Still, getting better had to take priority now, and that meant taking it easy, letting her body, and her mind, recover for a while, so she could bounce back and have all of those things again. Time, that was all she needed. And they did say a change was as good as a rest, didn’t they? She pulled off her wig, closed her eyes and tried to decide what to do with herself for the next month.

Chapter 3

I hadn’t expected her to be there.

I was sure I’d heard the door slam earlier, her feet on the stairs, the bumping of bags, her car driving away. Usually that meant a few days, a few nights, at least, when the place would be empty. She’s a creature of habit. And tidy. I’ll give her that. No dirty mugs left in the sink, no stuff scattered around the floor. Just the lingering smells of furniture polish, good coffee and posh perfume.

I suppose I’m a creature of habit too, in my way. I never go in during the day. I prefer the evenings, or the dead of night. Never when I might be seen. Or heard. No noisy shoes on the creaky stairs. No dirty marks left behind on her immaculate carpets. And I never put the light on. No need to. I can feel my way around that flat as if it’s my own.

It’s been different lately though. There had been talk of her not being well, a hospital stay, an operation, but she keeps herself to herself, that one, so nobody really seemed to know for sure. I had wondered if it might be serious, if she was going to die like he did, at the back of some stage somewhere, and how I might feel if she did.

But she survived it, whatever it was. Came back, holed up, stayed at home a lot more. Which curtailed things for me, for a while, until she started venturing out again. No visitors though. Or none that I’d noticed. No flowers either, which you’d expect, wouldn’t you? If someone’s sick? Except the tulips. I found them this morning, in the dark, touched the petals, felt a couple of them fall.

But then I heard her, shuffling about in the bed. The rustle of the pillows. I had no idea she was there until then, and it unnerved me a bit, I can tell you. I was sure the place was empty.

There was a raincoat on the back of a chair. Damp, its belt trailing on the carpet. I brushed against it on my way out. Could have tripped over it. Not like her, that. She’s usually so tidy. So I hung it up for her, on a hook. I like to do little things like that when I’m here. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to help her out or anything like that. I just like to make her wonder. How this has happened, or that. It makes me smile, to think of her wondering. Just a little game I play. Seeing how far I can go, to worry her, maybe even scare her a bit. Like that time I put the plug in and left the tap on, just dripping, that was all, but what fun if it had flooded the place, knowing she would rack her brains, struggle to remember how it could have happened. How she had made that sort of stupid mistake. Well, who else could it possibly have been? She lives alone, and she knows, just as I do, that there’s nobody to blame but herself.