It happened this morning

My phone-alarm clock sprung to life way too early, as ever. The bright light it made as it squawked meant that I had an excuse for not opening my eyes straight away.

I stretched, trying my best to look more like a cute kitten waking up than a Kraken, but most likely failing miserably - my mother's genes have ensured that, true to her Scottish clan's heritage, I am most definitely not a morning person.

The sound of soft breathing by my side made me smile. No, for once, it was not my cat (you can't hear him breathe, for one thing). This was a human being. A living, breathing human being.

Holy crap. It wasn't a dream. There really WAS a man in my bed. A man, if the images running through my head were anything to go by, that bore more than a striking resemblance to Don Draper. Good job I was wearing my least-unsexy pyjamas.

Oh.

Wait.

"Wearing pyjamas" didn't sound right.

Surely, if Don Draper were in bed next to me, I wouldn't be wearing anything at all. I would be glowing, swathed in just a white sheet, my hair tousled yet fetching, my skin flushed and my eyes shining.

Hmmm.

That didn't sound right either.

I stretched again, willfully keeping my eyes closed. No, I wasn't imagining it. The breathing was most definitely there, and there was very clearly someone lying next to me...

I opened my eyes, slowly, scraping the morning crud away and peering murkily through the darkness. The form lying next to me was certainly human, but it didn't look quite how I imagined Don Draper would look. Blonder, for one thing. But I could (probably) live with that.

Yes, but not just blonder. Kind of shorter. A lot shorter. And skinnier. And -

Oh.

Fuck.

Not Don Draper at all. Not even a man.

A 7-year-old girl, my sweet baby L, who'd climbed into my bed at some ungodly hour after waking from a nightmare.

Fuck.

I swear, I love that little girl with all my heart. But at that moment, at that precise moment when I realised that my dream was just that, a dream, my deception at seeing her long, blond hair tangling over the edge of my pillow was monumental.

Sigh.