Nobody could say what had caused so much chaos. Nobody knew. The streets out of the city had been jam packed with traffic, as families who'd been planning a whole day of shopping decided to head home early. Trains and busses were cancelled due to unidentified technical problems, as well as the more obvious problem of a whole day's worth of shoppers, tourists, and commuters all wanting to leave at the same time.

The evening news reported that there had been an 'incident', but made no effort to explain what that incident might have been. There had been a number of fires, which might have had one cause between them, but nobody seemed to be sure. Three buildings had suffered a partial collapse in the middle of a shopping district, and again, nobody could say if there was something in common between them.

On the Internet, people talked about monsters walking in the streets, terrible things so scary that you couldn't remember what they looked like a minute later. Some people had tried to draw them, Mom said, but she wouldn't show Amber the pictures. She didn't want her little girl to be more scared than she already was. It was clear that if they'd taken ten more minutes to get out of the shop, or if they'd been parked in one of the multi-storey lots closer to the city centre, they wouldn't have been enjoying microwave hamburgers in front of the television; they would have still been stuck in the gridlock that had developed as hundreds of people decided they wanted to use the same roads at the same time, and half of them decided to ignore the signs and try to find their own ways around the blockages.

The news said that people had taken pictures of whatever happened. They couldn't show them, though. So many different images, it was obvious that as soon as the first garbled stories had come out of the city centre, people had started putting together fake photos based on the descriptions, and they'd taken bits and pieces from whichever stories sounded most dramatic, not caring if they were true or even sane.

Mom quickly changed the channel when the tone shifted from traffic disruption and people stranded to speculation about chemical attacks, terrorists, and the people who stood on street corners yelling that the aliens had landed. They watched a cosy police drama instead, where there was only one policeman in the village, everyone called him by his first name, and the big mystery of the week was who had stolen a thousand tins of paint that nobody actually seemed to want.

Amber headed off for an early night once the mystery was solved. She'd guessed halfway through that young Eric wasn't really hurt, just visiting his boyfriend in Colchester, and that the terrifying red stain on his coat was some of the missing paint, and that it would somehow turn out to be something to do with the insurance. These ones nearly always were, but this time the smaller details hadn't been enough to keep Amber's attention until the end.

"I'm just tired," she said, for maybe the fifth time. "We got away in time, and we weren't close enough to see any monsters. We were lucky, Mom."

"I think you're right. And I'm very, very proud of you for thinking properly in a crisis. I've been telling you for years that you need to not lose your head, and then I'm the one who couldn't think when those people started talking about fire, or monsters, or whatever it was."

Amber hugged her mother tight. She couldn't think of the right words to say how glad she was that they hadn't been close enough to see a monster. She mumbled a bit, but she couldn't think of any actual words, so she hoped that just holding her close would be good enough.

"I love you, sweetie," Amber's mom ruffled her hair, "I'm just so glad it wasn't worse. And I'm so glad. I know now you can look after yourself, if you've not got your head in the clouds. But we both breathed in the smoke, and they're saying something about there might have been chemicals burning, or anything. So if you start feeling funny, you let me know right away, okay? I've called Eileen already, to let her know we're safe. She'll be coming round in the morning, so if we get sick or something she can get someone to help. There's nothing more to worry about."

Amber nodded again. She was vaguely aware that Mom wouldn't normally bother to tell her something like that, not wanting to get her scared. Today had made a big impression on both of them, even though they hadn't been close to whatever had happened. Mom trusted her just a little more, and Amber knew that she had an answer to one of the questions that had been buzzing around her mind like a confused fly. She knew that she would do anything to protect her family, and her friends. If she'd had to choose between saving her mom and herself, she knew she would have made the right choice when it came to it, even when she was sure that a girl her age wasn't even supposed to think about those kinds of things. But then, Amber knew she was special.

"Don't have nightmares," Mom added, as Amber's feet hit the stairs. "That's an order. All the scary things stay in today, they'll be less of a worry tomorrow. Don't have bad dreams, and if you do, you can always come and find me. I'll understand."

Amber nodded and hurried up to her room. She pulled on her pyjamas and crawled under the covers, sighing deeply. The curtains were closed, the room plunged into darkness. The clock still said 9:48, but she didn't want to stay awake any more. She lay under the covers, and forced her breathing to slow down. When she was sure she was calm enough, she closed her eyes and whispered two words: "I'm ready."