‘What are you doing?’ the other one yells.
‘Never you mind,’ the shorter one answers, pushing June up the stairs.
Before I know it, my hand is closing around the hilt of a knife. I draw it out. It’s the biggest one – the carving knife.
‘Where’s your bedroom?’ I hear the man in the skull mask ask June as they reach the top of the stairs.
June sobs so loudly I can’t hear her answer.
I take a step towards the man in the doorway, who still has his back to me. I bring the knife up, about to slash it down and bury it into his back, but he senses me and turns. His arm swings up – the arm holding the gun – just as I drive the knife down with all my strength. He ducks but I manage to strike the top of his arm. The knife slices through his sweater like warm butter and he lets out a cry, dropping his gun. I jab at him once more and he stumbles and falls to his knees.
I slash again, aiming for his face, and he jerks sideways to avoid me, smacking his head into the corner of the wooden island in the center of the kitchen. While he’s dazed I bring the knife down like a dagger, aiming for his chest, but he rolls out of the way just in time, kicking out with his legs and slamming me into the cupboard behind. The knife goes flying out of my hands, landing with a crash in the sink.
He reaches for the gun on the floor. Somewhere in the back of my head I register that my hands have landed on the wooden chopping board – the one I bought just a few months ago at the farmer’s market and which Robert laughed was heavier than a gravestone.
I’m not sure how I manage to lift it, but I do. It seems to weigh nothing and I swing it like a baseball bat and smash it into the man just as he levels the gun at me, catching him around the back of the head with a dull clunk.
He goes down like a sack of lead and I drop the board with a clatter to the floor beside him. I stand over his body for a few seconds, shaking so hard my teeth rattle. June. Her name punches its way through the fog in my head. I make my way unsteadily to the kitchen door before remembering the gun. I turn around and go back for it and I’m out in the hall, almost at the stairs before I remember Robert. Where is he? What have they done to him? But I don’t have time to look. I keep moving forwards, towards the stairs, towards June. There’s a phone on the console table by the front door and I grab it and dial 911. A disembodied voice on the other end of the line asks me what my emergency is.
‘Help,’ I whisper. ‘There’re people in my house. They’ve got guns.’
‘What’s your address?’ the woman asks. ‘Ma’am?’
I whisper our address as fast as I can and then lay the phone face up on the table.
‘The police are on their way,’ I hear her say, her voice tinny and far away. ‘Can you get somewhere safe until they arrive?’
I don’t answer. I’m already halfway up the stairs. The adrenaline hits me in another wave, making me light-headed. I look down at the gun in my hands. It’s heavy. Heavier than I thought it would be. An alien object. I don’t know how to fire a gun. I slide my finger over the trigger.
At the landing I take a step down the hallway towards June’s room. I can’t hear anything. Oh God. I whisper a prayer. Please don’t let him have touched her. If he’s laid a finger on her . . .
I bring the gun up, hold it in both hands like I’ve seen them do in the movies, my finger clamped over the trigger. My chest feels hollow, my heart rattling around in it like a loose ball bearing. I take a deep breath and step forwards into June’s room.
June is on her knees.
He’s standing in front of her.
I don’t think. I just aim.
Chapter 6
Lightning jolts through me and the reverberating shock of it disperses the fog. I can breathe again. Light pours in. Color too. A UFO of dazzling, spinning flashbulbs hovers above me. The voice calling my name is no longer muffled but crystal clear, and a face emerges to go with it – a man, in his thirties or thereabouts, Asian, clean-shaven.
‘Ava, can you hear me?’ he shouts right by my ear.
Yes, I want to shout back, I can hear you, but the words won’t come.
‘I’ve got a pulse. Blood pressure seventy over forty,’ he calls.
‘What have we got here?’ A woman’s voice this time. Out of breath, clipped, professional. She reminds me of Laurie.
‘Female, forty-one years old, brought in by paramedics,’ the other doctor tells her.
Are they talking about me? They must be. But how did I get here? Why am I here?
‘Head wound, possible fractured skull.’
Skull? And like that, I remember. The images pop fast and furious on the back of my eyelids. The gun in his hand. The blast of it. The bullet slamming home. The look on June’s face; her eyes widening in horror, her mouth opening in surprise.
‘She’s losing pressure.’
‘What happened?’ someone asks.
What did happen? I can only recall snatches. Remember, Ava, remember! There were men. Masks. They were wearing masks. The house. They were in the house. They had guns. Robert. Oh God. Robert. What happened to him? Where is he?
‘Burglary went wrong,’ someone says.
The beeping
