Since the builders had left this had become her and Ollie’s daytime world. There was plenty of space for her son to play on a floor mat in the living area, and the under-floor heating made it warm for him even in the depths of winter. In truth, she couldn’t deny that she had also wanted to stamp some of her own personality on the house. She had had to stop feeling like a visitor. The new extension felt like her space.
‘London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,’ she sang as she walked into the kitchen, flicking the light switch and turning towards the sink, where the lunch dishes were waiting for her. Ollie started bouncing in her arms, banging his hand on her shoulder.
‘Ay, ay,’ he shouted.
Emma laughed. ‘Are you joining in, sweetheart?’ She gently put him into his chair, but he wasn’t looking at her. ‘You’re a funny little man, aren’t you,’ she said, dropping a kiss onto his sparse blond hair.
She glanced out at the dismal day. The black clouds heavy with rain were creating such gloom that the kitchen lights were a necessity even this early in the afternoon.
Her eyes settled on the garden, which was in desperate need of some attention. The workmen had paid little regard to the niceties of maintaining the lawn or the flowerbeds as they had tramped backwards and forwards in their heavy boots, but she didn’t mind. She had visions of the spring days just around the corner, out in the sunshine with Ollie playing on the big waterproof mat. She was going to plan and design a real cottage garden with lots of roses. She had always loved roses.
For a moment, Emma was in a trance, staring at nothing because in her head she could see summer days when the garden was finished, the beds bursting with newly planted flowers. She could almost smell the lavender she would grow in the borders.
She wasn’t sure of the moment that it happened. It wasn’t an instant in time, it was more of a gradual awareness, but as she stared blindly at the black window, dreaming of the happy months ahead, something moved at the edge of her peripheral vision. Her eyes refocused from the garden to the surface of the glass, the bright lights of the kitchen against the dark sky beyond creating a perfect mirror.
Every nerve ending in her body prickled, and she gasped as her brain finally acknowledged what she was looking at.
It was a pair of eyes. A pair of eyes that were behind her, watching.
Close behind her.
In her kitchen.
5
A beam of sunlight burst through the black clouds, hitting the kitchen window and obliterating the reflection as if it had never been there. Emma’s fingers gripped the edge of the sink. Had she imagined it? But as quickly as the sun had come out, it was chased away by the squally clouds and the mirror image returned.
Locking eyes with the ghostly reflection that ebbed and flowed as the light outside adjusted from black to grey, Emma groped along the draining board, searching with her fingers for a weapon. There was nothing more than a plastic bowl. Reaching up to the cutlery holder, she felt a sharp pain and a rush of liquid warmth as her fingers grasped the blade of a sharp boning knife, and she followed the steel down to grip the handle with damp, sticky fingers.
Scared of breaking the fragile eye contact for even a second in case the person moved – moved closer to her or to Ollie, moved out of her line of vision or into the hall, where she would be forced to follow – Emma took a deep breath and spun round, leaning heavily back on the sink for support as her legs suddenly weakened.
Her heart thumping and her throat too tight with tension to scream, she stared at the person in front of her as adrenaline pumped through her body, preparing it for fight or flight.
It was a girl, little more than a child.
She was slightly built with straggly blonde hair that settled on the shoulders of her scruffy dark-grey duffle coat, her hands thrust deep into the pockets. The eyes that Emma had seen reflected in the window were mesmerising. Large, oval and the deep grey-green of a stormy ocean, they flinched slightly as Emma brandished the knife. But the girl didn’t move.
Emma lowered the knife onto the kitchen island, but kept hold of it. She had no idea what the girl wanted, but, young as she was, Emma didn’t trust her.
‘What are you doing in my kitchen?’ she asked. ‘Get out now, before I call the police.’
The girl didn’t move. She just stared back, her eyes never leaving Emma’s face. In them Emma thought she could read hostility, but perhaps it was confusion, or fear.
‘Ay, ay,’ shouted Ollie, not used to being ignored. Neither pair of eyes strayed to him even for a second.
‘I’m not going to ask you again. Either go now, or tell me who you are and what the hell you are doing in my kitchen?’ Emma repeated.