‘You have reached your destination,’ the satnav voice said, so I pulled over, turned off the engine and remained for a moment, staring at house number 11 just a little further ahead and to the right of me. My fingers involuntarily wrapped around the arc of the steering wheel to prevent me from sinking so deeply into my seat that I could never climb out.
I looked closely at Steven’s house. Some of the slate roof tiles were askew or needed replacing and the white paint on the window frames was flaking. The garden was overgrown and a wooden gate had fallen from its hinges and was propped up against an unkempt hedge. A porch on the right-hand side had a pitched roof and a front door you couldn’t see from the road.
I glanced at my watch: it was 7.50 p.m. and I was due inside in ten minutes. Now that I was here and the place was in view, my fear rose, causing my legs to tremble like they were trying to keep up with the ever-increasing beat of my heart. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep them still. Dusk was enveloping the village and it gave my mission a more sinister feel.
‘Calm yourself, Laura,’ I spoke out loud. ‘Remain in control and think of your anchor.’
But not even Henry could help me now.
I remained where I was for the time being until I was sure I hadn’t been seen. I wasn’t naive to the risks of what I was doing. A tiny, rational portion of my brain held on to my initial suspicions about Steven’s motives in having me there. And that part urged me to sit outside his house a little bit longer to confirm this wasn’t some kind of sick joke. If it was, Steven’s storytelling put mine to shame.
I craved a cigarette and began to nibble the skin around my fingernails as I questioned what I was doing there. Nobody was twisting my arm to go inside; if I just turned over the ignition and drove away, I’d be safe at home within minutes. That’s what a sensible, cautious person would do. That’s what Mary would have done. But she was weak, and I was not like her and would never be. And the lure of what was going to happen under that roof was all too powerful for me to ignore. I had to go inside.
I slipped on my brown leather gloves so as not to leave fingerprints on anything I touched, and walked cautiously up a gravel path, passing windows with drawn curtains. I looked up at the only illuminated window, on the first floor, where Steven had said he’d be waiting.
The door was ajar and I pushed it open, then took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. I fished out my torch and directed the beam towards various closed doors. The only pieces of furniture in the porch and hallway were a small table with some dried flowers in a vase and a wooden chair. Propping the front door open with the chair, in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat, I slid my hand into my pocket and gripped the handle of the knife.
As agreed, Steven would meet me in his bedroom. I climbed the stairs, one at a time, each of them creaking as if to announce my arrival. On the landing, I paused to take another breath, then made my way towards the only door with a faint light shining under it.
‘Steven?’ I whispered from beneath the architrave. I scoured the dimly lit room but he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the room was empty – there was no bed, no wardrobe, no chest of drawers. Just a wallpapered, almost bare room with a lamp on the floor. I looked up and the vaulted ceiling had beams like Steven had described, and I saw the rope attached. It moved ever so slightly from the draught of the open door. Alarm bells sounded in my head.
This is all wrong. Where is he? This wasn’t what we agreed. Get out of here!
Fear crawled from the small of my back, up my spine and towards my shoulders, wrapping itself around my neck like a snake and squeezing my throat. I wanted to run away so badly but I was too frightened to move. Suddenly something caught my eye. I paused to squint at it until it came into focus, and my stomach fell.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I whispered, and clasped the knife even more tightly. Instead of finding a man I’d promised to help in the last moments of his life, I was confronted by something shocking in the patterns of the wallpaper. I realised I wasn’t looking at wallpaper at all. It was hundreds of photographs of me.
Me walking up the steps and into the office. Me in my street. Me driving. Me on a spin bike at the gym. Me pushing a trolley around the supermarket. Me through the kitchen window. Me sitting in the coffee shop in town. Me entering the Hartley Hotel car park. From what I could see, every picture appeared to be different; Steven must have been following me for weeks.
It got worse, because I wasn’t the only focus of the lens. Tony had been caught boxing at the gym and going to his office. There were also my children on their way to school. Me watching Alice in the playground with her friends. Effie in the passenger seat of a boy’s car. Henry in the residential home’s community lounge as I combed his hair. To take some of the photographs, Steven must have been standing just a couple of feet behind me and I hadn’t known.
Instinct and fear made me grab at them, yanking them down by the fistful, cramming them into my pockets or throwing them to the floor as if doing that would be enough to wake me from the nightmare. But there were too many to dispose of. And if Steven had gone to all this trouble to scare me, what else might he be capable of ?
‘Don’t you like your picture being taken?’
I spun around quickly in the direction of Steven’s voice, which seemed to come out of nowhere. A figure was standing in the doorway, the darkness of the hall masking his face. He stepped forward two paces so I could see him more clearly, and I moved backwards. His hands were by his side and I now could make out the intensity of his stare.
‘I’ve gone to a lot of effort,’ he continued, his speech firm and confident, much more so than I’d ever heard him by phone. ‘I spent weeks following you and your family around. The least you can do is appreciate them.’
I took another step back into the bedroom, but realised that in doing so, he was cornering me. I struggled to breathe. It was like someone was choking me.
‘What . . . what do you want from me?’ I eventually stammered.
‘I want you to tell me why you manipulate vulnerable people and what you get out of it,’ he responded. ‘And none of that wanting to “help people who’ve fallen by the road” bullshit.’
He moved towards me, so I tugged the knife from my pocket and held it in front of me. The dim light in the room kept catching the silver blade as my hand shook. I could see Steven’s face more clearly now. It wasn’t as menacing as he sounded, but his body language terrified me.
He laughed mockingly as he looked at the knife. ‘You are many things, Laura Morris, but you don’t have the guts to actually kill anyone with your own bare hands. You do it from behind a telephone or a keyboard. Me, however . . . well, I’m an unknown quantity, aren’t I? You don’t know what I’m capable of.’
‘Don’t come any closer,’ I said. My groin suddenly felt warm and I realised I was wetting myself, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Let me go. Please.’