for pine furniture, a cot and a wardrobe and maybe a chest of drawers with a changing table on top. This would have been the baby’s room, and then when he or she got big enough we were going to move them into the spare room to make way for a sibling, maybe two. Richard and I decorated it together one weekend, Radio Two on and sunshine streaming through the window, me in the first trimester of the only natural pregnancy we managed to conceive. I was already allowing myself surreptitious visits to Boots and JoJo Maman Bébé to buy a few sleepsuits and vests and scratch mittens and all the things I knew I shouldn’t – but I wanted to dive into it, to be fully immersed in it, to be properly ready. Ignorant of what was to come. That was before the worst years started, before the brutal cycles of IVF and the endless waiting, hoping, praying, wondering in sleepless hours whether I had somehow cursed it – cursed my pregnancy – by buying baby clothes too far in advance.
I haven’t been into the nursery for months and normally I keep the door shut. It’s a snapshot of a life that will never be, a museum exhibit, preserved in aspic and frozen in time.
Now it’s in an even worse state than the rest of the house. Everything is torn, opened, strewn on the floor. Drawers pulled out and turned upside down, smashed, the wood splintered and snapped. Everything opened, emptied, ripped. Hurled against walls and stripped of their contents. The destruction downstairs is methodical; but this is on a whole different level. It looks like venom. Like anger.
The tears spill then. I’m furious at myself, but I can’t help it. I cuff the tears away with the heel of my hand, not wanting to look at the ruin of the nursery but unable to look away. I pick the little doll off the floor and set it on the small painted chair by the door. It doesn’t make sense. There is literally nothing in here worth stealing. Nothing of value. I haven’t even set foot in the room since . . . I don’t know when. Maybe the summer, a few months ago. I nudge the shattered remnants of a wooden drawer with the toe of my shoe. Then I begin setting some of the furniture back upright to clear the floorspace a little.
And I realise there is something missing.
The half-dozen sleepsuits – soft white cotton never worn or washed – are gone. The little nought to three month vests are gone. The scratch mittens and a few other items of baby clothing, bought years ago during those furtive visits to Boots, all gone.
A thought pushes its way through the anger and fear: this is all about Mia. But she’s never been here in my house, not even once. Did they see the little nursery in the box room and connect it to her? Did they take the baby clothes as the next best thing, as evidence of her presence here? That doesn’t even make sense. Or was someone trying to send me a message? I have no idea what the message might be, apart from the fact that it somehow relates back to Mia.
Everything relates back to her.
In the bathroom I find a box of tissues among the bottles and creams knocked off the shelf, dry my eyes and blow my nose. I go into the spare bedroom last, survey the damage there. More of the same, wardrobes open and searched, everything flung to the floor, blankets and old clothes and pillows piled up to complete the wreckage of my house.
I’m about to go back downstairs when I notice something. Feel something. A draught. A breeze. Just a touch of cold autumn air coming through an open window across the room. Pulling the sleeve of my shirt over my hand to avoid messing up any fingerprints, I shut the window and turn the key in the lock, making sure the latch is fully down. I need to call 101, and when I’ve done that I’ll call Gilbourne as well.
I turn to leave the room and immediately freeze in place, the breath stolen from my chest.
There is a man standing behind the door.
28
I register two things in the first split-second of shock.
He is dressed all in black.
His face is covered with a balaclava.
Pure liquid terror rushes from my stomach down to my toes, a wash of fear so