‘You really are, you’re a star.’ Sharon paused on the threshold. Outside it was dark, murky and damp.
And you, Rachel thought, are a fucking nightmare. She shut the door after her mother and leaned back, her eyes sore, too long a day, heaviness in her chest making her throat ache, sad, as though she’d lost something but she didn’t know what it was.
Gill was dreaming, being chased, her legs rubbery, fire licking at her heels, when she was woken by the sound of a car crossing the gravel outside the house. She sat up. Her heart gave a kick and she felt a moment’s dizziness. She wasn’t expecting anyone. It was far too late for social callers. Or business. Late and dark. Sammy was staying at Orla’s and Gill no longer got romantic fleeting visits from Chris Latham. He’d met someone else and had the guts to be straight with her about it before disappearing from her life.
She was holding her breath, head cocked to one side. The engine cut out. She heard the car door open, footsteps.
Climbing out of bed, she pulled on her dressing gown, drew the curtain back a fraction but could see nobody. The car had stopped at the side of the house, near the door, but her bedroom looked out over the front. They were isolated, on the edge of the moors, the nearest neighbour along the road out of sight. Certainly out of earshot. The farmhouse over the fields visible in the distance from the front windows but too far away to help. The house has good security, she reminded herself. Security lights, alarm, top-of-the-range bolts and mortise locks. The burglar alarm was connected to the police station.
Should she go and look out of Sammy’s window? What if they saw her and realized she was alone? Footsteps crossed the gravel, the sound changing as they reached the flagged path that skirted the house. Her pulse was jumping, her throat dry.
Would they go away once they got no response? They couldn’t get in unless they smashed a window. A determined man with a lump hammer could crash his way through the reinforced glass eventually. Gill thought of bus stops, the shower of glass in drifts around them.
And if they got in? How long till the police responded? It was a nine-minute drive from the nearest station – if they left as a matter of urgency.
Violent banging on the door jolted her into action. She grabbed her phone and pressed 999, her heart in her mouth.
The doorbell went, long and shrill, then more banging. A pause. A crashing sound, something breaking? The alarm would sound if the windows broke, she was sure that’s what they’d had set up. More banging,