And where was my phone?
It had been in my hand. I could still feel the shape and the weight of it. But it wasn’t in my hand any more.
I must have dropped it when I’d fallen. It must have skidded across the floor and—
I gazed towards the toilet and the tiled flooring, peering at the base of the copper bath.
No phone.
I couldn’t see it.
So maybe Donovan had used it. That made sense.
And yes, now that I thought about it, I’d already input 999, so he would just have needed to connect the call. I’d input 999 because I’d been scared because—
An invisible hand reached inside my chest and closed around my heart in a fist.
You’d been scared because of him.
And he’d been right behind you when he shouldn’t have been. He’d promised you he wouldn’t come near you.
I swung my head in the direction of the landing, the room canting abruptly, the shower hissing in my ears.
I tried to listen to what was being said downstairs but I still couldn’t hear very much over the drumming of the shower.
Then it hit me.
Was that deliberate? Had he turned the shower on because he didn’t want me to hear them?
Or he doesn’t want them to hear you.
I needed to know who was down there.
Releasing the sink, I took two steps towards the window, then stopped.
Hell.
The nauseating pain in the back of my head blared like a rotted tooth, then gradually steadied and faded a little.
The floorboards trembled beneath me again.
He’s closed the door.
I moved forwards more carefully this time until I reached the window in front of me, tilted the shutter blades with my fingers and looked out.
The thickening darkness outside was stained acid yellow by the street lighting.
I couldn’t see an ambulance but an old man was standing beside the open gate at the end of our path.
Our neighbour, John.
He had an empty plastic shopping bag hanging limply in his hand. I didn’t like the expression on his face. His mouth was hooked downwards, a slash of doubt or confusion scoring a deep line across his brow.
He was only there for the briefest instant, half twisted around, glancing towards our front door. Then he turned and began to walk off, his domed scalp and the wisps of white hair at the sides of his head skimming along past the top of our hedge.
He crossed the road and continued onwards, heading in the direction of the nearby parade of shops on Upper Richmond Road.
Had he called round to ask if there was anything we needed, as he sometimes did?
If so, had Donovan said something to get rid of him – something that hadn’t entirely convinced him that everything was normal and that explained why he’d been looking back at our house with such a conflicted expression on his face?
Or had he been looking that way because he’d watched Donovan let somebody else into our home?
John was continuing to stroll away beyond the parked cars and plane trees. He didn’t glance back.
There was nobody else around.
My eyes strayed to the ‘For Sale’ sign in the front of our yard and something inside me tightened and tensed.
Then I lowered my gaze further and peered at my arm for a second. The one with the sleeve rolled up, exposing my familiar, knotted scar, running like a length of hot wire from the inside of my wrist to the crook of my elbow.
I experienced a jolt of fear, icy liquid seeping through my stomach.
Taking hold of my wrist, I lifted my arm closer, staring in disbelief at the inside of my elbow.
No, I hadn’t imagined it.
A tiny dot of blood.
I pressed a nail to it, remembering the scratch and the stinging sensation, the way Donovan had slipped something into his pocket afterwards and—
Shit.
In my dazed state I’d thought he was helping me, but what if he hadn’t been?
He might have injected you with something.
I remembered what he’d said to me when I’d been lying on the floor.
Just wait.
Why? How had he expected to find me when he got back up here and what was he planning to do to me?
I stared back at the en suite behind me, not daring to breathe as I listened to the maddening hiss and splatter of the shower and beyond it . . . nothing.
Except a taut, silent humming. A soundless note of pure terror.
Which was when a new thought hit me.
Move.