By the time Rose climbs into her childhood single bed, she is so tired she can barely see straight.
She hasn’t been able to make it back to the double bed yet, the one she was sleeping in on the night of the attack. And even in this lumpy, too-small one, she sometimes wakes up in a panic. But the whole episode with that bloke last night – and she is still shuddering at how it played out – has made her yearn for a bit of normality. She can’t face the sofa tonight.
If she had any sleeping pills in the house, she’d take them. But she’s resisted, fearing ending up suspended in some horrific paralysis between being awake and asleep, just like Oakley’s victims. She has experienced it once, thankfully, but has no desire to be anywhere in between ever again.
Before closing her eyes, she runs through the usual mental checklist. The radio is on in the background. The hall light blazes on. She has her phone plugged in next to her on the bedside table, and a large battery-operated torch just in case. At the side of the bed is her baton, propped up so it’s the first thing she touches when she reaches out. A pair of handcuffs are under the pillow, along with a kitchen knife. She’s practised what she would do if anyone were in the room many times now in a series of smooth, swift movements. At least, it is when she’s fully awake.
It helps. If only she could simply switch herself off for the night, like a household appliance.
As her eyelids finally begin to droop, a memory from last night comes back to her in bright detail, so intense it makes her insides fizz. She was lost in the pleasure of the moment, body moving on top of that bloke. He might be a vain idiot, but he felt very good. Until she made it all weird and showed herself up. Wincing once again, Rose curls herself into a ball and wills sleep to come.
In the wee small hours, the dream comes.
She’s walking up the road to her old police station at Silverton Street, feeling light and happy. As she enters, Omar, the giant desk sergeant, is singing something that sounds like opera. He loves musicals but dream Omar is something else again. Rose claps enthusiastically as she passes him and goes through the double doors to the main working area, where she can see all her old colleagues at work. No one looks up when she greets them and they all keep their heads down. That’s when she notices the floor is no longer covered in the worn institutional carpet, but in twigs and dirt, like the ground in a forest.
She calls out to her colleagues to ‘mind their shoes’, which seems eminently sensible but no one pays any attention. Then her own feet are sinking into the ground as though the forest floor is a twiggy quicksand. Rose tries to cry for help but has no voice. She clings to DC Ewa Duggan’s desk but her fingers slip and the earth begins to close around her.
Now she is pressed against something cold and flat. She manages to lift her head to see that she’s against a wall, the wall in her bedroom, but some force is stopping her from pulling away from it. It’s like powerful glue is keeping her suspended there and when she attempts to pull back, the wall bends and warps and comes with her. Then she’s free again and the relief is enormous, but now she’s scuttling along the wall like a spider, looking down at her own sleeping form in the bed. Rose in the bed is as still as if she were dead. Dream Rose feels the need to call out to her but can’t make her voice work beyond a hoarse barking sound.
Then she’s falling, falling … a long way down into a dark hole. She’s surrounded by earth walls that she must scrape at with her fingernails. Gregory is buried under here and she has to get him out. The cold, damp soil crumbles and breaks under her fingers and she can’t reach him, can’t reach him …
Coming awake with a cry, Rose thinks at first she must still be dreaming. She’s in the back garden, fingers buried in the mud at the far end. Freezing and filthy.
Whimpering, she snatches her hands away from the cold earth and looks around, dazed. What would be worse? That she’s asleep and unable to wake up? Or finding herself outside in her bloody pyjamas?
It’s only a few seconds before she properly understands that, yes, she really is out here, but it feels longer because it’s so hard to process. How the hell did she get out here?
Shaking with horror and the frigid night air, she clambers to her feet. Hard to tell what time it is. It is as about as dark as it ever gets in London, which is not very, and there’s the omnipresent sound of traffic in the background. But it feels like morning is still some distance away.
Rose is standing there, unable to move, when a nearby car alarm shrieks. The blast of shock gets her moving. Shivering violently and with her teeth chattering, she hurries up the garden on feet that are almost numb with cold.
The ancient water heater is kind for once. Rose stands under the steaming jets of the shower for as long as she can, trying to wash the dirt from her nails and the shocking cold out of her skin.
Images from the dream tumble through her mind. There was something about Silverton Street. Then the horrible feeling of being stuck to the wall and scuttling along it to look down at herself. The shivering starts up again and Rose starts to cry. Nightmares are one thing, but if she’s going to start sleepwalking out of the house now, she is going to have to get help of some kind.
She pictures herself making an appointment with the GP and attempting to explain any of this. That’s not the only thing putting her off; she’s almost too ashamed to admit that, even to herself. James Oakley was a family doctor. Ridiculous to think he was in any way representative of his profession! But logic doesn’t make her any keener to step foot in a surgery.
No, she thinks miserably, as she dries herself with the towel, the night-time cold already creeping back into her limbs, she’s going to have to find a way to live through this and get to the other side on her own. Like she always has.
Her phone rings as she’s drinking a second cup of coffee that morning, feeling wretched after her terrible night. The horror of those dreams clings to her and she still can’t seem to get warm.
When she sees the caller ID, it’s irritation that spikes rather than the queasy blend of fear and disgust she experienced the night before.
‘Okay, you ghostly little wanker, what have you got this time?’ she murmurs as she answers.
But her sarcasm quickly melts at the terrible sound on the other end of the phone.
‘Gwen?’ she says. ‘What’s happened? Is that you?’
More guttural sobbing before Gwen finally speaks.
‘It’s Gregory,’ she manages to force out. ‘He’s missing!’