Chapter 8
On my first night in the first home I’ve ever owned, sleep stays away. Lying on the floor makes my spine ache and, as the temperature drops, my cheap, thin sleeping bag starts to lose the battle.
At some point, everything outside falls quiet and the silence inside the house begins to hum, tricking me into thinking I can hear things in it.
Creaks. Footsteps. Breaths.
The door to the office is locked and, across the landing, the door to the bedroom is closed, but I can still feel the stain.
As if it’s a presence.
As if it has a live, thumping pulse.
I tell myself it can’t be what it looks like, but that doesn’t help me sleep. Eventually, resigned, I pat the floor for my phone. The screen says it’s nearly 1 a.m. I’ve been lying here, wide awake, for nearly three hours.
At least there are no new messages in the WhatsApp group.
I open a browser window, tap the search bar and start typing my own name.
I’ve discovered I share it with a nutritionist based in Denver, Colorado, who has numerous social media accounts, a weekly podcast and a newspaper column, and who makes regular appearances on local TV that are then clipped and shared to YouTube.
Even when you add Dublin, she still dominates the results.
She has no idea what a gift she’s given me.
Satisfied there’s nothing new since yesterday, I clear the search bar and start typing his name.
But I stop three letters in. Backspace. Hesitate.
Replace the letter I just deleted. Hesitate again.
Delete them all. X out, lock my phone. Put it down on the floor. Push it away.
He’s in Australia, supposedly. Brisbane, specifically. As far away as you can go before you start coming back.
That’s where he went, after everything. Where he fled to.
I have no intention of contacting him. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. But I would like to know that he’s still there.
Really, what I need is to know that he’s not here.
I pick up my phone again. This time, I type his whole name into the search bar even as a voice in my head screams at me to stop.
Because I don’t want to see his face. I can’t see it.
I tap GO anyway.
And then, there he is.
The top result is an Instagram account for @shreddr_jay. It includes a preview of the text in his bio, which is a quote: Do or do not. There is no try.
Star Wars and shitty advice – this has to be him.
I take a moment to steel myself, then I click on the link.
Landscapes. All landscapes. Fields and mountains and beach scenes, none of which look like Ireland and most of which seem like they could be Australia.
No faces. None at all. He doesn’t even have a profile pic; the little circle next to his username has a sweating glass of beer in it.
I can’t click on any of his pictures to zoom in, or see past a couple of rows without an account, but I feel reassured.
I put the phone back down on the floor beside me, burrow down into the bag and close my eyes.
And now, finally – mercifully – sleep slowly curls its tentacles around me and pulls me down into its depths.
I jolt awake.
It’s still dark and noticeably colder, and the world beyond the house is completely silent.
Inside the house, there’s a scuffling sound.
Footsteps.
Downstairs, on the hall tile.
I think, It’s the middle of the night and someone is inside my house, but in a strangely detached way, as if I’m merely logging this incident as an off-site observer. But then reality hits and I’m on fire with fear, every nerve ending alight.
More footsteps, muffled by carpet now.
They’re coming up the stairs.
Slowly. Deliberately. Cautiously.
Which they wouldn’t do if they thought the house was vacant.
They know I’m here.
The silence around me hums, pulses, throbs with the thunderous hammering of my heart, drowning out everything else. I’m afraid I won’t hear the footsteps getting closer, and that whoever is making them will start to hear me, hyperventilating. I force myself to gulp down air, hold it, exhale.
I do it again.
I do it a third time.
The volume of the noise inside my head starts to go down, turning up the volume on the sounds outside it.
It allows me to hear another muffled footstep, followed by a creaking stair yielding under pressure. It sounds horrifically close.
The top step of the stairs, I think.
I slither out of the sleeping bag and pat the carpet until my fingers find my phone, which comes to life, a blinding white rectangle that fills the room with a bright glow. Panicked, I flip it over to extinguish the light, inadvertently making it thump on the bare wooden floor.
Shit.
I glimpse the time: 2.34 a.m.
This is no house-hunter.
I press the device to me to block any light as I crawl to the far end of the room. I sit with my knees drawn up to my chest and my back braced against the wall. I watch the door. There’s no strip of light underneath it, even though I am absolutely positive I left the landing light on.
A metallic taste fills my mouth.
I can’t hear anything now.
I hold my breath, strain to listen, but there’s only silence – until the door to the office begins to rock.
Gently, at first.
A test.
But that quickly turns into a violent rattling, and then the thumping starts. Each blow makes the door visibly shudder.
Whoever is out there is trying to kick it in.
I can’t think; I can only fear. I taste salt and realize I’m crying. I want to scream, but what will that do besides confirm to them that I’m in here?
The thump of the next kick coincides with a loud crack. I expect to see the door fall in. It doesn’t, but surely it will soon. It’s just a flimsy pocket door, designed more for privacy than for protection. Whenever I slide it open or closed, it feels light in my grip and skips along its track.
The door stills.
For several seconds, silence. I have the horrible sense that whoever is out there is doing the exact same thing as me: holding their breath, listening, waiting for something to give a presence away.
But then I hear a muffled thump and the whoosh of a door swinging open, and realize that they’ve opened the door to the bedroom, across the hall.
Suddenly, there’s a bright white strip of light beneath the office door.
I stare into it, stunned.
They’ve turned the landing light back on.
I push aside questions of why they might have done that, what they’re looking at now, or the ramifications of them having the confidence to casually flip that switch again.
What matters is that I know where they are, which is in another room, and so long as they’re there and that light is on, they won’t see the glow of my phone.
