Chapter 27: THEN - The Safe Room

Blood all over my pink gingham duvet cover. The room stank of sweet rust and rot, like an abattoir. I stood there, alone, for an amount of time that is lost to me. Either a minute or an hour, I don’t know. The blood had a freshness to it. I looked at the window. He came inside the house. How long ago did he leave?

Panic rushed through me. Where did the blood come from? Was it human? Was it…? I sprinted out of the room towards Mum and Dad’s room. They should both be at work, but what if…? When I burst into the room it’s empty. I check the bathroom too. Also empty.

Then I ran downstairs, shouting to Honey. “Call Mum! I’m going to call Dad.”

“What?” she shouted back.

“Just do it. I need to know she’s alive.”

Honey appeared in the hall. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He’s been in the house. He’s… there’s blood everywhere, Honey.”

“Blood?” she whispered.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket and dialled Dad. Honey did the same, phoning Mum. It took five rings for Dad to answer, and when I heard his voice I burst into tears.

“What’s happened?” he asked, sounding panicked.

“He’s been in the house, Dad,” I said.

“Is he there now?”

“No.”

“Have you called the police?”

“I’ll do that now.”

“Good. Keep the doors locked. I’m coming home now.”

It dawned on me that when I saw Peter, he was probably coming back from doing this to my bedroom. He even had the gall to follow us.

Honey hung up her phone. “Mum’s coming home.”

I nodded.

She put a hand on my shoulder. “What’s going on?”

I took her upstairs, and when she stepped into the bedroom she screamed, dragged me away, and called the police.

“What if he killed his girlfriend?” I said, feeling sick.

Honey poured a glass of water and downed it in a couple of gulps.

I later learned that it was pig’s blood he’d poured on my bed. He never sent any explanation why. I thought there might be text messages on my phone with the usual emotional crash-outs that occurred after the stalking ramped up again, but this time he was silent.

I had my own sense of what he was trying to say. When I saw what he’d done, I felt his hatred. For my personal space, my bed, the place I rest. He sullied it and made it dirty. He told me that I could never rest again, and he was right.

The police arrived before Mum and Dad. They stripped the bed for evidence and started asking the neighbours if they’d seen someone break into the house. No one had seen anything, and it seemed that Peter had found the kitchen window slightly ajar, jimmied it open and climbed his way in. None of our windows and doors were particularly safe. The kitchen window often didn’t close properly in the summer when the heat made the house swell.

Perhaps he opened my bedroom window to throw me off. He wanted to believe he could climb directly in at any time of the day or night. He succeeded in unsettling us as a family. Dad bought padlocks and blackout blinds. Mum started smoking for the first time in a decade.

In the end, the police didn’t charge Peter for breaking and entering, but they did finally arrest him for harassment and obtain a restraining order. This, along with messages PC Thomas established came from a phone belonging to him, meant he could be charged. Finally. Unfortunately, the pig’s blood incident didn’t count towards his punishment because it couldn’t be proved. Only the messages and sightings of him counted. He received a £500 fine and a suspended sentence along with the restraining order.

I didn’t think it was going to do anything. Why would a piece of paper stop Peter from harassing me? He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he enjoyed it so much that he didn’t care. He never would.

But it did mean the police could arrest him again if he came within fifty metres of our house or walked on our street. He was not allowed to contact me via text message, email or phone call. He could not contact me via a direct message on any of my online accounts either. It was tricky, because we lived on the same estate, and the courts would not force him to move house. So they stated the exact streets he could not enter. There was an imaginary border around our house to keep him out.

At least now there was a chance of real punishment. Peter faced up to five years in prison if I could prove he’d violated the terms of the order.

For once, I prayed for him to stalk me, to send me a message, call me, or appear at the bus stop. I had to sleep on the bed he had once covered in blood. There were still stains on the headboard that we couldn’t scrub out. The least he could do was make it worthwhile. I wanted him punished. I saw the hate he had for me, and I hated him right back.

Peter was the mould beneath the wallpaper, barely visible but there, in the background, expanding across the walls. I sensed him and always knew he was waiting for me. Months went by and I heard nothing from him. There were no more rumours about him having girlfriends. Mum and Mary stopped talking again. Dad concentrated on work and moaned about money. Honey got a new boyfriend and spent loads of time with him. I suspected she wanted to move out but I half-wondered if she continued to stay because of me, because she felt she had to protect me.

I noticed a change in Honey. She became more protective over her privacy than ever. I wasn’t allowed in her room again. She stopped lending me her clothes. She barely spent any time at home, either she was working, or out with her boyfriend. When she was home, she hardly spoke to me. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, and it hurt me. I felt resented because of what Peter had done to our family and that wasn’t my fault, but all of them made me feel like it was.

I tried to fix it the only way I knew how. I’d come home from school with her favourite chocolate bar—a Caramac—and a copy of Cosmopolitan. She’d thank me and take them to her room to enjoy alone. I tried to suggest we go swimming at the weekend, but she said she was busy.

One afternoon she was in the kitchen making toast before work, and I hovered beside her, pretending to look for tea bags.

“How’s Danny?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” she said, not meeting my eye.

“Still working at the garage?”

“Yes.”

Silence stretched. She chewed her toast loudly and the sound echoed around the kitchen. Finally, I decided to just say what was on my mind.

“I miss hanging out with you. We were getting on again. Before…” My cheeks burned red, my body felt unused to such vulnerability.

Honey shrugged. “People change.”

“Do you not want to do things together anymore?”

“It’s not that,” she said quickly, but her tone didn’t soften. “I’m just… busy.”

“Too busy for ten minutes with your sister?”

She finally turned to face me then, toast in hand, her expression tight. “Amber, I can’t always be here for you.”

My stomach dropped. “I wasn’t asking you to be here for me. I was just talking.”

“You weren’t just talking,” she said, voice rising. “Every time I come home, you’re… watching me. Waiting for me to talk to you. I can’t breathe in this house anymore. Everyone’s so tense and you’re just—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together.

“I’m just what?” I whispered.

“Tired,” she said finally. “You’re tired. I’m tired. All of it is exhausting. That’s all I meant.”

She snatched up her keys and abandoned the half-eaten toast.

“Honey, I never asked you to fix anything,” I said. “I know Peter messed everything up. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t do this to us.”

“I know,” she said. But she said it too fast. Too automatically. Then she grabbed her bag and left before I could say anything else.

The slam of the door echoed through the hallway long after she’d gone.

For days after that, I replayed the conversation in my head, every word, every pause, wondering if she hated me, if she blamed me, if she despised the attention I got, or if this was her way of coping. I didn’t know. And the not-knowing was worse than anything.

One night, I finally knocked on her bedroom door and asked, “Are you angry with me?”

She stared at me for a long time as though weighing something up in her head. Then she said, “No,” but she shut her bedroom door before I could say another word. I heard the lock click.

After that, I stopped trying.

Life became a waiting room. I waited for Peter to break the restraining order. I waited for Honey to come back to me. I waited for the next awful thing to happen because it didn’t feel possible that it was over. People like Peter don’t just stop.

Finally, Honey moved out, leaving me with Mum, Dad and the mould growing under the wallpaper. I didn’t blame her, but I was confused about why she was pushing me away. I always thought we had time to make amends one day in the future. I had no idea that we’d never repair the chasm that had opened up between us.