At 4 a.m., I wake in the darkness, every sense alive to the fact that someone is in the room with me.
Day Two
Chapter 3
Help Me
I squint into the dense darknessof the bedroom, the silence around me thick. Whatever it was that woke me is now silent.
I do not move an inch—I keep my breathing deep and steady, as if I am still asleep.
I sense it in the room with me. I can feel its presence but I cannot see, not yet. Thoughts fire: perhaps whoever it is has been here all along, while I unpacked, ate supper. Perhaps they came with the house.
And then I see it, across the room: a shadow deeper than the others, a figure slowly shifting in the darkness.
I constrict internally, my panic suddenly electric, muscles tensing, breath stopping.
Beside me, my phone is just inches away on the nightstand.
No—best to run straight for the door.
A bang comes from the far corner of the room—
And instantly I’m up, bolting faster than my thoughts. I race for the bedroom door, already imagining the stairs beyond, the front door, the street. I wantout. I need to get out of this house. Now.
More noises, objects hitting the floor behind me—
My hands find the door in the darkness, fumble the lock, sending the key tumbling down onto the carpet, my panic climaxing as I bend to search below me. Any second now, the brutal, grasping hands of the intruder will be on me.
But nothing comes, my own snagging breath deafening as I desperately grope one arm out along the wall and hit the light switch.
The room bursts into vision. Boxes, bubble-wrapped picture frames and mirrors, clothes still on hangers slung over chairs.
There is no one there, only a garment bag waving in the breeze from the window. I burst out a laugh of relief, jolts of it.
A furry face pokes around the edge of a toppled box, the blind across from him slapping in the breeze. Blue lets out a low, joyful burble.
He’s back. I head over to the window and look out. We are two floors up; how did he manage to get up here?
I look to the right and am shocked to notice it: the house beside mine is rigged in scaffolding, its framework leading up directly from the pavement to beside my window, a little, waist-high gate at street level the only thing standing between the street and my open bedroom window. I suppose I must have noticed it on some subconscious level earlier today and completely ignored it, siloing it into the not-relevant-to-me part of my brain.
“Oh my God,” I sigh, turning to Blue with disproportionate relief. I raise the flapping blind and stretch up to secure the open window. I don’t want him making a habit of this form of entry and exit—or anyone else, for that matter.
I take a breath, the relief palpable as the window thuds shut, my warm breath fogging the glass. I wipe it with my T-shirt. Outside, London twinkles in the darkness, the warm glow of housing estates and skyscrapers, unsleeping, in the distance.
“Come here, you little menace,” I coo, turning back to Blue, and patting the edge of the bed, where I plop down next to him and stroke him.
He settles next to me, his soft paws padding me, loving me, equally relieved, his coat cool and silken to the touch. He headbutts my hand, his purr resonating through his little body.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” I ask. Blue looks up at me with wide eyes and meows assent. He always seems to understand questions about food.
As we head downstairs, I notice through the moonlit back window that the scaffolding also wraps around the back of the house beside mine as well as the front. I know for a fact it wasn’t up when I viewed the house; I took photos. So, it must have been erected in the last few weeks while the sale went through.
Downstairs, I fork out a healthy portion of his new cat food, the vet having put him on a special diet: suspected diabetes. We’ve had to cut back on treats, but I just want him to be happy.
I gulp down a cool glass of water and watch him eat ravenously. You’d expect him to be especially hungry after a full day of exploring, but this is how he gobbles every meal: half-starved and desperate.
Once Blue is finished, I rinse his bowl, double-check that the back door is locked, flick off the lights, and head up to bed, the soft pit-pat of his paws following me.
