The Watchful Neighbour - Debbie Viggiano Page 0,37

years old. The last ten years had been an emotional rollercoaster. That had been far worse to deal with than a piffling broken window.

Pep talk over, Jade set about running a bath.

After a long soak, she slipped on some cosy pyjamas and snuggled under the duvet. Despite thinking she wouldn’t sleep, Jade was out for the count within minutes.

In the early hours her eyes snapped open. There had been a noise. Her ears strained to hear. There it was again.

Should she call Brad? No. She didn’t want her screen lighting up the shadows or risk inadvertently alerting an intruder to her whereabouts. Apart from anything else, time was of the essence. She needed to act. Now.

Suddenly Jade’s entire body was whooshing with adrenalin. She knew instinctively that her nervous system had switched to survival mode. All earlier musings about whether she had it in her to kill flew straight out of her broken kitchen window. In that moment, Jade knew she was capable of murder. And right now, her victim was downstairs.

She could hear him moving around. How had he got in? She hadn’t heard breaking glass. And then it came to her. The intruder had used the oldest trick in the book. Jade had once read about it in one of those gangland memoirs.

The guy had chosen his target house and coated a windowpane in treacle. Over the sticky surface he’d placed sheets of newspaper. A few strategically placed raps with a hammer had then broken the glass but in such a way that it had adhered to the entirety of the newspaper. Carefully pushing against the pane, entry had accordingly been permitted. There hadn’t been one tinkle of broken glass alerting the homeowner.

Grabbing the frying pan, Jade rocketed out of bed. The element of surprise was crucial.

Creeping out to the landing, she paused to listen. Her ears felt like they’d quadrupled in size. She could almost visualise them on the side of her head, pulsing away.

There it was again. Pat-pat-pat. Pat-pat. The prowler must be cautiously feeling his way through the darkness. Well now was the time to help him see where he was going before bashing the living daylights out of him.

Jade stood at the top of the staircase, frying pan poised. Her eyes bored into the blackness, trying to make out shapes. She couldn’t see a thing. But she had a good idea of where the intruder was standing. The sounds were coming directly ahead… by the console table which was at the bottom of the staircase.

Her brain was working at lightning speed, working out manoeuvres. Jade had one clear advantage. She was above him. Therefore, she could launch herself from a greater height and let her body weight bring him down. Then, when he was on the floor, that would be the moment to go berserk with the frying pan.

All she needed to do was flick on the landing light, try not to screw up her eyes against the sudden illumination, and then rush down the stairs screaming like an avenging angel.

Okay. Take a deep breath. You can do this. Go!

Resisting the urge to blink against the glare of the overhead lightbulb, Jade flew down the stairs, frying pan aloft, screeching like a pterodactyl. She was halfway down when she realised there was no intruder in the hall.

Instead, Puddles gazed up at her with large, frightened eyes. He was sitting on the console table. A moment later he’d scrambled away from his swooping mistress, sending the console table toppling.

‘What the–?’

The adrenaline that had initially powered Jade, immediately spluttered and disappeared. Her legs instantly turned to unset blancmange and she collapsed down on the hall floor. Her body began trembling violently. She screamed again as a large spider crawled past her.

Oh my God. She’d been awoken by her cat tormenting a spider. Still shaking, she began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. As she sat there, vibrating from head to toe, she wrapped her arms about her torso and began to rock backwards and forwards. She recognised that she was in the grip of something halfway between hysteria and relief.

If her therapist had been here to witness this, there would have been an instant summary regarding Jade’s current state of mind.

Unstable.

Chapter Twenty-Three

In the end, it wasn’t Greg who took delivery of Jade’s Amazon package. He’d been out, having been called back to the hospital due to Mrs Good taking a turn for the worse.

Jade knew this because Dee Parker had told her so when