise, by the amount of light in the room during her announcement that he was to be her dinner. Then he also remembered that he had taken longer to drop off on both occasions, and had woken up later than her. How much later? It was important to know how long she’d been awake before he’d woken up, because it told him how early she’d woken up. If she woke up now, then instead of lying awake and waiting for him to catch up on sleep as she’d done in the previous timeline, she would notice his absence, probably around the very same time that she realised that she wanted to make a dinner out of him, and come racing out and catch him again.

Exhausted as he was from sleep loss, he kept running until he was out in the street, and then ducked into the next door neighbour’s front garden and hid amongst the plants.

He had barely laid down to catch his breath, when he heard Trudi’s voice. She was humming a tune that her fifteen year old self had hummed in the Easter special.