Chapter 2: NOW - The Safe Room

If I wake up once in the night to check the cameras, that’s a good night. I sleep with the command tablet on my bedside table. There’s a camera in Sophie’s room, right by the window, so that I can check she’s sleeping soundly.

It’s two a.m. and Sophie is sleeping with her arms and legs sprawled out, her duvet tangled, and her soft hair covering the pink pillow. Warmth spreads through my veins and I smile. Then I check the cameras around the outside of the house, especially at the gate. There’s no one. The smart-lock control system tells me every door is locked. Every window is secure.

Nineteen years have passed since Peter Harlow offered me and my sister a lift home that day. Long years of terror, paranoia, and pain. Now I live in a house with steel-reinforced doors. There’s an escape ladder rolled up at the bottom of my wardrobe just in case. I will never let my guard down ever again. Never. Not now that I have Sophie.

I fall back into an uneasy sleep, all too aware of the alarm waiting for me in just over four hours. As I drift off, I hope Ed visits me in my dreams. Is that too much to ask of the man who told me he’d never leave? The man who did, in fact, leave. Just not of his own accord. It was cancer who took my husband from me, and I should be angry at the disease, not him. Only some days I don’t know where my anger is pointing or even where it’s coming from, like it’s an uncontrollable force with no real direction.

I’m in a deep sleep when the alarm pulls me out. I rub my eyes just before her thumping feet thunder into the room. Sophie leaps onto the bed and plants a sloppy kiss on my forehead.

“Mummy! Good morning, Mummy!”

“Oh my goodness it’s too early for this, Soph. Come on. Time to brush your teeth.” I grab her under her armpits and lower her down onto the ground. “We’ve got to get ready for school.”

“I know, Mummy,” she says, and the sass in her voice reminds me of Honey. “I was just about to brush my teeth, actually. All by myself.”

“All by yourself?”

“Yes!” she states, confidently. “I don’t need you at all, actually.”

“That’s good to know.”

Her little feet stomp back out of the room, and I hear her heading down to the bathroom to fulfil her promise of doing it all by herself, actually. I shake my head slightly, then push my feet into a pair of slippers to ward off the chill. These mornings are getting colder. Maybe I need to adjust the thermostat.

The house Ed left me is large and hard to heat. There are rooms that neither me or Sophie even bother to use. But there’s no way I’m moving. I may be constantly worried about the cleaning and the upkeep—and the frankly ginormous spiders that crawl along the curtains in September—but this is the house Ed made safe for me. He made both the front and back door feature a multi-point lock. He installed the intercom system on the gate, and the panic button behind my bedside table. He even built the safe room in the cellar in case I need to hide with Sophie in a home invasion scenario.

This house is the one place I have ever felt safe since August 2007, and I am never moving, not if I don’t have to.

When Ed told me his parents had a house in Nidderdale, about thirty miles north of Leeds where I grew up, I jumped at the chance to move. The small village of Eel Beck offered us safety and isolation. It gave us a place where Peter would never find me. Even though I felt conflicted at the thought of receiving such a generous gift, I would always prioritise safety, and this house gave us that.

I have a quick shower, help Sophie dress for school, grab her lunchbox and bundle us both into the car. When I check the doors and windows are locked, twice, I feel guilty. I sense Sophie watching me, internalising this behaviour. I sense her learning my paranoia and I hate it.

Since Sophie was four years old, I have taught her how to dial the emergency services from my phone. I have taught her how to run down to the safe room and lock herself in. I’ve shown her which windows she can climb out of if she’s too afraid to stay in the house and how to use the fire ladder. None of this is normal for a child. But I have to know she’s safe. I need to know that if I’m hurt, or killed, she understands what to do. How could I go on living without knowing that?

I am the only one who can save me, and I am the only one who can keep my daughter safe.

The thought gives me comfort as we leave the property. I watch the house grow smaller in the rearview mirror, sensing that we’re leaving safety all over again. Every morning, I hate this. But if I never leave the house and keep Sophie wrapped in cotton wool then Peter Harlow wins.

At first, I considered home schooling Sophie. That way I’d have complete control over our environment. Ed left me enough money to ensure we’ll be okay as long as we don’t splash out on anything too frivolous. Then I thought about what life would be like for her, always in the same house, never socialising with other kids her age. How would I find other children for her to play with? She doesn’t have brothers and sisters or even cousins to spend time with.

No, she needed school. Before she started, I met with every teacher and sat down to tell them my story. Tea drained, biscuits eaten and tissues used, those meetings involved many nods, gasps and tears. Every person I saw vowed to keep Sophie safe and to never, ever, let her leave with a man no matter what lie they told.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night dreaming of Peter turning up at the school gates, charming the staff into believing he’s Sophie’s dad or uncle or stepdad. Picking her up and pinching her cheeks like she’s his. I’m at those school gates twenty minutes early every single day. Somehow, I make it work with my job at the library though I have worried that Yvonne, my manager, will grow tired of making allowances.

When I first met Ed at York University, I thought all of this would be behind me. No one has ever managed to make me feel safe except him, and I won’t lie, the fact that his family is wealthy helped a great deal. He adapted this house just for me, to make me feel safe.

I brake for a stop sign, watching the tyres of the cars ahead kicking up slush from the recent snowfall. The grief hits me like a wave again. His hand in mine at the end. Him telling me how much he wanted to stay with me and our daughter and the pain of us knowing he couldn’t. I hope to every God and every angel and whatever else may exist in this world that he still sees his daughter growing up somehow.

I am the only one who can save me now that Ed is not in this world.

But am I enough?

I take a left, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn bright white. In the back seat Sophie sings the theme tune from Horrid Henry and draws circles in the condensation on the window.

I would kill for her.