The Stranger on the Stairs

Prologue

Christy Nicholls knew instantly what was going to happen.

She knew the second she opened the back door to him; she knew before he had locked it and pocketed the key, before he had grabbed her round the waist and begun to kiss her, and straight away, she decided she would do nothing. She wouldn’t fight.

She turned her head towards the living room in a barely discernible movement, missed by him – she hoped.

Go, her eyes said to her seven-year-old daughter, who was hovering there behind the door, out of sight.

It was late – well after nine – and Bella was normally in bed at this time, but she had been off school with an upset stomach and had been asleep all day, so Christy had allowed her to stay downstairs for a while. He wouldn’t have expected that.

As his fingers groped her buttocks, pulling her phone from her jeans pocket and flinging it across the kitchen, Christy threw a second warning glance at Bella and jerked her head.

Go. Leave. Christy wasn’t quite sure what Bella would do.

Would she leave through the front door and run to a neighbour?

Or would she run upstairs and hide? Go upstairs and don’t come down until I tell you, Christy said with her eyes, and Bella – who had always been an obedient little thing who could read her mother’s expressions almost as well as she could read the Jacqueline Wilson books she adored – turned and ran.

It was because of her daughter that Christy had decided not to scream out or fight him.

She wanted to spare her the trauma. She figured that if she just gave in and accepted it, he would be satisfied and leave.

Later, she would tell Bella that everything was fine, that she had wanted him to kiss her, even though the very thought made her feel sick.

But she knew he wasn’t going to give up and go away until he’d got what he wanted, so she allowed him to push her to the kitchen floor.

As it turned out, Christy didn’t know everything that was about to happen, not all of it.

She had seen the raw lust in his eyes the last time he came.

She recognised the belligerence that can take hold in a man like him upon being rejected.

But she had underestimated the hatred he felt towards her, had misunderstood the person he really was.

Had Bella not been in the house that evening, would it have made any difference?

Would she have fought for her life sooner?

Or would she have been blindsided, just the same?

After all, he was always going to get away with what he was about to do because she couldn’t tell anyone; she just wanted it to be over with.

And so she simply wasn’t prepared for what would happen next.