Page 39 of Rich Little Liars

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.

14

NOW

The police arrive in seventeen minutes.

When I see the headlights sweep across the windows, I scramble downstairs and look through the peeper. A police car sits on the street, the markings familiar but somehow wrong in this context. Wrong because they’re here. Because I called them.

Because I’ve invited scrutiny.

The officer who gets out is alone. Male, tall, moving with the sort of unhurried confidence that comes from handling domestics and false alarms more often than actual emergencies. He checks the street, scans my front lawn, then walks up the driveway.

I open up before he can knock.

‘Ms Reynolds?’ His voice is pleasant. Professional. ‘I’m Officer Joseph Harvey. You called about an intruder?’

‘Yes. In my back yard. I saw someone standing there.’

He nods like this is completely reasonable. Like women call him at one in the morning about shapes in yards all the time. ‘May I come in?’

I step back and he enters, his boots leaving wet prints on my pale floors. He’s maybe forty, with greying hair and sharp eyes that take in everything – the lights, the tidiness, my unwashed hair and rumpled clothes. Taking inventory. Making assessments.

‘When did you first notice this person?’ he asks, pulling out a notebook.

‘About twenty minutes ago. I mean I’ve been seeing the shapes for a few nights now, but I only just realised it was a person. I was upstairs and looked out the window and they were just standing there.’

‘Which window?’