Mum lets go of her sticks. They crash to the floor and she grabs at me for support. I drop the keys and we cling to each other, blinded by the lights that are being shone directly into our faces.
‘Hide your faces!’ one of the women is shouting as dark figures hurtle down the stairs towards us.
Bile floods my stomach. I think I’m going to throw up.
Within a few seconds, Mum and I are surrounded by four strangers dressed all in black. I can’t see their faces because they wear thin knitted balaclavas with cutouts for their eyes and mouth.
They begin to talk rapidly to each other in whispers, but I’m so frozen with terror I can’t take in what they’re saying. It’s like my brain has iced over or they’re speaking a foreign language. I was wrong, so very wrong. I shouldn’t have tried to get Mum out of the house. I should have called the police when I had the chance.
Mum is leaning her whole weight on me, and I’m struggling to keep myself upright, let alone her, because my knees are juddering so much. This isn’t a dream. This is real. Slowly my brain kick-starts a little, and I begin to realize that whoever these people are, they’re angry. They’re swearing – a lot.
‘What the hell are we supposed to do now?’ asks the man who’s moved swiftly to lock and bolt the front door again. It’s the voice I heard from inside the attic. Now he stands with his back against the door, an immoveable force, jangling the bunch of keys in an agitated manner. He’s big in both height and width, his voice loud and booming, and he looms like a giant over Mum and me as we shrink together in fear. I feel he could break my bones like twigs if he wanted. ‘This is a disaster—’
‘Don’t hurt my mum!’ I blurt out, but the only response is a terrifying silence.
‘I knew there was someone here!’ A shorter male, more softly spoken than the first – the man I heard on the landing outside the study. ‘Didn’t I tell you I remembered leaving that door open when we did our recce of the house after we arrived?’
My heart plunges as I realize that I gave myself away by closing the study door behind me when I ran to hide. He’d recalled what was bugging him, and they’d come to search the house again. Frustration ripping through me, I think how just a moment or two longer, and Mum and I would have been safe.
‘I’ll kill Ethan when I get my hands on him, the stupid—’ That’s the loud woman, and I recognize her voice with dread. She’s short and square and she stands with her hands on her hips and her chin thrust forward in front of me and Mum, right in our faces like a snarling dog. She sounds beyond anger, utterly manic with fury. ‘I’ll batter him! He promised us this house was empty—’
‘Shut up!’ the other woman says, her words snapping out like a steel trap opening and closing. ‘Don’t give anything away. And do not, I repeat, do not use names.’ This is the woman who came into Dad’s study, shining her torch around while I was hidden under the desk. She’s taller than the first and more slender. From nowhere a random thought flits through my mind: I think she’s from an Indian family, like me. I don’t know where that came from, and at the moment it hardly matters.
‘Please,’ Mum begs shakily, hoarsely, gathering the courage to speak at last. ‘Please, just take what you want and go. Leave us alone, please.’
The tall woman moves to stand directly in front of Mum and me, and the three of us stare at each other. Her eyes through the slits in the balaclava are darkest brown, almost black. They give nothing away, and outwardly she seems the most together of them all, but something about her very stillness tells me she’s just as rattled as the others. She stands there silent for a few seconds as if she’s sizing us up. Tension ripples around the hall like sound waves.
‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ she says evenly. I wonder if she’s their leader as she’s taking charge and the others aren’t arguing. ‘Don’t shout for help or make any kind of loud noise. Not that anyone will hear you, anyway. Your neighbours are too far away.’
She’s right.
‘Who are you?’ I ask jerkily, trying to control my panicked breathing. ‘What do you want?’
The woman ignores me and looks at Mum. ‘Do you live here?’
‘Yes.’ Mum’s reply is no more than a faint whisper.
‘How did you get into the house?’ I ask.
But she isn’t answering my questions. She’s still looking at Mum. ‘Who else lives here?’
I jump in. ‘My dad and my three brothers are at work, but they’ll be home any minute.’ Somehow, the lie comes out smoothly, from nowhere, even though I’m still in a state of shock.
‘Oh, great!’ the loud woman bursts out explosively. She’s shaking her head, a fiery ball of crackling, electric rage. ‘That’s just great. Wonderful. Our very first chance to prove ourselves and it’s over before we’ve even started!’
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ the giant by the front door growls nervously, and my heart leaps with relief. ‘I knew this was a mistake. I just knew it was all going to blow up in our faces.’
‘Unless, of course, she’s lying . . .’ the other man says in his quiet, considered voice.
I try not to react, but I can’t help blinking nervously. The tall woman doesn’t move. She drills me with her laser stare. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not!’
‘If six people really lived here, there’s no way we would have been informed that this house was empty.’
The loud woman groans and begins pacing up and down in an agitated manner. I can see her fists clenched inside the black gloves they’re all wearing. ‘Just stop messing about and tell us who lives here,’ she demands. I can almost smell the aggression she’s giving off like poisonous fumes, and for a second I think she’s going to hit me.
‘Leave her alone!’ Mum cries, grasping me even more tightly. I can’t support even her tiny weight any longer, and my knees begin to buckle. The leader woman bends and picks up the sticks from the floor, thrusting them into Mum’s hands without comment. I move forward to stand in front of Mum, shielding her as best as I can.
‘For God’s sake, don’t lose it,’ the leader warns the other woman. Then she turns back to Mum and me. I find her calmness more threatening than the other woman’s out-of-control rage. ‘Let’s try again. The truth this time. Who else lives here?’
This time she’s talking directly to me, and I can see there’s no point in lying. I already know from what they’ve said that someone named Ethan has been watching our house. For how long? Days? Weeks? Why? Nothing I’ve read has ever prepared me for being plunged into this living nightmare.
