Lets close this all off on a sweet note, shall we?

Irene smiled softly down at where her son was colouring on the sitting room floor. He was laying on his stomach poring over his creation, a rainbow of crayons scattered around his bold scribbles.

He was such a sweet boy. She had been so worried when he had asked her what time Robert was coming home from his gamblers anonymous meeting.

How does he know about that?

Sometimes there was a secret sort of wisdom in his childlike eyes, and even though they'd tried to keep this from him he'd still managed to figure it out somehow. It had frightened her after all that had happened, she worried the pressure from it would hurt him while he was still recovering from the problems he'd had earlier in the year.

He had adjusted to the idea before she'd even admitted it existed.

"Dad's going to be fine mum," he had told her, "he just needs us to look after him.

She had hugged him tightly after that. He was too small to really understand, yet it made her preconception of Robert's condition seem like an overreaction. Her husband needed her help, support and understanding, and her son had realised all of this before she had come to accept it herself. They needed to stand strong as a family.

He's growing up, she realised, and it made her heart ache a little to think of him losing the innocence of childhood and stepping out to face the world. He wouldn't be alone though, never alone, no matter what she'd always be there for him, she was his mother.

"What are you drawing there sweetie?" she asked, brushing back his pale blonde, wispy mane. It was getting a bit long now; perhaps she needed to give it a trim?

He turned his gap toothed smile on her, his crayon paused mid motion.

"It's the owl and the pussycat," he grinned.

Irene leant down to admire the brightly coloured doodles. A bird and a cat, no, an owl and a pussycat; Toby had drawn them balanced on top of a crooked looking rectangle.

"Is that their pea green boat?" she asked.

"This is the castle they live in," he said excitedly, "it's really big, isn't it?"

"It sure is," she agreed with a bemused smile.

"Sarah really likes it there," he said, smiling tenderly.

Irene took a sharp breath.

Sarah.

It had been a long time since he'd talked about Sarah; she felt her hands shake nervously. The doctors had said it was normal, lots of children had imaginary friends, but they hadn't seen her son. Sarah hadn't been just an imaginary friend to him; she had been his sister. It might have been harmless if he hadn't been so absolutely distraught about the notion of her, his sister, who was missing but that only he could remember. Lots of people had tried to explain to him that he was an only child, but he didn't seem to be able to accept that Sarah was just a figment of his imagination. Irene had wrung her hands listening to him up at night calling for her, crying and yelling out for Sarah in his sleep.

She hadn't known what to do when he started to withdraw completely, she had thought she'd have to take him to see a psychiatrist, but she couldn't stand the thought of him needing therapy and drugs just to be a normal little boy again, he was her little baby. Then one day, just as quickly as he'd started up his fantasy about a lost sister, he seemed to be fine again. He'd come out to breakfast one morning with a big smile on his face, no bags under his eyes, no tear tracks down his cheeks. After that day he had never mentioned Sarah again.

Irene swallowed heavily. "So Sarah lives there too, does she?" she heard herself ask, her voice unsteady.

Her son looked up at her carefully, as if studying her expression for a hint of understanding. A sharp intelligence glittered in his eyes, accompanied by an overly contrite smile. He pointed to the cat in his picture.

"Sarah," he said, finally.

"Ah," sighed Irene, flattening her hand over her chest where her heart was beating erratically. "The pussycats name is Sarah?"

"Yep," he sniffed, scratching his crayon against the page and looking down at his picture again.

Of course, it was just a name after all. Perhaps this was his way of coming to terms with whatever distress had caused him to create his 'Sarah' in the first place. Perhaps this was just a way of healing. Thank goodness, he wasn't regressing back into that frightened little boy.

Irene smiled encouragingly. "What is the owls name?" she asked.

Her son continued to colour, not looking up at her.

"That's the Goblin King," he said.

Irene frowned. This was the owl and the pussycat, wasn't it? Why was there suddenly a goblin king involved?

"No, the owl;" she said, pointing to the feathered creature in his picture, "what's his name sweety?"

Toby looked up at her with a mulish pout. "It's a secret," he mumbled.

"Okay, okay," she smiled, flattening down his silky hair. So the owl didn't have a name, it hardly mattered, she had thought it might be Toby. "Well what's this that you're drawing in between them?" she asked, watching her son scribble a tiny object in the rectangle between the two. "Oh, I know, is it the moon?"

"Mu-uuuum" he moaned, "it's not the moon it's their baby." He rolled his eyes as if this should be obvious.

"But the owl and the pussycat didn't have a baby in the story," she told him. She nearly bit her own guilty tongue, who was she to tell him how the story should go? Robert often told her she was too concrete in her logic, she didn't want to stifle her sons creativity; he was only nine after all.

Toby placed the finishing touches on his picture, she could see that the object tucked between the owl and the pussycat did look a little bit like a tiny infant.

As he put down his crayon he smiled mysteriously up at his mother. "They do in this story," he said.