In the scrap of woodland opposite the house, more like a clump of bushes really, four or five trees fringed by globes of stingers, a dark figure. It was her. Dog’s tails for hair, on either side of her face. Eyes shadowed beneath the forehead, glimpsed in this moment but inserted, full-colour, by the power of their living image in Lauren’s memory. Icy fingers of fear pressed their way up Lauren’s spine as she tried to look away, couldn’t, found herself staring at the woman’s mouth as it curled into a cracked smile. Lauren clapped a hand over her own to stifle the scream.

She turned back to Patrick, her face changed so totally but he didn’t understand. He hadn’t seen …

“It’s that woman,” she breathed, “from the hospital,” and she pushed him, two-handed in the chest, toppling him into the door, which banged and crunched against the wall, in her rush to get back into the house.

Patrick said, “What?” and leaned outside, searching up and down the street.

“There,” she said, pointing, but he didn’t see. There in the bushes, not on the pavement, not in the street, right there across the road, in the bushes in front of the house. The woman had ducked down, but Lauren could still see the dark dome of the top of her ratty head. Crouching there, ready to pounce.

“Where?” he said. “What woman?” but he was facing the wrong way.

“Shut the fucking door, Patrick. Quickly.”

She got hold of one of his arms, pulling him off balance so that he lurched backwards into the room and she slammed the door, leaned against it, breathing hard.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He rubbed an elbow where he’d banged it on the doorframe.

She went to the window. The dark shape stood, looking right at her. Holding the basket, that basket of rags and horrors, the handle hooked over one arm.

“Look,” Lauren’s voice a harsh whisper, “come here and look.” The woman was so close, perhaps she could even hear them through the glass. Lauren took her eyes off the woman and reached out desperately for Patrick. “She’s after me. She’s after the boys.”

No sound in the room but the pounding of her heart. Riley had stopped crying. Through the monitor he gave a series of staccato sighs, asleep but still upset. Lauren retreated to the wall and pressed her back against it, behind the door, where the woman couldn’t see her.

Patrick went to the window and stared outside. “I don’t see her,” he said. “Show me where.”

“Look in the bushes. See? She might be crouching down.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

He rushed to the door, threw it open, and was gone.

Lauren hoped he wouldn’t catch the woman. She hoped he would scare her away, so that she would leave them alone, but Lauren didn’t want to see her, to face her, to be forced to look at her up close again. She slipped to the carpet and hugged her knees, feeling blood pulse in the place the woman’s nails had torn her skin, listening to the babies breathing through the monitor.