Chapter 3
Frankie Webber’s eyes flew open, her heart racing a mile a minute as adrenaline surged through her veins.
She sat up in bed, pushing the covers aside, every movement driven by her fight-or-flight instinct.
It was only as she searched around with her foot for the slippers she’d left beside the bed that the rest of her brain caught up with that base survival urge and she stopped what she was doing to try and figure out what it was that had woken her up.
The low-level night light she was embarrassed to need but still too nervous to do without cast a soft glow across the carpet near the door.
She focused on the small patch of light, one hand pressed to her chest as she struggled through one of the breathing exercises the counsellor she’d seen the previous year had taught her.
The second round was easier and gave her enough control to catch the sound of a car engine, low at first and then louder as it picked up speed before quickly trailing off again as whoever it was drove away.
Frankie tucked her leg back under the quilt and pulled it up to her chin as she settled back against her pillows with a sigh of relief.
Someone must’ve taken a wrong turning because her cottage stood at the end of a short private road and her handful of neighbours all had their own off-street parking and garages.
Her pulse was still quicker than it should’ve been, but the initial panicked need to escape was fading beneath the surge of anger and frustration that always followed.
She’d never considered herself a nervous person, quite the opposite in fact.
From the time she’d been a little girl she’d had an adventurous, outgoing nature and had always been at the front of the queue when it came to trying new things, and her mother, Elaine, had encouraged her all the way.
Then Craig had come into their lives and everything had changed.
Her confident, fun-loving mother had become increasingly obsessed with her new man and her priorities had changed.
Gone were their girls’ days out, the special bond between them fraying and failing as their small world had begun to revolve around what Craig wanted, and only what Craig wanted.
The only respite Frankie had had was her connection to the local youth theatre.
Her mum hadn’t had time to take her, but one of the other mums had stepped in to give Frankie lifts there and back.
Craig hadn’t cared what she was doing as long as she was out of the way, so he hadn’t interfered.
Though she’d done her best to take care of herself, it hadn’t taken long for both the school and the staff at the theatre company to notice signs of neglect.
Social services had become involved and eventually Frankie had been taken into care.
She could still remember the social worker coming to collect her and the way her mother had refused to take her eyes off her daytime TV show to even acknowledge her attempts to say goodbye.
They’d found her a nice foster family who had been happy to encourage her involvement in the theatre, and she’d stayed with them for several months until her foster-mother had become unwell.
Frankie’s social worker had been made redundant, so she’d lost that connection too.
Budgets had got tighter and demand had increased and Frankie had entered the scariest lottery in the world.
Sometimes she’d got lucky, but every time she began to believe she’d found a home something would happen and she’d be back in the pot again waiting to be picked.
As she’d got older, she’d become less desirable, less easy to place.
Not all the failures were down to the foster families, because Frankie had become something of an expert in self-sabotage.
It was easier to screw things up yourself than wait, gut churning and nerves frazzling, for things to fall apart.
The only time she’d felt at home anywhere was on the stage.
Frankie had started off in the chorus and small walk-on parts but had soon graduated to speaking roles and eventually became one of the leading lights.
And she’d loved it. Being in the spotlight had given her the missing attention she’d been starved of, and she’d got to be someone else for a while.
She’d progressed from youth theatre to a scholarship at drama school.
Acting had been her ultimate escape and the brightest joy in her life, until one man’s unwanted obsession had left Frankie a shell of her former self.
Any anger she’d felt towards the man who’d stalked her had passed once it had become clear he was unwell and she’d been only the latest in a too-long line of women who’d been subjected to his unwelcome attentions.
Like all actors, Frankie had been briefed more times than she could count about online safety and good conduct on social media.
She’d curated her feed carefully, trying to get the balance right between positive engagement with fans and followers and oversharing.
The comments had been innocuous at first, nothing she didn’t see every day, and then they’d grown more personal.
Talking about a dress she’d worn for a TV interview being his favourite colour, how she’d worn her hair, how pretty her smile was.
Creepy, but just one of those things anyone in the public eye had come to expect. Then the DMs had started.
‘Stop it.’ The words sounded loud in the darkness of her room, but it was enough to stop the live action replay of events in their tracks.
It didn’t always work and she’d lose any chance of sleep as every comment, every message, every photo rolled through her mind as she searched in vain for the point where she could’ve done something different.
Found a way to cut it off, to defuse and deflect the attention.
Such a stupid waste of her time. The anger she felt these days was with herself for not being able to get over it.
Every time she thought she was making progress something like this happened and it felt like she was back at square one.
Frankie welcomed the anger tonight, because at least it was better than being afraid.
A muffled noise interrupted her guilt spiral and Frankie’s heart rate spiked again. Someone’s outside.
Ignoring the urge to yank the quilt up over her head and hide, Frankie pushed it aside and edged towards the window.
She raised the corner of the curtain a fraction and peered down into the small front garden but it was too dark to see anything.
Wishing she’d left the outside light on, Frankie pressed closer to the window and listened.
There was a scuffing sound then something scraping and then, horror of horrors, the familiar creak of her front door opening.
Her eyes flew to the bedside table where her phone usually sat and she silently cursed her decision to leave her phone downstairs.
It had been part of her therapy, a way of exercising control over when and how she used it and avoiding the dreaded doomscroll.
No phone meant she couldn’t call for help. But that didn’t mean she was helpless. Her eyes shifted to the top drawer of the bedside cabinet.
She tiptoed over, her ears straining for any clue that the intruder was coming up the stairs, but all was quiet.
With one hand on the handle and the other bracing the drawer, Frankie inched it open until she could reach inside and retrieve two metal cylinders.
She tucked one in each of the pockets of her pyjama bottoms, then stuffed her feet into her slippers.
She’d have preferred something sturdier, but her trainers and winter boots were all stacked side by side on the shoe rack in the cupboard under the stairs along with her coats.
Her flannel-style pyjama bottoms were fine, but the matching vest left her feeling far too vulnerable.
Using the small night light as a guide, Frankie made her way to the chair where she’d thrown the old baggy hoodie she used in lieu of a dressing gown.
She zipped it to her chin. It wasn’t exactly a suit of armour, but it was better than nothing.
Having checked her pockets one more time to assure herself the two cylinders were there, Frankie took a deep breath and placed her hand on the door handle.
She eased the handle down as slowly as possible, praying it wouldn’t make a noise.
Actually opening the door took another level of courage, but what else was she going to do?
Waiting in her room for whoever was invading her home to come upstairs and find her was simply not an option.
She’d taken some self-defence classes after her confrontation with her stalker and they’d all told her the same thing – fighting was only ever the last resort.
The best defence would always be escape, and that meant getting downstairs while she could.