Charlie's favourite time of the week is when Mum does the laundry. She puts the babies on a fresh pile of towels and they squirm and gurgle and he doesn't understand them really; he can't remember Percy being a baby even though he guesses he was as little as the twins once. They just don't do anything, or seem good for much, really. Percy, at least, can walk – he waddles round the stacks of clothes; falls on them sometimes with a plop that makes Charlie laugh and Bill smirk.
Bill wants to go outside and play but Mum won't let them out alone; there's something scary out there, something scary enough that it makes Mum and Dad whisper like Charlie does when he's scared at night of the ghoul and wants to wake Bill up. Whatever it is makes Mum cry whenever Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian come to dinner, when they leave and she hugs them and won't let go until Dad makes her.
Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian aren't scared of the monster. Charlie wants to be like them someday, not scared of anything. Bill does too; sometimes the two of them play at fighting monsters; and sometimes they decide the monster's a dragon and Charlie will be the dragon. Percy tries to join in but Bill says he has to be the one to get eaten, and Charlie roars as loud as he can and then Percy runs away. Anyway he's too little to play with them, really.
But now no one's crying, no one's left out or scared of monsters. They're all there, Bill, and Percy, and Fred and George, and Charlie, in the warm yellow sun shining through the thick-paned window, surrounded by the smell of fresh-dried clothes, and life is perfect and Charlie can't imagine how it ever wouldn't be.
