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The bananas were the problem.

It was almost two weeks since the monster had disappeared, and things had changed a lot.

Moin was happy that he didn’t have to hear the monster’s horrible songs. They made his ears hurt.

And he didn’t have to keep cleaning the mess in his room.

He also didn’t have to pretend to sing so that his parents wouldn’t realize that it was the monster shrieking.

All that was good.

But the bananas made Moin sick. Ever since the monster had turned up, Moin had taken great pains to pretend that he loved bananas. He didn’t dislike them – he could eat two a day, maybe three at a pinch. But the monster’s demands for bananas were never-ending, so Moin had had to pretend he wanted to eat them all the time.

Now his parents kept buying bananas and telling him to finish them before they got spoilt. He’d taken to hiding them in his bag and chucking them in the bin at school. But all his books had begun to smell like rotten bananas.

Moin’s maths teacher had refused to mark his last test, saying the smell made her retch. And he had been so sure he’d get full marks.

So, he had...

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