house? How dare he track me down, break in, violate my home? Who the hell does he think he is?
If it even is him. Maybe it’s just the creak of my little house cooling in the night. Maybe it’s some poor creature that Dizzy brought in while I was sleeping, half-dead, trying to make its escape. Or maybe it’s nothing all. Just my imagination working overtime, conjuring babies’ cries and the sounds of an intruder in the night.
All these thoughts spin through my mind in a matter of seconds as I sit up, listening for the next sound. Nothing. As quietly as I can, I swing my legs out of bed and stand up, pulling on my thick towelling dressing gown. I go around to the other side of the bed, where Richard used to keep an old sawn-off piece of curtain pole for eventualities like this. I just hope he didn’t take it with him when he left.
He didn’t. It’s still there, leaning up against the wall, an eighteen-inch long baton of wood that feels smooth and solid in my right hand. Gripping it tightly, the phone still in my other hand, I move to the door. My heart is beating so fast I feel like it’s going to fly out of my chest, my legs tingling with adrenaline. I wait another minute, debating whether to turn the door handle. This is my bloody house. I am not going to cower in the bedroom.
I am nobody’s victim.
Slowly, carefully, I open the door to the landing as silently as I can. All I can hear is the breath in my throat and the thundering of my heart. I use my phone hand to hit the main light switch, squinting against the sudden brightness as the landing and stairs are bathed in halogen light.
‘I’ve called the police!’ I shout down the stairs. ‘They’re on their way.’
At the top of the stairs I listen again. A creak? A click? Something else?
I take the stairs slowly, straining my ears to hear the slightest sound, hitting the other lights when I get to the bottom. I tiptoe down the hall, breath trapped in my throat, checking the front door is locked and bolted with the security chain on. I check all the rooms, turning all the lights on as I go, every bulb blazing bright in the night to banish the shadows and illuminate the hiding places. The sliding glass door in the lounge is closed and locked. The little dining room with its chairs pushed tightly into the table. The kitchen is last, my narrow galley kitchen with its worktops left and right, a sink looking out over the small garden blanketed in darkness. The iPad there is untouched, plugged in to charge on the kitchen side. I reach the back door that leads out into the narrow alleyway with the garden one side, the street on the other. I test the handle, expecting it to remain firm and unmoving under my palm like the rest.
But the handle gives and the door swings open, a blast of cold night air greeting me.
I stand for a second, frozen with shock, eyes blinking into the darkness – is someone there? A face, a pair of eyes? Movement at the far end of the garden? – before I slam the door closed again and turn the key in the lock. Twisting it all the way around until I hear the metallic click of the deadbolt slotting into place. Testing the handle again twice, to make sure it’s solid and secure.
Clammy sweat dampens the back of my neck. There is a smell too, faint and fading. A ghost of something sour in the cold kitchen air, sweat and dirt and exhaled breath; then there’s fear rising in my throat and I turn back to the hallway raising the baton to strike—
There is no one there.
Heart thudding painfully in my chest, I check the phone in my left hand again, light up the screen up with a shaking hand to make sure the 999 call is only one press away. Listen to the sounds of my house again, straining my ears to pick up any tiny movement. A soft noise on the stairs, descending slowly. Footsteps. I grip the baton in a moist palm. Steps nearing the bottom now. Soft. Padding.
Dizzy appears at the foot of the stairs and walks slowly into the kitchen, winds his way between my legs and sits down by his food bowl. Yawning