She tiptoed into his room and I heard her whispering, ‘Tom! Tom! There’s a noise in the house.’
He came out, bleary-eyed and pale, and we all crept slowly down the stairs.
There was a door open, you could tell it as soon as we reached the ground floor. It was cold as ice and a breeze was blowing through the hallway, coming from the kitchen. Flo turned completely pale.
‘I’m getting the gun,’ she whispered, her voice so slight you could hardly hear.
‘I thought you said,’ Clare mouthed, ‘that it was loaded with blanks?’
‘It is,’ Flo whispered crossly, ‘but he won’t know that, will he?’ She jerked her head at the living-room door. ‘You first, Tom.’
‘Me?’ Tom said, in a horrified whisper, but he rolled his eyes and edged his head very quietly around the living-room door. Then he beckoned silently, and we all followed him, in a sort of relieved rush. The room was empty, moonlight flooding the pale carpet. Flo reached up above the mantelpiece and took down the gun. Her face was pale but determined.
‘You’re sure about the blanks?’ Clare asked again.
‘Completely sure. But if someone’s there it’ll give them a pretty good scare.’
‘If you’re holding the gun I’m going behind you,’ Tom hissed, ‘blanks or no blanks.’
‘All right.’
Whatever I’d thought of Flo, I couldn’t fault her courage. She stood for a moment in the hallway, and I could see her hands shaking. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath, and flung open the kitchen door so hard it crashed back against the tiled wall.
There was no one there. But the glass kitchen door was standing open in the moonlight, and a light dusting of snow blew across the tiled floor.
Clare was across the room in a moment, her bare feet soft on the cold tiles. ‘There’s footsteps, look.’ She pointed out across the lawn: big shapeless prints, like those made by wellies or snowboots.
‘Fuck.’ Tom’s face was pale. ‘What happened?’ He turned to me. ‘You were out of that door last. Didn’t you lock it?’
‘I— I’m sure I did.’ I tried to remember. Nina offering to help, Flo’s angry crashing. I had a clear memory of my hand on the lock. ‘I did. I’m certain I locked it.’
‘Well, you can’t have done it properly!’ Flo rounded on me. In the moonlit dark she looked like a statue, her face as hard and unyielding as marble.
‘I did.’ I was beginning to feel angry. ‘Anyway, I thought you said Clare checked?’
‘I just rattled each door,’ Clare said. Her eyes were huge, with shadows like bruises in the sockets. ‘I didn’t check every lock. If it didn’t open, I assumed it was shut.’
‘I locked it,’ I said stubbornly. Flo made a small furious noise, almost like a growl. Then she tucked the shotgun under her arm and stalked upstairs.
‘I locked it,’ I repeated, looking from Clare to Tom. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Look,’ Clare said, ‘it’s no one’s fault.’ She walked across to the door and slammed it hard, twisting the key as she did. ‘It’s damn well locked now, anyway. Let’s get up to bed.’
We trooped back up the stairs, feeling the spent adrenaline in our systems fading to sour jitters. Nina was at the top of the stairs as I rounded the landing, scrubbing her eyes confusedly.
‘What happened?’ she asked as I drew level. ‘Why did I just see Flo stamp past holding that fucking shotgun?’
‘We had a scare,’ Tom said shortly, coming up from behind me. ‘Someone,’ he glanced at me, ‘left the kitchen door unlocked.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ I said doggedly.
‘Well, whatever. It was open. We heard it banging. There were footprints outside.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Nina was as wide awake as the rest of us now. She passed a hand over her face again, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. ‘Had they gone? Was anything missing?’
‘Nothing I noticed.’ Tom looked at me and Clare. ‘Anything you can think of? Telly was there. All the obvious stuff like that. Did anyone leave their wallets lying around? Mine’s in my room.’
‘Mine too,’ Clare said. She turned and glanced out at the drive. ‘And all the cars are still there.
‘My bag’s in my room, I think,’ I said. I put my head round the door to check. ‘Yup. It’s there.’
‘Well … looks like it wasn’t robbery they were after,’ Tom said uneasily. ‘If it wasn’t for the footsteps you could almost think it was just a faulty lock.’
But there were the footsteps. There undeniably were.
‘Think we should call the police?’ he asked.
‘We can’t, can we?’ Nina said acidly. ‘No landline and no bloody reception.’
‘You had a couple of bars yesterday,’ I reminded her, but she shook her head.
‘Must have been a blip. I’ve had nothing since. Well, look on the bright side, there’s no smell of petrol so with luck, it’s not the crazed locals with their jerry cans come back for a second bonfire.’
There was a silence. Nobody laughed.