Chapter 26: NOW - The Safe Room

I redirect my gaze from the window to Emily. “Is it possible your husband may have followed you here?”

Her face pales. “I… I don’t know.”

I left the matches downstairs, so I use my phone as a torch again. It’s on low battery and I need to be quick. I manoeuvre Sophie so that she’s standing behind Emily, then, on shaking legs, I walk over to the built-in wardrobe. I realise that a man could easily fit inside it, which makes my legs even wobblier. I try to remember my self-defence classes and centre myself. Sophie lets out a thin whimper and my stomach drops. I can’t stand the thought of her being scared.

The room feels different now. Wrong. Like everything has been moved an inch to the left. Nothing stands out as being different. It’s the light. The blackout has swallowed the familiar shape of it and replaced it with jagged shadows. The unmade bed could be a crouching animal, the curtains hang like torn shrouds, and every surface seems to tilt towards the wardrobe—like the entire room knows exactly where the danger is.

I take a step forward. The carpet muffles my footsteps, but I feel each fibre scraping against my bare feet, too soft, too intrusive, as though the house itself is listening. I’m hollow. There’s nothing in me except nerves and adrenaline.

My hand grips the wardrobe handle. It’s ice cold, colder than anything else in the room. My mouth floods with saliva and I swallow hard, almost choking on it. I tell myself to breathe but the air feels thick, too heavy to pull into my lungs.

Behind me, Emily whispers, “Be careful,” and her voice has lowered to a deeper, more sombre tone.

The phone shakes as I lift it, the beam jittering over the surface of the doors. The hinges glint. I hear a faint tap, which could be the house settling or something more sinister. My brain interprets it as knuckles against wood. A chill ripples up the back of my neck, each tiny hair lifting.

I count to three in my head. My hand refuses to move. My body has turned traitor, caught between the instinct to protect my daughter and the instinct to run.

Finally, I yank the doors open.

The beam of light slices into the dark interior. Cardigans hanging like limp bodies, coats swaying slightly. I hold my breath, straining to hear the sound of a breath, or the shifting of weight.

Nothing. Just the distant hiss of wind.

I force myself to push through the clothes, my arm disappearing into the shadows as my fingers sweep along the back panel. When I finally pull away, I stumble back, shaking. The wardrobe is empty.

But the terror doesn’t leave my body.

If anything, it gets worse, because the night is not over, and I don’t know why the window was open.

“Everything all right?” Emily asks.

“There’s no one in there.” I glance around at Sophie. “It’s all right, everything’s fine.”

“Do you promise, Mummy?”

“I promise.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back. There are several other rooms someone could be hiding in, not to mention the attic and the cellar.

I think about the perimeter of the house. One of the reasons I love this house is because of the red brick wall and iron gate at the bottom of the drive. But at the back of the house, the garden is lined with hedges. Sometimes I worry that a fox or badger will create a hole large enough for a man to crawl through the hedge and I tend to check on it once a week or so. But with the cold weather, I haven’t done it for a while.

I push the thought away, trying to keep my expression cheery for my daughter.

“Okay, Soph,” I say. “We’re going to check the other rooms in the house and then we’re having a sleepover downstairs, isn’t that cool? We’ll have cushions, and duvets and blankets and everything warm and cozy. Does that sound like fun?”

As she nods her little head I crouch down and brush a few tears away, then pull her in for a big hug.

“It’s a girl’s night, Sophie.” Emily joins in.

But when I stand at full height, Emily’s expression mirrors my own anxieties. Something isn’t right here.

I let Emily hold Sophie’s hand as we make our way through the house, starting with the upstairs bathroom and spare room, then the downstairs, the living room, the kitchen, pantry and toilet. I finally find the torch under the sink to save my phone battery and sweep the thin but piercing light across every room, making sure to get into the corners.

“There’s the attic, cellar, and garage,” I tell Emily. “I don’t want to go into any of them.”

“Can you barricade them?” Emily suggests.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. We can move the kitchen table over to cover that door, and the garage door is locked. I don’t know about the attic, though.” I laugh. “Is this…? Am I being ridiculous here?”

Emily shrugs. “We might laugh about it in the morning but right now I think I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

We drag the heavy oak table across to block the door to the cellar then I check that the connecting door to the garage is definitely locked. I also check the windows, and the back door, all while Sophie watches pensively.

There’s just the attic, which is opened by a hatch. The three of us traipse up to the top floor and stare at it.

“Short of hammering some sort of wood across it, I don’t know what to do,” I say.

“Do you have anything like that?”

I shake my head. If Ed was still alive, he’d know what to do, and he always had spare wood left over from a DIY project.

“I’ve got an idea,” I say. “We need to go downstairs.” I move swiftly through the house, the adrenaline taking over.

It would be foolish to confront any potential intruder up in the attic where space is limited and I could easily fall through the ceiling. But I can make it so that we hear if someone tries to come out of the attic. Ed bought a set of expensive stainless-steel saucepans from John Lewis that each have an eyelet in the handle to hang them from a hook. I grab a ball of twine from the junk drawer and remove all four pans from the cupboards. Emily twigs on immediately and nods with encouragement.

A few minutes later, and I have a pretty good alarm system set up without any electricity needed. The four heavy pans hang down from the attic door handle. If someone is in there and decides to come out, the pans will rattle or even drop to the ground, making enough of a racket for us to hear downstairs.

“We’re all safe now,” I say. “Let’s get some bedding and cushions and take them downstairs. Okay, Soph?”

She smiles at me, but I see the worry in her eyes, and it almost cleaves me in two.