I look at those tiles in front of Mum’s Kitchener and, for the first time, I see the blood running fast and dark between them, pooling in the cracks of grout.
The floorboards creak overhead. Danger. Run.
I do. The rest I’ll think about later. Including whether or not running is a mistake. I sprint through the hallway, ignoring the warning rattle of the bird plates. In the entrance hall, I snatch a quick glance back at the staircase. Another flash lights up the empty hallway, the stained-glass window. I run for the front door.
It’s locked.
I waste stupid moments pulling back on the night latch over and over again, but I know it’s useless. I know there’s only one deadlock key.
I run back through the hallway, casting another look up to where the stairwell curves into darkness before I race back into the kitchen, ease shut its door.
Run.
I sprint across the tiles, into the icy scullery. I can’t find the light switch, but another flash of lightning exposes my worst remaining fear. The mortice key is gone. When I turn the handle, the door to the back garden is locked too.
There’s nowhere left to go. I need to calm down. Ross will be back soon. I need to think. And then I need to act.
I go into the kitchen. Right my fallen chair. Take out my phone and return Rafiq’s call.
‘I’m in the house,’ I say, when it goes to voicemail. And I’ve no time to say anything more before thunder breaks over the house in an explosive roar, my signal cuts off, and the garden reappears in a frozen white sheet of light.
The orchard, the ugly plinths and paving, the washhouse and its slate roof, its chained door. And there, on the naked expanse of wall alongside, standing out in stark relief against it, like an overexposed photo flash: high and wide and blood-red. Loud enough to be a shout. A scream.
El did scream as she stared out the window, her finger pointing. I saw her reflection against the dark glass, her mouth a horrified O. The moonlight made silver shadows of the apple trees, the exercise yard, the high prison walls. And the words painted in an ugly red warning.
HE KNOWS
The horror of them froze me still.
Until I heard the deadlock. Turning over with a clunk, heavy and loud. Just like the jail cells in the Shank.
The lights go out in another bellow of thunder, and I scream, drop my phone with a clatter. I’m on my hands and knees on the floor, frantically scrabbling around, when the lights flicker back on with a low humming buzz.
‘Cat?’
I freeze. My phone is under the table. I lunge for it, scramble to my feet.
‘You okay?’
Creak, creak, pause. He’s at the top of the stairs.
‘Yeah.’ My voice cracks on the word.
Another creak, a longer pause. ‘I’ll get the torch just in case we’re in for a power cut, and then I’ll be back down.’ Creak. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ He sounds too cheerful; the smile in his voice has teeth. Especially after our argument. Especially after what I said, and what he didn’t. Especially after my scream.
The bell ring stops me in my panicked tracks. Low and heavy, ponderous. I look up at the bell board, at the violently swinging bell. Thin, tinny, F sharp or G flat. Bathroom is nearly obscured behind the frantic star-shaped pendulum. I look up at the ceiling. Why the fuck would Ross be pulling the bell pull in the bathroom? I look at my reflection in the kitchen window, the dark shadows of my face distorted by the rain. It isn’t him.
This time, when the lights brown out and then flicker before turning the kitchen back into black, I don’t scream. Nor when thunder shakes the house from ceiling to floor and the garden lights up white again. I expect the words to be gone. I want them to be gone, because then I’m just crazy, a person so determined to forever run away that she invents more fantasies than she can ever possibly examine or refute. But there they still are, in the second before the garden turns back to darkness, and the kitchen to light. The words, the facts. The writing on the wall.
HE KNOWS
Mum did scream when she heard the deadlock. Seizing El with her good arm, and me with her bad, she pulled us away from the window, pushed us back into the hallway. We didn’t want to go. Mum shoved us towards the pantry, the Berlin Wall. Get to Mirrorland now. Her lopsided, black-bruised face so determined, her nails scratching, feet kicking – she was never afraid to hurt us. A glance over her shoulder like a bird about to peck, about to fly. I’ll stop him. But you have to be quick. It’s time. It has to be tonight. You have to go NOW. RUN!
There are two bells ringing together now, discordant and frenzied, their stars swinging drunkenly, the bell board shuddering, shedding dust. Bedrooms 4 and 5. The Princess Tower and the Donkshop. Ringing together, because both are opposite each other at the end of the landing. Then Bedroom 3: low and long inside their fading echo. He’s coming back. I stumble out of the kitchen as the lights flicker again,
