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You need protection from her.

You need protection from yourself.

No, you need protection from her.

No, you need protection from yourself.

Her. Yourself. Her. Yourself.

I scrunched the empty cracker packet into the bin just to put a different noise in my head. The axe leant against the wall, all innocent. Me? I’m just for chopping wood. No idea what you’re thinking of, missus. I bit my lip. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I gathered up my axe and ascended the stairs to the bedroom.

I lay down on the bare mattress fully clothed, needle and thread in my pocket, and the axe laid heavy as a prayer across my chest. The house, 1b, lay still and empty around me in the late afternoon light.

Alright, shadow, I thought to myself, come and get me.

Then I closed my eyes and let myself fall into sleep.

It felt as though it had only been a few minutes, but when I woke the room was dark. Properly dark. The golden sunlight was gone and the windows were black. I’d hoped I’d feel more rested when the moment came, but I just felt… out of it. I had that sick, light-headed feeling that comes when I’ve slept at the wrong time of the day, crossed with the sudden jolt of adrenaline from hearing something in the shadows.

Which I had.

I hugged the axe on my chest and waited. The sound came again, the sound that had woken me.

Knocking from downstairs.

“Tamsin?” A voice muffled by wood and night came from downstairs. “Are you awake?”

It was Rowan.

I sat up on the mattress. What was he doing here? And tonight of all nights?

“Tamsin? Look, I wanted to apologise about yesterday.”

A heaviness shifted in me. Guilt.

Stupid, nice, hard-won softness.

He didn’t need to apologise to me. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not with what I was attempting to do. With her. I didn’t know how I was going to keep myself safe, let alone another person.

I shivered in the lonely night air. It was a relief to hear him though. I rubbed my thumb along the wooden handle of the axe, polished and warm.

I realised now that I wanted help. I wanted Rowan’s help. I didn’t quite know how he would help. How he could help. Maybe him just being here would be enough. To have a friend. And if he was here, even after finding out what happened at the office, then maybe that’s what we were. Maybe we were friends. Just having that as a possibility made the night ahead feel less dangerous.

“Alright,” I said into the dark. “I’m coming!”

I got up and opened the bedroom door.

I stepped out onto the landing, ready to walk down the stairs, to let Rowan in, when I heard a creak next to my ear.

I stopped. I turned.

The bathroom door was open a crack. My eyes adjusted to the dark. Slowly, a face surfaced from the shadows.

Rowan’s face.

He peered through the gap, ashen and terrified. As I stared dumbfounded at his wide, frightened eyes, not understanding, I heard his voice coming again from the front door downstairs.