A rabid bat can be mistaken for a harmless moth that gnaws at your clothes but leaves your skin unbitten. Do moths tap on the window, crash into the wall like that? What about bats? Or fathers? It’s just a moth, bumbling and fluttering and leaving my bedroom uncontaminated.

But what if it’s a bat? 

I’m a child again, hiding under bedsheets at the sound of keys turning in locks, afraid of germ-covered things flying in through cracked windows. He frothed at the mouth when he was angry, spat all over knives and forks clattering downstairs until the kitchen was a hollow where insects used to live. Mum changed all the locks but the moth-sized bat kept circling above her head erratically, biting at the air she breathed instead of moths.

A human-sized bat was found somewhere in the Philippines curled up inside black leathery wings like Dad in his blazer. It’s hanging upside down in the picture, holding me by the legs over the bed because I’m still awake at nine. Is that dusk-coloured thing still only a moth, circling the whirring light still switched on, or is it the bat that hunts it?