It wasn’t a talking carpet like the one in Aladdin. There were no furry tassels. It didn’t fly through a dark sky sprinkled with white stars.
Instead, it was heavy and fraying where the edges met the varnished wooden floor. A golden colour that had turned to beige, it had red shapes on it that were now rust, green that had faded to yellow. The carpet was in my parents’ bedroom, down the long passage that creaked. If you knew where the creaks were, you could leap silently from side to side as you tried to escape your room, without anyone hearing. One wrong step though, and the whole house would wake.