My son’s bedroom, a parental no-go zone at the best of times, has been sealed off completely since early spring, when he moved to start work in Edinburgh.
It’s not because the sight of his darling, left-behind things is too much for me to bear, nor is it because of mess, as he left the place fairly tidy-ish. Rather, the door has been shut fast for months because the cats are gallingly fond of him and by cutting off their option of sleeping on his bed, I’m raising significantly the chances of them curling up for the night on mine.
I didn’t even strip the bed – neither did he – as the sheets were fresh when he left, so when he messaged recently to announce he was coming home for a long weekend, I had nothing to do apart from put my head round the door to make sure everything was more or less shipshape.
The room was stuffy, to be sure, but it looked perfectly habitable, and so I closed the door and went off to prepare the prodigal soup.
His arrival was met with huge joy and rejoicing, primarily from the cats, but also from us as we waited our turns for our hugs. He went bounding upstairs to settle in.
Moments later, there was a tremulous voice on the landing. “Mum? Can I borrow you?”
Something was up. I hurried upstairs and jumped onto the bed, ready for a heart-to-heart, mentally doomscrolling a list of potential crises that might have brought him home.
Apocalyptic mothage
“Look at this.” He turned his pillow over, revealing an inky smattering of gross, dusty blobs and smears. Moths. Dead ones.
“The floor,” he whispered. His carpet is normally a neutral, oochy shade that smart paint cards might call “Burnt Porridge” or suchlike but, today, it was adorned with pearlescent flecks, scattered from here to yon, glinting and winking in the airless room. More moths. So. Many. More. Moths.
I’d dealt with the odd moth attack before, but only in terms of giving holey jumpers to mum for darning, and scooshing moth repellent around drawers and wardrobes. This was next-level, apocalyptic, horror movie, plague and pestilence mothage.
The cats were enthralled, swiping at the moths and seeming disappointed when their tiny new playmates collapsed into puffs of dust beneath their murderous paws. It was nice to see some entertainment gleaned from our predicament but, nonetheless, we had to take action right away.
Option One, by far the most tempting, was to burn the entire house down.
Option Two was to face our fears and deal with the problem. We stripped the bed and tipped the bedding into the bin.
The carpet became food
My brain was trying to process how many beasties, how much larvae, how much, er, moth detritus, may have buried its way into the fibres of the duvet and pillows. I pictured it all being boiled into hell-soup in the washing machine and decided to cut my losses and bin the whole lot.
What was left of the carpet got sooked up into oblivion
Then, gingerly, we pulled the bed away from the wall, revealing the true horror of the problem. Down there, the critters had really made themselves at home, feasting on delicious carpet and raising their young in what must have been a wonderful, tranquil, moth-nursery.
It looked like generations of moths had been raised on Burnt Porridge. The “carpet”, threadbare in the corners, had become food. As I attacked the situation with the hoover, huge bare patches were exposed, as what was left of the carpet got sooked up into oblivion. It was, frankly, appalling.
My son slept in another room that night. The next morning, we began to take everything out of the room, piece by piece, to salvage what hadn’t been taken over by moths.
A refreshing new start
If you are an empty nester reading this, with a child’s bedroom upstairs that you cannot bear to clear because it’s full of treasures and memories and worries about rejecting your baby should you turf out his stuff, I’d highly recommend a plague of moths to cure you of your nostalgic notions. Honestly, it was quite refreshing in the end.
Both me and the boy set about binning everything that wasn’t actually useful in the here and now, with clear heads, clear goals and a clear purpose: to end up with four walls, a ceiling and bare floorboards that could all be scrubbed with bleach.
I’m going to turn the room into a lovely, twin, spare bedroom for all the precious family visits which, please God, will happen over the coming years. I’ll keep it moth-free, too.
My son is delighted. We achieved in 24 hours what might have taken years otherwise. Now, when he comes home, he will be welcomed like the adult he is and can store his memories in his heart, which is where they should be.
Erica Munro is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and freelance editor
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