She ran. Without thinking, without making any rational decisions or even weighing up her options, because then she would have certainly hurried downstairs, back to Samson. To the exit.
Instead she leaped up the last couple of steps, crossed the narrow landing virtually blind, losing a slipper, yanked open her bedroom door and shut it again behind her. Emma locked the door with the simple key which – thank God – was on the inside. She grabbed a chair and wedged the backrest under the handle, as she’d seen in films…
… but does that make any sense?
No, nothing made sense here, it hadn’t for a long while. Ever since she’d been picked up off the ground by the bus stop outside Le Zen.
Without hair.
Without dignity.
Without reason.
Emma’s eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness.
In the scant daylight that seeped through the slats of the roller blind she could only make out shapes. Shadows. Vague surfaces. The bed, the wardrobe, the heavy door.
Squatting down beside a chest of drawers, an heirloom from her grandmother where she kept her underwear, Emma fixed her gaze on the door handle, the only reflective object in the room.
What her eyes had forfeited in vision, her ears had evidently made up in hearing. Besides the fitful noises of her own breathing, which was going far too fast, and the rustling of her dressing gown rising and falling over her pumping torso, dull thuds were sounding in the background.
Footsteps.
Heavy footsteps.
Coming up the stairs.
Emma did the worst thing she possibly could.
She screamed.
A high-pitched, piercing scream. She heard her own mortal fear wresting from her throat. Despite the fact that she was only drawing attention to herself, she couldn’t stop.
Sinking to her knees, Emma pressed her hand to her mouth, bit her knuckles, whimpered and despised herself for such weakness.
How proud she used to be of her ability to keep her feelings under control, even in the most emotional situations. For example when the jealous borderliner who she was referring to a colleague punched her goodbye in the face. Or when an eleven-year-old patient died of a brain tumour and she’d held her mother’s hand in the clinic until it was over. She’d always managed to put off her collapse till she was home alone, where, at a time and manner of her own choosing, she could bawl her anger or grief into a pillow pressed onto her face. But this form of self-control was history now and she hated herself for it.
I’m a wreck.
A screaming, howling misery guts who starts crying every time she sees an advertisement with a baby in it. Who thinks of the Hairdresser every time she meets a man.
And who anticipates certain death when the handle is being shaken on the other side of the door.
The last thing she saw was the door trembling from the hammering it was getting. Then Emma closed her eyes, tried pulling herself up on the chest of drawers, but slipped feebly like a drunkard unable to keep her balance.
Howling, she sank to the floorboards again, tasted her tears, smelled the sweat dripping from her eyebrows (why didn’t he shave those off too?) and couldn’t help thinking of the roller blind, which I didn’t open this morning, stupid cow. Now there wasn’t enough time to pull the heavy thing up. And jump.
It wasn’t so far from the first floor, especially with all that snow on the ground in the garden.
Maybe I could have done it…
Her screams and thoughts broke off when the door splintered and at once a cold draught cooled her tear-stained face.
Emma could hear panting. Footsteps. Shouting. Not coming from herself. But from the intruder.
Male shouting.
Two hands yanked away her arms which she’d wrapped over her head in protection, crouched like a little child waiting to be punished.
No, more like a woman waiting for death.
Finally she heard her name.
Emma.
Being yelled again and again by a voice, the last voice she’d been expecting in what were likely to be her last few seconds without pain.
Then the blow came. Straight to the face.
Her cheek burned as if it had been stung by a jellyfish and her tears bit open her eyelids from the inside. Through the blur she could see that she had two intruders to deal with.
The two men were standing close beside one another. Despite the meagre light and veil before her eyes she recognised both faces.
Which was hardly surprising.
She was married to one of them.