Chapter 13
NOW
Unable to sleep, I’m making coffee at half past eleven when I notice it.
Not a dramatic moment. Not a sudden shock. Just a shape at the edge of the back yard that catches my eye as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Dark against dark, but slightly different.
Slightly wrong.
I stop mid-reach for a mug and look properly.
It’s probably nothing. A trash bag I left out. A trick of the light from the streetlamp filtering through the trees. The hedge casting shadows in ways I haven’t learned yet because I’ve only been here a short while and don’t know how this garden looks at night.
Except, it’s in a spot where nothing should be. Just past the patio, near the corner where the fence meets the hedge. A dark mass that I don’t remember seeing before.
I move closer to the window, trying to get a better angle.
The pool lies between me and the fence, the water flat and black at this hour, turning the yard into layers of shadow I can’t quite read.
The shape doesn’t resolve into anything recognisable.
Just remains stubbornly unclear – too tall for a fox, too still for branches in the wind.
The coffee maker sings completion behind me.
I ignore it and just continue to watch. The shape doesn’t move.
Doesn’t do anything except exist there at the edge of my garden in a way that makes my shoulders tight.
It must be a trash bag. Or a pile of leaves.
Or literally anything except what my paranoid brain is trying to make it into.
But I keep watching anyway, scanning that corner of the garden, trying to identify what I’m seeing. Trying to convince myself it’s nothing.
After five minutes, my neck starts to ache from the angle. I straighten, roll my shoulders, tell myself to stop being stupid. Make my coffee. Drink it standing at the sink, occasionally glancing out at the garden.
The shape is still there. Still unclear.
Still making me breathless.
Eventually, I force myself away from the window. Go through my usual routine of checking locks – front door, back door, every ground-floor window. Everything is secure. Everything is fine.
Upstairs, I stand at my bedroom window looking down at the garden from a different angle. From here, I can’t see the corner where the shape was. Can’t see much except the back patio and the yard and the fence line disappearing into darkness.
I close the curtains and get into bed fully clothed. Lie there staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind whistle, telling myself there’s nothing to worry about.
But sleep doesn’t come.
The next night, I see it again. Different spot this time.
I’m in the study around midnight, reading the same page of a book for the third time, when I glance up and catch something at the far end of the garden. Near the shed I haven’t opened since moving in.
Another dark shape. Another mass that doesn’t quite make sense.
My first thought is: maybe I left something out there. Except I haven’t been in that part of the yard, or even walked past the back patio since that first week when I pulled a few weeds and gave up.
I set down my book and move to the window.
The shape is harder to see from this angle – too far away, too much darkness between here and there. But it’s definitely something. Definitely present.
I watch it for a long time. Ten minutes.
Fifteen. My reflection stares back at me from the black glass, pale and tense, and behind it the yard sits motionless.
The shape doesn’t move. Doesn’t resolve into anything identifiable.
Just exists. If I had the nerve to go take a look, I would do just that.
But with the rattle of emotions I’ve been lately, I daren’t.
It occurs to me that what’s outside could be the biggest threat imaginable, or just that – imagination.
This is what exhaustion does. What isolation does. It makes you see threats in garden furniture and fallen branches. It makes you stand at windows in the middle of the night cataloguing shapes that are probably nothing.
The scene remains empty. Nothing moves except branches swaying in a breeze I can’t feel from inside.
I make dinner. Wash dishes. Move through the house in circuits that have become habit – kitchen to living room to hallway to kitchen again.
Each time I pass a window, I glance out. Each time, I see nothing.
My eyes grow gritty with exhaustion. I should go to bed. Should stop this obsessive watching and try to get some sleep.
But I can’t ignore the feeling that something is coming. That these past two nights have been leading to something. That whatever has been leaving those shapes in my garden is building towards a moment I’m not ready for.
I’m in the spare room when I see it.
Not a shape – a person. Standing just outside the pool of light from my kitchen window, right at the edge where darkness thickens.
But why would someone be standing in my garden at one in the morning? Why would they just stand there, not moving, not doing anything?