But I can’t have them hearing me either, so—
Alex.
He’s right next door. I can text him.
There is literally no one else.
I turn the screen brightness down and hold the phone close to my chest. I open the WhatsApp group, find his welcome message and tap to reply to him directly. Someone in mq hse break in cant call they’ll hwer, reads my first attempt, typed with trembling fingers.
One tick.
Two.
But the ticks are grey and stay that way. Delivered, but not read.
I type a more coherent follow-up. People broke in here now help can’t call or they’ll hear me.
One tick.
Two.
Staying grey.
If Alex sleeps with his phone on silent, this is pointless and I have no Plan B.
I type SOS, send it.
Then I do that two more times.
One tick.
Two.
Still grey.
Shit shit shit.
I need to wake him up. I silence my phone and call his number, praying it’s only WhatsApp he’s silenced, and realizing a nanosecond before the first bell of the ringtone sounds that I need to quieten my audio separately.
From the other side of the door, I hear a shuffling noise.
They’re coming back.
I hang up. I think about giving up, giving in. Accepting survival rather than escape.
But then I go back to WhatsApp just in time to see all the grey ticks blink into a miraculous, glorious blue.
Hope soars in my chest.
Sorry, I type quickly. Don’t kno whate sle to do.
One tick.
Two.
Blue.
And then a little bubble appears: Alex is typing.
My relief bursts into frustration. What the fuck is he doing? Just get in here! Frighten this person away!
Bang on fnt dor, I type. HURRY.
As soon as the ticks on that turn blue, the typing bubble disappears.
I can’t hear anything now, inside or outside the house. I hold my breath, wait, listen. Nothing. I risk crawling closer to the door. I think I hear something. A distant hinge, swinging.
Maybe.
Then silence, for what feels like minutes but must be seconds.
The doorbell goes, several times in quick succession, so loud after so much silence that it seems to send an electrical charge through the house.
Fists bang against the glass. The letterbox opens and through it comes Alex’s shouted voice, angry and confident, presumably addressing my faceless intruder.
‘The guards are on their way!’
My stomach lurches. I imagine what might happen next, if he actually has called them. They’ll come here. They’ll ask me questions about myself. Personal information. Alex might be here to hear the answers.
One problem at a time.
What I hear now are footsteps, quickly retreating from my front door.
I follow their movement around the side of the house, around the end of the terrace, through the gate and into my yard, and then I hear Alex shouting, ‘The guards are here!’ I look up at the Velux window, waiting for the dim to start flashing with blue light.
I realize, on a delay, that Alex’s voice just then came from inside. He’s in my kitchen. But I didn’t hear the patio door open, so it must have happened earlier. When I was still asleep.
That’s how someone got in.
Didn’t I lock it?
I hear Alex moving around downstairs now, opening and closing doors. I get to my feet just as my phone vibrates. He’s sent a text. No one here. Where r u? I tell him, Upstairs, locked in office. He replies, Stay until I say OK. I hear him open the front door, close it again.
I track his slow, cautious ascent of the stairs.
A long pause while, I assume, he looks into the bedroom.
I picture how I left it. I’d pulled up the carpet into a messy roll, which I’d dropped when I saw the stain. It’d unrolled a little, and then I’d kicked it until it had unrolled all the way back across the floor. The stain shouldn’t be visible.
Footsteps, going past my door, into the bathroom.
And then, finally, his voice right outside.
‘Ellie, there’s no one here.’ He exhales. ‘I’ve checked everywhere.’
With shaking hands I open the door.
His features soften with relief when he sees me. I try not to react to his plaid pyjama bottoms, inside-out sweatshirt, unlaced trainers and flushed, puffy face. He’s wearing glasses; he must wear contacts during the day. He looks younger in them, more boyish.
There’s something unexpectedly intimate about seeing him like this. I have an utterly mortifying urge to fall into his arms and force him to hold me.
‘You OK?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘Yeah.’
‘The patio door was open.’
‘I locked it. After you left today. I haven’t touched it since.’
‘Well, there’s no broken glass or damage that I could see, so—’
‘—they must have had a key,’ I finish.
He nods grimly. ‘You need to change the locks.’
I don’t know how much that costs, but I know it’s more than I have.
‘What happened?’ he asks.
I explain the sequence of events. Waking up, hearing footsteps downstairs. Them coming upstairs. Trying the door. Kicking it. Crossing the landing to the bedroom. Silence for a while, until he arrived.
‘Did you see anyone?’
Alex shakes his head. ‘They must have run down the stairs and out the patio door before I got here. Otherwise I would’ve seen them coming down the stairs or in the hall, through the glass in your front door.
Or heard them, if they were already outside, at the back.
’ He pauses. ‘We’d better go downstairs. Wait for the guards.’
So they’re not here, but he did call them. They’re coming. My relief leaves me, like the sea retreating before a tsunami.
‘Ring them back and say everything’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘False alarm, or whatever.’
He looks at me incredulously. ‘What? But—’
‘Please. I don’t— I can’t see them.’
‘Ellie, you—’
‘Please.’
I meet his eye and try to show him how much I mean it, so I don’t have to actually explain, because I can’t.
But what I see is his gaze slipping from my face and moving over my shoulder, into the room beyond.
I see him seeing it. The mat and sleeping bag on the floor.
The makeshift pillow. The unfinished room.
And this is his last room.
He’s already been in all the other ones, checking them.
He’s seen everything, so he knows I have nothing.
I’ve just made my biggest mistake yet.