‘It’s just me and my mum,’ I explain slowly. ‘She was injured in a car accident years ago and she isn’t very well. She can’t walk without sticks, and she never leaves the house. Look, just take anything you want and leave us alone, please.’ My voice trembles and I bite my lip. I’m appealing to their better nature. But I don’t know if they have one.
‘Christ!’ the man by the door exclaims. ‘This is getting worse by the second. I think we should just get out of here right now—’
The loud woman whirls to confront him. ‘And what about all the work we’ve done?’ she spits. ‘What about all the planning? We can’t give it up, just like that!’
I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about. But suddenly, through all the terror and uncertainty, my curiosity begins to stir, as if I’ve just woken up from a deep sleep.
‘I know all that, J—’ The man swallows the end of the sentence abruptly, stopping himself from giving away the loud woman’s name, I think. ‘But we didn’t expect this . . .’
I guess he means Mum and me.
‘We need to think things over and decide how we’re going to move forward,’ the leader says. ‘Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ the quiet man replies. The other two say nothing but she takes their silence as agreement, even though the man by the front door is muttering darkly under his breath. I can’t catch what he’s saying, but I don’t think he’s happy. He’s not the only one.
‘What are you going to do to us?’ Mum asks. I can hear the desperation in her voice. I know she’s realized, as I did earlier, that these are no ordinary intruders; they’re not burglars.
The leader does not answer. She gazes around the hall and down the corridors as if looking for inspiration. ‘What’s that room there?’ she asks, pointing at the dim light spilling from the open door of Mum’s bedroom.
‘It’s where my mum sleeps,’ I say. ‘She can’t get upstairs any more.’
‘Take your mum in there and sit down,’ she tells me, taking the keys from the tall man.
I have no choice. I have to obey, although a tiny spark of anger kicks in at being bossed around by a stranger in my own home. Together, Mum and I begin the slow journey back along the corridor, not knowing what we’re walking into. The four intruders surround us like bodyguards. Or a death squad.
As we go, the loud woman tries the handles of the other doors. ‘I need a wee,’ she complains. ‘Is there a bathroom downstairs? And, if you live here, why are all the doors on this floor kept locked?’
‘Because my mum’s afraid of burglars,’ I snap back without thinking.
No one says anything and my words hang in the air, thickening the tension around us.
Inside Mum’s room the two of us collapse onto the sofa and hold each other close. A memory flashes into my head of Mum hugging me after a fall when I was a toddler – now things have reversed: I’m the grownup and she’s the child seeking comfort. But I’m also drawing strength from the feel of my mum in my arms, the familiar scent of her hair. We need each other to get through this.
There we sit, huddled together in silence, watching the four of them prowl the room. The tall man checks the windows are securely locked and pulls the curtains even closer together, while the leader glances around, taking in everything with a searching gaze.
‘Where are your mobile phones?’ she asks.
The quiet man has already spotted Mum’s mobile lying on the battered bedside table and he scoops it up. The leader’s gaze swivels to me.
‘And yours?’
I think, briefly, of saying I don’t have one, but I know they won’t believe me. ‘Here.’ A little sulkily, I take it from my jacket pocket and hold it out. The loud woman grabs it from me with unnecessary force.
‘Get a grip, for Christ’s sake!’ the leader snaps at her. She doesn’t seem too impressed. ‘Come outside, all of you. We need to talk. We’ve got some decisions to make.’
The four of them go out into the corridor, leaving the door wide open so that they can see Mum and me on the sofa. They put their heads together and start a heated and very intense discussion.
‘Anni, who are they?’ Mum whispers. ‘What do they want?’
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I murmur, straining my ears to catch snippets of what they’re saying.
Even though I haven’t seen their faces, I’m beginning to notice things about them. The giant man who was guarding the front door – he wants to leave. He’s nervous. He fidgets and bites his lip and gnaws at his fingernails. ‘Maybe we should abort the mission,’ I hear him say.
‘No way!’ screeches the loud woman. She’s got a voice like nails scraping down a blackboard and she’s one of those people who can’t talk softly to save their lives. Even though the leader tells her to keep it down, I can still hear what she says next. ‘It’s taken months to prepare for this. Months! We’ve been trusted with our first mission, and we’ve got to see it through. Or what will the others think?’
The others? There are more of them? Yes. Ethan, the man who was watching the house – he must be one of them.
‘We didn’t know the house was occupied, did we?’ the giant man snaps back. ‘It makes things a lot more dangerous, especially with all those police crawling around out there.’
The loud woman jabs him in the chest with her finger. ‘Are you scared?’ she jeers. ‘Is that why you want to leave? Why don’t you ring the others and tell them—?’ She actually says his name then, I’m sure she does, but I can’t tell what it is because the other three burst into a storm of protest and drown her out.
‘No names!’ the leader snarls, flicking a glance at Mum and me. ‘And keep your voices down!’
The four get into an even tighter huddle and continue arguing in fierce whispers. It all seems to come down to whether or not they decide to go ahead with their ‘mission’, now that they’ve found the house isn’t empty after all.
A film Mum and I watched not long ago called Mission: Impossible leaps into my head. This is like a Hollywood film. But who knows what the ending will be? I shiver, because it is completely beyond my control.
And if they do make the decision to carry on with the mission, then where does that leave me and Mum?
Mum is thinking the same thing. ‘Anni . . .’ she whispers faintly, and I know what’s coming next. ‘Are they going to – to kill us?’
I want to lie, but I can’t, not about this. ‘I don’t know, Mum.’