sweat collect beneath my armpits. Between my thighs. There is no sound. Only the stale smell of dead flowers and perspiration. There is someone standing down on the porch. In front of a large, dark house. The door isn’t sturdy. They could come in if they put their mind to it.
Maybe they already have.
Maybe they are already inside, walking through the hallway, towards the stairs leading up to my bedroom. The carpets, grey and silent, swallowing the sound of their steps. More than one person. Or just one man. One man and his silent steps on the stairs to my bedroom. The closed door coming into view. His hands are gloved. His breath is going quickly. His pupils dilated. His heart beating with excitement.
I almost choke on my own breath.
Stop. A car’s broken down, that’s it.
Should I check? What if they need help?
They would ring again then, wouldn’t they?
Wouldn’t you ring again?
I pull the blanket up to my nose. There are no sounds at all. I didn’t hear a car. You hear cars from miles off on this road.
As the minutes pass by, I start wondering. Did I only imagine it?
My teachers always said I had an overactive imagination.
Slowly, I sit up. Rise, carefully. Tiptoe across the carpet. To the window. I don’t dare draw back the curtain. Only lift it, not even by an inch. Through the narrow gap, I peek out.
It takes my eyes a while to get used to the darkness. When they have, I look out across the hollow.
There isn’t a single soul. Not a car, not a bike, nothing. Only the long shadows of the bare birches, a little darker even than the night, like fingers stretched out towards the house.
I drop the curtains again and move back under the blanket.
I only imagined it.
The sweat dries. It leaves sticky patches in the dip between my collarbones, on top of my breasts, beneath my arms and at the seam of my panties. Slowly, I close my eyes. I listen for sounds. A breeze strokes through the naked boughs of the trees. Wood creaks. It’s not the stairs. It’s no one coming up the stairs. It is just the trees. Just the trees and their long shadows.
The sweat is cooling on my skin. It prickles.
It is a summer day in the year 1988. Three children are running up the High Street, out of breath. They are giggling as they turn into Cobblestone Snicket to hide, two girls and a boy. The heat lurks in the narrow alley, the air oppressive. A thunderstorm may be coming. Everyone is wearing shorts, skirts and crop tops, humming ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.
The kids all try to peek back around the corner at the same time. ‘Move, Linn,’ the boy hisses, ‘I can’t see!’
‘Shhh,’ Linn, the girl in front, says to the boy, her dark eyes wide and curious. ‘Shh, Anna!’ to the other girl.
The other girl’s blonde hair is falling down onto her shoulders and she’s whispering, ‘Don’t let them catch us, please don’t …’
Five houses down, a front door is thrown open. A woman in her forties, she seems ancient to these kids, steps out. Her son is watching from the window. He is their best friend, Jay is, but he has been grounded. His mother is wearing a brown cardigan and frameless glasses, sweating in the heatwave. ‘I know you are there!’ the woman calls out. Her name is Mrs Mason. She is their teacher in kindergarten, teaches them colours and songs and the clock, which is really hard. Now her doorbell had rung just like the stupid fake clock she brings into kindergarten with her to bully them. Ding, ding, ding, three short chimes. Linn giggles.
Mrs Mason steps out of her doorway. Anna’s murmuring turns louder. ‘Please, God, help us, make her not see us, make her not see us …’
‘Come out!’ Mrs Mason calls again. Anna slinks back further into the alley, praying in another language now, one Linn doesn’t understand. Teo is clutching Linn’s shoulders. ‘What do we do?’ he whispers. ‘She’s coming right at us!’
His brown eyes widen as he sees how close Mrs Mason is already, her flat shoes making funny sounds on the pavement. ‘Come on, Linn!’
Teo takes her hand and pulls her with him, following Anna, who’s already well ahead. They run down the narrow alley, pushing through the stifling heat, emerging on the other side into the parking lot of the supermarket. It is new and shiny, and they run up to it and inside and pretend to be looking at the sweets machine. The sweat prickles as it dries on their skin. Anna is looking so hard at the sweets, Linn is afraid her eyes will pop out like the chewing gums pop out of the machine. Teo keeps clutching her sleeve and Anna’s, and then Anna takes Linn’s hand. ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ is playing over the speakers.
Finally, Anna glances up and grins, in her pretty floral dress and her pretty ponytails. ‘Ding, ding, ding,’ she whispers, and the three kids start giggling until they are out of breath all over again. ‘Ding, ding, ding.’
LINN
When I wake up in the morning, I’m sticky all over. It takes my eyes a while to focus on the ceiling. And for my brain to remember what happened last night.
What I imagined, anyway. I lie in the damp sheets, breathing more heavily than I should. I did not expect the first night to be easy, but I will deal with the nightmares. I’ve dealt with them before. They are a price I am willing to pay. And the begonias look bright and purple in the daylight, and the deadly nightshade is buried deep in the nightstand drawer.
‘Good morning,’ I say to the begonias, determinedly cheerful, taking them to the bathroom to make sure they get their breakfast. Then I go down to put on the washing machine for the sweaty sheets. There is only a little detergent left. As I stand bent over my parents’ old machine, in that basement, naked light bulbs casting dark shadows into the corners, I tell myself that I cannot feel fingers of sweat on my body. On my eyelids.
Hurrying back upstairs and into the bathroom, I tell myself I can still try and find a hotel in the area, should the nightmares get worse. Although that would be too expensive, I fear. And there are no friends I could bother.
There were only ever the three of them, really, weren’t there? Anna, Jacob, Teoman.
One of whom has come back, too.
Teo.
Standing naked in the bathroom, waiting for the water to turn hot, I watch the frost flowers on the windows while I remember them. Teoman and Anna and Jay. My best friends for as long as I could remember.
Teo. The only one the police ever arrested.
Involuntarily, I shiver. The Detective Inspector let him go the next day and said all the evidence pointed to a stranger. Maybe the DNA sample could have helped, but it was contaminated. Got mixed up in the lab. Human error. All too human.
I never asked Graham what made him take Teo in. What made him let him go.
I didn’t want to know.
Besides, it didn’t matter, did it? We thought it was a stranger.
Now, things look a little different.
Every muscle in my body cramps up. As I step into the shower, I resolve to speak to Graham as soon as I can. Find out what he thought about it, about them: Anna, Jacob, Teo. And we all went to see Miss Luca, too, afterwards, so she’s someone to speak to.
After the shower, I make some porridge with the blueberries I brought