Prologue
Someone is in the house.
She knows instantly that it’s not a stranger. It’s not someone off the street who has broken in, seeking money or jewellery or anything they might be able to sell.
Because what woke her isn’t a sound, but a feeling.
Her body has gone from at rest to hypervigilant in only a few seconds, her eyes popping open and her heart racing.
The first thought she has is for the children, safely curled up in their beds. Her children need to be protected because someone is definitely in the house.
It’s a person she knows. A person who is familiar with her home, who knows how to move around it.
Straining to hear something, anything, she thinks that she can make out the sound of footsteps on the stairs. But whoever is here is being very careful, very quiet.
She desperately wants to be imagining it. But she’s not.
She should get up, go and look, flick on every light and chase shadows out of corners, prove herself wrong.
But she can’t move. Fear keeps her trapped under her duvet, her fists clenched, her mouth dry.
If she manages to scream, her children will wake up and come running.
But then they would be in danger. She can’t scream.
Memories of an old nightmare flash in her mind and she thinks that if she opened her mouth to scream, no sound would come out anyway. In nightmares, you lose your voice and your ability to move. You are helpless.
This is a nightmare and it’s one that she created for herself. She only has herself to blame.
Who is it?
Is it just one person or are there more?
Is it possible that the perfectly nice family she let into her life is walking around her house in the middle of the night?
Or is it someone else entirely?