A breeze came over her, colder this time, sending prickles of goose flesh running up and down her arms. But other than the gentle dancing of leaves and blades of grass, there was no movement. She was alone.
“Silly Mummy, eh?” she whispered to Patrick, shaking her head at her foolishness. But still, she hurried her pace as she padded back up the driveway and slipped back into the house. Once inside, with one hand, she double-locked the front door and then the porch door as well, just for good measure.
The rest of the evening progressed as normal, and soon enough, Willa had forgotten all about her bizarre moment of paranoia out on the driveway. She fed Patrick his milk, bathed him, read him a story, and then set him down to sleep in his side-sleeper that was attached to her side of the bed she shared with Don. Once she was sure the little boy was sound asleep, she ran herself a steaming hot bath, then attempted to call her husband.
He didn’t answer.
She tutted and rolled her eyes. No doubt he’d end up drinking too much and have to leave the car at the golf course.
Willa pulled off her summer dress and sank into the bubbling depths of the tub; the boiling, floral-scented liquid soothing her moderately sunburned skin as she leaned her head back and gazed up at the ceiling.
Yes, she thought to herself, as her heavy eyelids began to fall, this is the life.
When Willa opened her eyes again, the water had gone lukewarm.
Immediately, her heart began to thunder in her chest as the shrill echoes of her baby screaming spilled in from the hallway and bounced off the tiles of the bathroom.
The woman hurried out of the bath, not even pausing to drape her towel around herself as she sprinted from the bathroom, down the passage, and back into the darkness of her bedroom.
“Oh, Patrick!” she cried, tears of guilt and shame welling up in her eyes as she flicked on the light switch and saw the red-faced little bundle screeching his lungs out in the side sleeper. “Oh my darling, oh my baby…” she whispered, scooping his body up and holding him close to her chest. She rocked him, gently kissing his head as his cries quickly descended into quiet sniffles.
Willa glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was almost 11 pm. She’d been asleep for hours.
“Oh baby, you must be hungry,” she kissed Patrick’s squidgy cheek. She set him down on the bed and hurriedly pulled on her dressing gown before gathering him up again. “I wonder where Daddy is…” she muttered, bouncing him on her hip as she padded from the bedroom and stood at the top of the staircase.
For a moment, she paused there and looked down the steps at the well-lit landing. The air was tense and still. Far too quiet for her liking. But then, she sighed a breath of relief. By the front door, she noted Don’s golf clubs, and his shoes carelessly kicked off and left abandoned by their side.
“Oh silly Daddy,” she laughed, proceeding to descend the staircase. “I think he might have had just a bit too much to drink. Probably fell asleep in front of the television, silly man…”
Patrick, predictably, said nothing in response. Instead, his piercing blue eyes stared vacantly ahead as if he were deep in thought. Willa sighed as she got to the foot of the stairs and re-positioned the baby in her arms.
“Don?” she called out, “what’re you doing?”
She moved further down the downstairs hallway, peering into the dark, empty living room, then looking directly ahead at the state-of-the-art kitchen that took up the entirety of the back of the house.
The light, she noticed, was on.
A tight, prickling sensation constricted in the pit of her stomach, and a low, uncomfortable breath escaped her lips.
If Don had made a beeline for a kitchen, it usually only meant one thing, and that was that he was making himself another drink. This, in itself, did not concern Willa; however, her husband’s binge drinking had become a constant source of anxiety for her. What if Patrick’s social workers turned up one day to see empty whiskey bottles in the bin? Or the smell was still in the air, of Don himself was still hungover?
“For god’s sake,” she muttered angrily underneath her breath, quickening her pace as she stormed towards the archway of the kitchen.
“Don, I need to feed our son!” she barked, irritated. “So if you don’t…”
When she got to the doorway and caught sight of her carefully designed, open-plan kitchen, she froze and almost choked on her own words.
The designer tiles that she had agonised over for so long and the tasteful canvases that she and Don had selected together were ruined.
Stained.
Soiled.
Scarlet red splatter corrupted the pristine countertops, reminding Willa of a bowl of tomato soup she had dropped once as a child. But this was redder than tomato soup. It was bright red, more like the chicken tikka masala from the local Indian takeaway.
At first, her brow furrowed into a deep frown of confusion, absorbing the vast amount of space that the strange red concoction had covered. Then, the stench of iron hit her nostrils, causing her stomach to churn and boiling hot bile to climb up into her throat.
Suddenly, she felt afraid.
“Don?” she squeaked, forcing herself to take a few more steps forwards, past the marble breakfast bar, exposing the square of floor that she had not been able to see from the entrance to the kitchen.
In her arms, Patrick began to wail, unimpressed with the sudden shakiness of his adoptive mother’s hold.
He needn’t have worried because, in the next moment, he was slipping, falling from her grip, and smacking his head onto the cold, slippery tiles on the ground below. Willa’s bloodcurdling screams pierced his delicate ears, like screwdrivers being rammed
