My own worst enemy#1

There's a mouse in our attic. It doesn't come inside but I've heard it a few times at night, scurrying behind the walls. We just moved our bedroom upstairs into the loft conversion that the previous owners put in and I've combed every square inch of the room for cracks or holes but there's nothing, we're separated by dry wall, dead air and a layer of thick cream eggshell paint that I put on last week. There have been nights now, more than three that I've turned on the light and M has groaned, pulling the sheets over his head while I sit there staring at the wall, my ears perked for the slightest rustle. Between two pregnancies and two babies I haven't slept through a night in three years, yet here I am, sitting silently in the night while neither child is awake waiting for a tiny noise behind a wall. When I finally lie back down and turn off the lights I'll watch the clock until yellow fingers of light creep across the room and then I'll give up and go downstairs. That mouse doesn't have to come into the house to disturb me. It's already inside nibbling at my small brain.