There was no way to avoid the puddles, so she waded bravely through – and as if that weren’t bad enough, the water sprayed up into her eyes every time a car went past. Beneath her pink wool beanie with its little pompom on top, her poor hair hung limp as a jellyfish.
What a night! It was only two short blocks from the bar to her apartment but each trip felt like crossing a minefield, and the rain that particular evening was a cruel bonus, adding insult to injury.
She paused at a distance from her building, praying he wouldn’t be there. His presence was insistent but erratic: one day yes, another day no, and then there he’d be again. It was a dangerous little game they were playing. He knew just how to make it impossible for her to report him and, in any case, a woman has few legal grounds on which to call the police over a psycho ex unless he actually kills her, even though she’s not exactly in a position to speak out if she’s dead. Either way, she’s screwed.
Penelope – Penny to her friends – stopped just out of reach of the glare of a streetlamp; the light buzzed on and off, then came a sizzle, and finally darkness. At least he wasn’t waiting at the entrance. Now it was just a matter of figuring out whether he was inside.
Penny sighed into the rain, bit her lip and told herself she couldn’t stay out there much longer. If he doesn’t stab me first, I’m gonna die of pneumonia.
Shrugging her shoulders, she quickened her pace as she sploshed her way to the door, though not exactly quite so carefree as Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain.
The building was truly hideous – one of those sad, crumbling apartment complexes, a chipped canvas for mediocre graffiti artists, with a sparse lobby further enlivened by drab, peeling wallpaper. The ideal place, in fact, for a sick psycho to take revenge on a girl who’d dared to stop dating him.
Penny crossed the threshold, her heart in her throat.
It was totally dark inside. The light switch was still faulty, the single bulb on its bare wire failing to relieve the gloom. Just as it always did, the concentrated darkness took her breath away.
Penny had a serious problem with the dark. She would lose all sense of reality, grow paralysed and then panic until she eventually managed to force herself to breathe and think and count to ten. Then she would finally come to, the blood rushing back to her arms and legs, and she could move again, though it was always a momentary truce, only long enough to fool the brain until it was light again. Those times when she couldn’t find the light right away were when she’d start screaming.
On this particular evening, she took her cell phone from her bag and turned on the flashlight, illuminating a grey and desolate space. Mildly heartened, she set off up the stairs.
She lived on the second-to-last floor, and hoped Grant hadn’t bothered to climb that many steps to lurk in wait for her, crouched in some miserable corner.
One month earlier, Penny had dated Grant for seven stupid days. They’d met at the bar where Penny worked. He’d walked in, gorgeous as the sun, elegantly unkempt and with the most charming smile. He’d exchanged a few words with her while she was mixing his mojito, and then ended up waiting outside for her, all done with a studied delicacy, clearly with the hots for her but making no assumptions. They had fallen into an easy conversation outside the entrance to Well Purple. Nothing on that starry night, not the faintest hint of anything wrong, had led her to suspect that so much beauty and elegance could hide something far more sinister, but Penny had been forced to snap out of her fantasy by only their third date. That boy with his perfect looks – every mother’s dream for her daughter – was no more than a spoiled and violent little bully who took pleasure in humiliating women, so Penny had dumped him without much thought and he had not forgiven her. Since then he had begun to follow her everywhere. For the time being he was still limiting himself to inspiring fear in her, observing her from afar with his feral smile and mocking her threateningly, though never in the presence of a witness. In public he acted like a true gentleman, straight