The thought sends ice down my spine.
I stare at the shape, barely breathing, waiting for it to do something.
The shape doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
We stay like that for what feels like hours but is probably only seconds. Me at the window, frozen. The shape outside, motionless. A tableau of watching and being watched. My mind races through possibilities.
Could it be Richard? Come to check on me without wanting to disturb me by knocking? But why would he stand in the yard instead of coming to the door?
Could it be Caroline? Some misguided surveillance disguised as concern? But Caroline wouldn’t stand outside at midnight. Caroline would call a homeowners’ association meeting about suspicious activity, not engage in it herself.
Could it be whoever sent the notes? Whoever had my wedding ring and knows what happened that night? That feels closer to the truth. Feels like it fits the pattern of escalation I’ve been trying to ignore. Notes becoming physical presence. Warnings becoming threats becoming action.
The shape still doesn’t move.
But I feel it watching. Can sense the attention focused on my house, on my lit windows, on me standing here like an idiot making myself visible. I should step back. Should hide. Should do something other than stand here offering myself up as a target.
But I can’t move. Can’t look away. Because if I break eye contact – if that’s even what this is – then it becomes real. Then I have to acknowledge that someone is out there and someone has been out there multiple nights and is escalating from notes to presence.
My hands grip the windowsill. My breath fogs the pane in small clouds that disappear and reform with each exhale.
How long has this person been standing there?
How long have they been watching before I noticed?
Have they been doing this every night, positioning themselves in different spots around my property, studying my patterns, learning my routines?
The notes. The ring.
Now this.
It’s all connected. It has to be. Someone closing in. Someone knows what I did and has been patient enough to wait, to watch, to let the fear build slowly instead of confronting me directly.
But why? What do they want? If they know about the fire, about Daniel, about everything that happened that night – why not just go to the police? Why this elaborate psychological torture?
Unless they want something else.
Something like personal justice.
The shape shifts. Just slightly. The smallest movement. A weight transfer from one foot to the other, maybe. Or an adjustment of posture, my eyes finally adjusting enough to see what’s really there.
But it’s enough.
Enough to confirm this is real. This is a person. This is happening.
A gasp escapes before I can stop it.
The sound feels too loud in the silent house. Loud enough that maybe, impossibly, the person outside might hear it through the glass and the distance and the wall between us.
The shape goes completely still. Like it did hear. Like it knows I’m watching back.
For a second, we’re both frozen again. Two people separated by glass and darkness and whatever horrible knowledge exists between us.
Then my body makes the decision my mind is too slow to process.
I stumble away from the window, my hand fumbling for the cord on the blind. It takes three tries before I manage to yank it down, shutting out whatever is out there in my garden.
My heart is thundering in my chest. My breath comes in short, sharp gasps that seem to boom in the quiet. This is real. This isn’t paranoia or exhaustion or the product of too many sleepless nights. This is an actual person and I need to call someone.
The police. I need to call the police.
The thought strikes me suddenly, sharp and clear. This is what normal people do when someone is on their property at one in the morning. They call the police. They report trespassers. They don’t stand here frozen trying to decide if calling for help will create more problems than it solves.
My phone. Where’s my phone?
Downstairs. No – wait. My bedroom. I left it charging on the nightstand.
I turn and run, my footsteps pounding on the landing, too loud, announcing my panic to anyone who might be listening. Down the hallway, past the bathroom, into my bedroom where the phone sits exactly where I left it, screen dark, innocent, unaware of what I need it for.
I snatch it up with trembling hands, nearly dropping it, catching it at the last second. The screen lights up as I unlock it, too bright in the darkness, making me squint. My thumb dances across the scene and hovers over the call button.
This is it. This is the moment. Once I make this call, everything changes. Police will come. Questions will be asked. My name will go into reports, into systems and databases that might flag something I can’t afford to have flagged.
But someone is outside. And whatever they want, whatever they know, whatever they’re planning – it’s going to get much worse, very soon.
I press the button.
And everything changes.