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‘Keep them up there,’ Kay warned as she dialled. ‘I don’t want them down here.’ She was still gripping the poker and she knew she would have no compunction about using it should the men come back. ‘I’m perfectly all right; they didn’t touch me.’
In the few minutes in which it took the two young policemen to arrive, Kay stood by the phone without moving. She could see now the burglar who had been inside must have broken the window in his haste to escape, along with a heavy glass vase that had been on the window sill. She was shaking, her teeth chattering, as much from reaction as the freezing air swirling into the room.
They had been trying to invade her house, and with her babies asleep upstairs. She felt such a sickening mixture of shock and rage it made her legs tremble. How dared they?
When she heard the car draw up outside, she forced herself to walk to the front door and open it, her face ashen. The two policemen were wonderful, another car—this time with a female police officer—arriving moments later. While one of the policemen took a statement, the other searched the garden outside, but Kay had already told them she was sure the men had gone.
The woman police officer went upstairs to talk to Leonora, returning shortly and smiling at Kay as she said, ‘You’ve got two lovely little girls.’
Yes, she had, and those men would have been here, in the same house with her precious babies. By rights she should have been asleep upstairs, Kay thought sickly. That was what they’d expected.
The police woman must have seen in her face what she was thinking because now she said briskly, ‘A cup of tea, I think.’
It was a long night, but by the time a weak and windy dawn began to banish the darkness the police had gone through the wreckage with a fine-tooth comb, dusting and sorting and even finding a piece of glass with some blood on it.
‘One of ’em cut themselves,’ the policeman said with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘Nice of ‘em to leave a calling card. We might well find we’ve got this one on file.’
Her mother and the twins had come downstairs at some point, the children’s curiosity overwhelming, but Kay was pleased and relieved to find both Georgia and Emily didn’t really seem aware of the significance of what had happened. They had clung to her a while at first, and neat, tidy little Emily had been indignant about all the mess, but there had been no tears. It had been too cold for them to remain downstairs, and her mother had reported both girls were asleep within ten minutes or so once they’d been tucked up back in bed.
‘Are you sure we can’t call your brother or someone else, a friend maybe, before we leave, Mrs Sherwood?’ the woman police officer had asked, once they had done all they could. One of the policemen had stuck a large piece of cardboard across the hole in the window, but the room was still icy.
Kay shook her head. ‘No need to disturb anyone now,’ she said quietly. It was still only seven o’clock. ‘Time enough for that later.’
‘I’m ringing Henry.’ The police officers were hardly out of the door when Leonora picked up the telephone. ‘He always rises at six and he’d want to know.’
More like her mother was longing to tell him, Kay thought indulgently. But she didn’t mind. If she was honest her first coherent thought when she’d been waiting for the police to arrive had been an intense desire to be able to talk to Mitchell.
Her mother was a little deflated when the answer machine cut in after she had dialled the number, but, assuming Henry was down at the lake feeding the ducks their normal hearty breakfast, she left a message and hung up.
Once Kay had showered and dressed she felt better, although the white face staring back at her from the mirror still looked like death warmed up. Coffee. Lots of strong, sweet coffee before the girls woke up, she thought practically. Those men, whoever they were, weren’t going to get the better of her. She wouldn’t let them frighten her, not in her own house.
She put the coffee on to percolate while her mother went upstairs to wash and dress, and was just checking every tiny piece of glass had gone when she heard a car screech to a halt outside. Henry, bless him. He’d obviously heard her mother’s message and come flying over in person, rather than ringing back.
She got up from her knees and walked to the front door. They had closed the curtains earlier, hoping it would help to warm the room a little, but it was still icy cold, despite the heating being on. She didn’t wait for Henry to knock, opening the door with a smile of welcome, which remained fixed in surprise when she found herself looking into a pair of silver-blue eyes set in an ominously dark face as Mitchell strode up the path, Henry following some yards behind.
‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t wait for her to speak, taking her into his arms as he reached her and holding her so tight she couldn’t breathe. ‘I’ll tear them limb from limb, I swear it.’
‘Mitchell, Mitchell.’ She had to struggle to become free, but when she saw the look on his face her voice gentled. ‘I’m fine, I am,’ she said quickly. ‘No one was hurt—no one but one of the burglars, anyway.’
She had stepped backwards into the sitting room as she’d spoken, the two men following her, but as Henry shut the door Mitchell pulled her to him again, his voice hoarse as he murmured, ‘I’d have killed them if they’d hurt a hair on your head. Damn it, I should have been here.’
She understood immediately. Her hand lifted to his face and he grabbed it and held it there as she said, ‘No, you shouldn’t, of course you shouldn’t. You can’t be everywhere,’ knowing that old ghosts had been resurrected and the torment of his sister’s death was heavy on his shoulders.
Henry was standing silently behind them, his face grim, and now Kay said, ‘Mum’s getting dressed, Henry, but there’s coffee on the go in the kitchen if you’d like to take charge. And don’t you look like that either—we really are all right.’
‘Kay, Kay…’ As Henry disappeared into the other room Mitchell’s hands moved to cradle her face, his lips desperate as they bruised hers in an agony of fear at what might have been. ‘Are the twins okay? How badly were they frightened?’
She loved that he’d thought of the girls. ‘They’re too young to really realise what’s happened,’ she said softly, her lips tingling and burning. ‘I’m not sure how they’ll be today, but they’re still asleep so that’s a good sign.’
‘When I think what could have happened—’
‘Don’t.’ She cut off his voice by putting a finger to his lips. ‘The police think they are just two petty thieves who have been working this area, apparently. They break in at night and go for things like the TV and video, but they’re not violent. One of them c
ut themselves on the window, they were so desperate to get away when I screamed.’
‘You screamed?’ His face went greyer. ‘Damn it, Kay, I want to do murder.’
Kay thought he needed a cup of coffee more than she did. She pulled him over to the sofa and when they were both sitting down, his arm enclosing her, she said, after they had kissed again, ‘What are you doing here? I didn’t think you got back until this afternoon?’
