‘Really?’ Martin’s face falls. ‘I had a few other issues to discuss with you about the neighbours and about how we could—’
‘It will have to be another time, Martin.’ Daisy has started wailing and I feel like joining her. What am I doing in my neighbour’s garden when all I want to do is curl up on my bed and fall asleep? I step back into Martin’s kitchen, eager to be on my way.
‘Shoes!’ he calls out behind me.
I bite my tongue and slip off my flip-flops, finding it hard to bend down to retrieve them while Daisy is flailing around in my arms. As I walk back into the hall, I notice the door to the cupboard under the stairs is slightly ajar, and I’m surprised to see stairs leading downwards. Martin must have a basement in his house, which is strange because as far as I’m aware none of the other houses in our road have one. But I’m not going to ask about it now. If I do, I’ll never get out of here.
Six
I’m lying on my back in a dark place. I reach out to feel the space around me, and my fingertips come into contact with warm metal, rough and ridged like corrugated iron. Where the hell am I? Wherever it is, it’s so hot I can barely breathe. My body is slippery with sweat. I try to sit up but my head bashes into the metal casing above me. I’m trapped inside some kind of container. Terror bubbles up inside me, but I don’t have enough air in my lungs to scream. How did I get here? How will I get out? Am I going to die? Beyond my confines I hear a thin sound in the distance. The sound of crying. Screaming. It’s Daisy!
My eyes fly open and I instantly close them again against the brightness flooding into my bedroom. I was dreaming. A nightmare. It was dark and hot in my dream. I’m still hot now, the bedsheets sticking to my body. Air. I need air. I slide out of bed and stagger over to the window but it’s closed. Locked. I can’t remember where I put the key.
In my dream, Daisy was crying, but she’s not crying now. She’s silent. I rush back to her basket in a panic, convinced she will be gone. But my baby is there. Sleeping peacefully, her cheeks a little flushed, but her forehead cool to the touch. I stretch out my fingers to stop them shaking.
The clock by my bed says 11.35 a.m. and the events of this morning rush back to me as my dream fades. I was at Martin’s place, then I came back home. I soothed Daisy, checked the windows and doors, and had a nap. My head is throbbing. That bloody jackhammer is still going strong out there. Even with the windows closed I can hear it. Just when I think it’s stopped, it starts up again, an instrument of torture.
I sit heavily on the side of the bed and retrieve my phone from the nightstand, trying to slow my racing brain, my speeding pulse. Trying to get a sense of where I am. That dream has thrown me off kilter. I have to keep telling myself that I’m safe. I’m home. I’m with my baby. Nothing has changed. So why do I feel like I’m in some sinister alternate universe?
I’m really not in any state to go out tonight so I tap in a quick text to my best friend, Melinda Clark, to tell her I’m not up to it. She lives over the way at number one with her two young children, James who’s almost four, and Katie who’s two.
My phone pings instantaneously with a reply:
Don’t you dare bail on me. You’re coming and that’s that.
Despite my grinding headache, I can’t help smiling at her bulldozer attitude. I text back:
Sorry Mel, but you’ll have to manage without me.
* * *
You can’t leave me to fend for myself with ‘the perfect ones’.
‘The perfect ones’ is the name we gave to our school friends who all seem to live these untouchable, wonderful lives in sprawling houses with super-rich husbands. Saying that, they’re all down-to-earth women who we still have a laugh with. Mel used to be one of the ‘perfect ones’ herself, until her rich and perfect husband, Chris, left her two years ago for a twenty-year-old dance student. Now she’s bringing up their children on her own. Chris bought her the house and gives her a generous monthly allowance, but he rarely visits her or the children, which is sad for all of them. She could have had a much swankier house if she’d wanted it, but she said she would rather live near me than on her own in a palace.
Sometimes, in my more uncharitable moments, I’m convinced the only reason Mel moved here was so that I’d be on hand to babysit. I love her to pieces, but our relationship has always been a bit of a one-way street, with me rushing to bail her out or look after her children when disaster strikes. It’s difficult to say no to her, though. Her parents died in a car crash when she was a teenager and Dominic and I are the closest thing she has to family.
I feel bad for bailing on her tonight, but not bad enough to go.
I’ll come to the next one. Promise.
* * *
I’m coming over. See you in a minute.
Shit. I quickly text her back
Don’t ring the bell. Daisy’s asleep.
I rush to the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. By the time I get downstairs and open the door, Mel is already striding up the drive. She’s gorgeous, with green eyes, glossy hair that falls in tawny waves and an hour-glass figure that most women wouldn’t know what to do with. Not Mel. She celebrates her curves in style, with a wardrobe that includes figure-hugging pencil skirts, belted fifties-style dresses and Capri pants. And we’ve nicknamed her boobs the eighth wonder of the world.
‘You look like crap, Kirstie,’ she says without preamble.
‘I feel it.’
We head into the kitchen.
‘Fuck, it’s hot in here,’ she says, screwing up her face and fanning herself with her hand, blood-red fingernails waving back and forth in a crimson blur. ‘Open the doors for Christ’s sake. No wonder you feel rough. I’m already convinced I’ve got the flu and I’ve only been inside your house for thirty seconds.’ She strides over to the bifold doors, turns the key and yanks them all the way back. ‘God, that’s better.’ Mel takes in a deep breath of fresh air, and I can’t help doing the same.
‘Hi, Mel,’ I say. ‘Nice to see you, as always.’
She gives my shoulder a push. ‘Sarky cow. Why does it smell like an old tart’s knickers in here?’
‘Didn’t you hear what happened yesterday?’ I ask.
She shakes her head and sits at the kitchen table.
‘Hang on a minute.’ I nip into the lounge and retrieve the baby monitor, before returning to the kitchen where I sit opposite Mel and explain what I heard the night before.
‘Weird,’ she says. ‘So that’s why the police came round asking me about babies? They never mentioned you, or what you’d heard. Just asked if I had any babies staying with me, or if I’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around. I wondered what had happened.’
‘It’s scary, right?’
She waggles her head. ‘Hmm, I dunno. I wouldn’t worry about it. Daisy’s okay, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, but only because I’m keeping an eye on her. I’m keeping all the doors and windows locked.’
‘Ah, that explains why this place has turned into a sauna. It’s thirty degrees out. You can’t keep yourself sealed in. Let me open some more windows.’ She moves over to the kitchen window but it’s locked. ‘Where’s the key?’
‘I think it’s upstairs.’
‘Go and get it. You need air in here.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s fine.’ The thought of Mel opening all the windows makes my head swim.
‘Go and get it, Kirstie.’
I sigh and do as she asks, tiptoeing up the stairs so as not to wake Daisy. I think I remember stashing the key in the pocket of my dress.
Minutes later, I’m following Mel from room to room as she unlocks all the downstairs windows. I feel myself wince each time she throws another one wide open.
‘Is this why you don’t want to come out tonight?’ she asks. ‘Because of what happened last night?’
‘I suppose. Partly.’
‘Oh, Kirstie.’ She stops what she’s doing for a moment to look at me.
Annoyingly, I feel tears begin to prick at my eyes. What is wrong with me?
‘Daisy will be fine.’ Mel says. ‘Dom will be with her, right?’