Still, this morning, I should have just left. Stopping to move the coat was a stupid idea, when she was showing signs of waking up, nearly catching me. It was bad enough the door clicking the way it always does, no matter how gently I pull it closed behind me, but there’s not much I can do about that. But I know I’ll have to be more careful. The coat could have stayed where it was. There will be other occasions. Other chances. It’s not worth taking risks.

She has no idea about me. Utterly oblivious. And I’d like to keep it that way.

Chapter 4

PRUE

Monday mornings in London were nothing like those at home. A strange clicking sound had woken Prue while it was still dark, her eyes flying open in semi-panic. She had half expected to see someone leaning over the bed, it had been so real. She lay still and listened, hardly daring to move, waiting for her heart rate to slow back down, but there was nobody there. Of course not. Just the creaks and clatters of the walls and floors and plumbing system of what was still an unfamiliar building talking to her in its own peculiar way, no doubt. Coming from an old cottage like hers, she was only too aware of any number of those, although they had all faded into their own kind of regular routine in time, so she no longer heard them.

Once she was awake though, she couldn’t get back to sleep. The growing rumble of passing traffic throbbed through her head, even though she was sleeping at the back of the building and had pulled her pillow over her ears. And then various clunks and slams as the other residents got up, ran showers, turned on radios and TVs, banged doors and clomped noisily down the stairs on their way to work. Prue was more used to the chug-chug sound of occasional tractors trundling by, the chink of milk bottles being left on the step, and the old cockerel’s crowing call from a nearby farmyard so much a part of her life that she hardly noticed it any more, all in all a much quieter, more solitary start to her day.

But then, since losing her beloved gran, that’s how her life had seemed lately – more and more solitary. If it wasn’t for work, having to drive to the local newspaper office every day and then head out to see the people making the news, even if only briefly, and mostly through a lens, she knew she could quite easily hide away indoors and not speak to another living soul for days. As long as she had one of her cameras for company, and a book to read, and her cat, she didn’t really need anyone else. Oh, she had thought she did, had started to imagine how her future might be as half of a proper couple … but that was not an option any more. If it ever had been, of course, apart from in her own head.