She drops her bag on the floor and slips her phone out of her pocket, checking to see if she has any messages. Jake has texted saying he misses her and he’ll be back by half seven. She feels a small, familiar thrill seeing his name there. She unlocks the home screen and starts typing back a response.
‘No problem.’ She uses thumbs to text, her shoulders hunched over the phone. She sends the text, slides the phone back into her trouser pocket, and then she turns and feels along the wall for the light switch.
Her eyes, confused by the bright light of the phone, struggle to adjust to the darkness and the switch isn’t where she thought it would be. She gropes along the plaster, stumbling slightly.
The phone vibrates against her thigh. She reaches into her pocket, and as she turns back, she sees it: a ball of shadow, tumbling towards her, expanding like an ink blot. She has no time to raise her arms to defend herself. She understands, too late, that the scuffling noise she heard was not just the creak of ancient pipes or the residue of half-formed ghosts, but a thing that wishes her harm.
Before Kate has a chance to react, a heavy and formless weight is thudding against her skull with such force that her neck cracks and slackens and her head drops forward. Her thoughts atomise then coalesce into a bright, dazzling white. She crumples to the floor. She’s always thought she would scream if she were attacked. But in terror, it turns out Kate is silent. As she passes out, she thinks of brown, gloopy water, rising up over her face. She imagines the dim light of aslow-moving boat receding into the silty darkness and she tries, in vain, to reach for it as the current sucks her to the bottom of the riverbed.
When she comes round, her right leg is numb and pressed against a hard, cold surface. Her eyelids are sticky and opening them requires effort. Her vision is blurry, and she realises one of her contact lenses has slid around her eye, the edges of it scratchy and dry. She blinks – once, twice, three times – and it slips back into place. A kaleidoscopic pattern comes into focus, brown and white mosaic pieces which jiggle and then solidify into a tiled floor. Her cheek is raw and cold. She is lying on her side, her face against the tiles, her right shoulder twisted uncomfortably underneath her chest. Her left ankle is splayed back at an awkward angle. Her head is throbbing. She has the unpleasant sensation of liquid coagulating at the nape of her neck. The thought of blood makes her feel faint and she blinks her eyes shut for a minute, to rid herself of the image.
‘Kate.’
Her name.
‘Kate.’
There it is again. Her name spoken in a recognisable voice that she can’t yet place.
‘Open your eyes, Kate.’
Her head is still fuzzy. Someone has upended a snow globe and scattered her thoughts like glitter.
‘Kate.’
It is a female voice. It is one she knows, but not intimately. It is someone she has been worried about. And then, suddenly, it comes to her. Marisa. Thank God. Marisa is here. She must have come in after her and disturbed the intruder and found Kate lying here.
‘Mrsssa,’ Kate slurs. A tooth has loosened in her mouth. Her tongue is swollen. She tries to say she’s glad Marisa is here but it comes out as ‘Sgld sshhear.’
‘Don’t speak,’ Marisa says.
Kate opens her eyes fully. She sees the edges of Marisa’s slippers: fluffy beige booties Kate has always hated. They look so matronly, andMarisa is so young. She doesn’t make the best of herself. But why is she thinking this now? She needs to concentrate. She needs to get up off the floor and get some medical attention. Marisa will have called an ambulance, she is sure. But why is Marisa wearing slippers if she’s just come in from outside?
Kate tries to untwist her shoulder and to press her hand against the floor so that she can lever herself into a sitting position against the skirting board. Even this sends an electric eel of pain slamming into her ribs and swimming down her spine.
‘Arrrghh!’ she cries out. The loose tooth comes away entirely. It floats in her mouth, lodging underneath her tongue. Kate gags. She thinks she’s about to throw up. She spits out the tooth. It lands on a white tile, amid a spatter of blood.
She rests her cheek back on the coolness of the floor, allowing the nausea to pass. Why is Marisa just sitting there? Why isn’t she trying to help her?
‘Sit up, Kate.’
Marisa’s voice is monotone, almost robotic. Perhaps it’s tough love, Kate thinks. Perhaps she thinks this is the best way to snap her out of her shock.
‘Ambulance,’ Kate says. Without the tooth, it is easier to make herself understood.
‘You don’t need an ambulance, Kate. You’re perfectly fine. I just want to talk.’
That is the first odd signal that reaches Kate’s jagged synapses. Oh, she thinks, Marisa is not going to help after all. Marisa is not acting as she thought she would. Oh, she thinks. Oh.
Then Kate notices that she can’t move her legs. They seem to be fused together, impossibly heavy to lift. She lowers her head. Looking down along the hallway floor, she sees there are coils of rope wound tightly around her thighs. She recognises the rope as one of Jake’s at-home fitness purchases. At weekends, he loops it behind the back-garden gatepost and slams the rope up and down from a squatting position to burn belly fat. Now, the rope is still, the woven weight of it heavy against her legs. Kate follows the rope with her gaze acrossthe hallway floor. In the split-second before she sees, she understands that it will be Marisa holding the end.
‘Hello there.’
Marisa is sitting on a kitchen chair, erect and poised in the half-gloom, the rope twisted several times around her hand and wrist. Her blonde hair is loose around her shoulders. She is wearing a grey cardigan and a grubby T-shirt and no bra. Her pregnant belly sticks out. Her legs are spread apart. There is a strange nonchalance to her stance. It reminds Kate of a portrait of the Virgin and Child she has seen on Jake’s laptop: a late medieval altarpiece fragment, with the mother looking monumental and stolid against a gold-leaf background. The only sign of her relation to the adult-seeming baby standing on her lap is the slightest inclination of her head, swathed in blue-gold cloth. Even her hands, elegantly placed around the child, seem not actually to touch his flesh.
‘How long have you and Jake been sleeping together?’
Marisa asks the question calmly but there is a flush on her cheeks, a dot of red at the centre of each one that suggests a flaming core of anger. Kate is so surprised by the question, so utterly taken aback by the surreal weirdness of the situation that it takes a moment to register what is being asked. For a second, she forgets about being scared.
