He just used to pace backwards and forwards all night long. Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough . . .
Was I going mad? Was that what this was?
Jesus. This was ridiculous. People didn’t go mad from two nights’ lack of sleep. I was being completely melodramatic.
And yet, as the footsteps passed above me again, slow and relentless, I felt a kind of panic rise up inside me, possessing me, and I could not stop my eyes turning towards the locked door, imagining it opening, the slow tread, tread of old feet on the stairs inside, and then that cadaverous, hollow face coming towards me in the darkness, the bony arm outstretched.
Elspeth . . .
It was a sound not coming from above, but in my own mind—a death rattle cry of a grief-stricken father for his lost child. Elspeth . . .
But the door did not open. No one came. And yet still above me, hour after hour, those steps continued. Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . the ceaseless pacing of someone unable to rest.
I could not bring myself to turn out the light. Not this time. Not with those ceaseless, restless footsteps above me.
Instead, I lay there, on my side, facing the locked door, my phone in my hand, watching, waiting, until the floor beneath the window opposite my bed began to lighten with the coming of dawn, and at last I got up, stiff-limbed and nauseous with tiredness, and made my way down to the warmth of the kitchen to make myself the strongest cup of coffee I could bear to drink, and try to face the day.
Downstairs was empty and echoing, eerily quiet without the snuffling, huffing presence of the dogs. I was surprised to find that a part of me missed the distraction of their questing noses and constant begging for treats.
As I made my way across the hall to the kitchen, I found I was picking up a treasure trail of the girls’ possessions—a scatter of crayons on the hall rug, a My Little Pony abandoned beneath the breakfast bar, and then—oddly—a single purple flower, wilting, in the middle of the kitchen floor. I bent down, puzzled, wondering where it had come from. It was just a single bloom, and it looked as if it had fallen from a bouquet or dropped from a house plant, but there were no flowers in this room. Had one of the girls picked it? But if so, when?
It seemed a shame to let it die, so I filled a coffee mug with water and stuck the stem into it, and then put it on the kitchen table. Perhaps it would revive.
I was quietly nursing my second cup of coffee and watching the sun rise above the hills to the east of the house when the voice came, seemingly from nowhere.
“Rowan . . .”
It was a reedy quaver, barely audible, and yet somehow loud enough to echo around the silent kitchen, and it made me jump so that scalding coffee slopped over my wrist and the sleeve of my dressing gown.
“Shit.” I began mopping up, twisting at the same time to see the source of the voice. There was no one there, at least, no one visible.
“Who’s there?” I called, and this time I heard a creak from the direction of the stairs, a single creak, so eerily like those of the night before that my heart skipped a beat. “Who is it?” I called again, more aggressively than I had intended, and strode angrily out into the hallway.
Above me a small figure hesitated at the top of the stairs. Ellie. Her face was worried, her lip trembling.
“Oh, sweetheart . . .” I felt instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, you scared me. I didn’t mean to snap. Come down.”
“I’m not allowed,” she said. She had a blanket in her hands, twisting the silky trim between her fingers, and with her bottom lip stuck out and wobbling dangerously close to tears, she looked suddenly much younger than her five years.
“Of course you are. Who says you’re not allowed?”
“Mummy. We’re not allowed out of our rooms until the bunny clock’s ears go up.”
Oh. Suddenly I remembered the paragraph in the binder about Ellie’s early rising, and the rule about the Happy bunny clock, which clicked over to the wide-awake bunny at six. I looked back through the arch to the kitchen clock—5:47.
Well, I couldn’t