For a frozen moment, they stand there, staring at each other. Motionless, waiting. Two predators gauging the other’s strength, weighing their options. But the moment he begins to move forward, the moment he places a foot on the bottom step, she turns into prey.

*

Just a few seconds from now, Karen Eiken Hornby will realise she should have attacked immediately, should have hurled herself at him, used all the things they taught her at the academy to overwhelm him. That’s what she should have done.

Instead, she does the opposite.

And before she has fully turned around, she realises she won’t make it, even before she treads on the long robe and her foot slips out from under her. Even before she feels his hand around her ankle, she knows this is going to change everything.

*

He doesn’t speak. Just pulls, hard and fast. She ends up on her stomach. Her chin hits the top step as all air is pushed out of her lungs. Only now does she become aware of that other thing. The muffled sound of her mobile phone at the bottom of her handbag, which is sitting on the kitchen table. The beep a few seconds after it stops ringing.

Something in her is still trying, fingers are fumbling around for something to hold onto, legs are trying to kick off the heavy body, lungs are trying to suck in enough air to scream. He crawls on top of her, drags himself up along her body and she feels his breath against her neck. Feels the robe ride up to her waist, a knee forcing her closed legs apart. A hand over her mouth. Effectively stopping the scream that might have come.

Her phone rings again.

The sound makes him stiffen. Gives her an opportunity to twist sideways while he tries to prise her legs apart again, and he lets out a curse mid-movement. The sharp edges of the bottle miss their intended target and cut the inside of her thigh instead. It doesn’t hurt, just feels strange and warm, she reflects in a daze and registers that he’s adjusting his grip. He slashes again and this time she doesn’t know where the bottle makes contact, just knows he’s going to kill them. Two lives are about to end. And then the realisation that he doesn’t know that.

She clings to that thought, as though it’s the only protection she can give; he’s never going to know you’re in there.

And just as that realisation takes root, she hears the car.

Maybe he hears it, too. Maybe that’s why, in a last desperate attempt, summoning strength she no longer has, she manages to twist again, to turn her hip in the small space where his hand is holding the bottle.