We need to talk, Ruth.

I have to keep moving, or I’ll imagine all the worst things Aidan might say to me. I’ll panic.

I’m about to pick up the remote control and put it on the shelf next to the monitor when I hear a noise outside, a movement in the trees close to my lounge windows. I stop, listen. Almost a minute later, I hear another sound, louder than the first: branches moving. Someone is standing next to my house. Not Aidan; he’d come straight to the door. I sink to my knees in the hall, slide across into the lounge and position myself behind an armchair.

Charlie Zailer. I left my coat at the police station. She might have brought it back. I pray it’s her—someone who won’t hurt me—even though on Friday I couldn’t wait to get away from her.

Then I hear laughing, two voices I don’t recognise. I edge out from behind the chair and see a teenage boy framed in my lounge window. He is undoing his flies, turning back towards the path to shout at his friend to wait for him while he has a slash. A shaving rash covers his neck and chin, and he’s wearing jeans that reveal a good three inches of the boxer shorts beneath. I close my eyes, steady myself on the arm of the chair. It’s nobody, no one who knows about or is interested in me. I hear the more distant voice, the friend, calling him an animal.

As he walks away, I watch to check he doesn’t look back. He adjusts his jeans and scratches the back of his neck, unaware of my eyes on him. If he turned round now, he would see me clearly.

It was one of the things I liked most about this little house, the way the lounge stuck out like a sort of display box at the front of the park, with large stained-glass-topped windows on three sides. Malcolm told me he’d had trouble finding a tenant after the last one left. ‘No privacy, you see.’ He pointed as we approached the park gates, keen to list Blantyre Lodge’s flaws before I crossed the threshold: there were bollards I’d have to lower and raise every time I drove my car into or out of the park. The lounge and bedroom weren’t perfect squares—each had a corner missing, as if a triangle had been cut out of the space. ‘I might as well be honest,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s not as if you wouldn’t notice.’

‘Privacy’s the opposite of what I want,’ I told him. ‘If people can see me and I can see people, that suits me fine.’ I was surprised by my own words, unsure if this was the truth or the exact reverse of how I felt. I remember thinking, if I’m invisible, nobody will be able to help me if I need help.

‘Get yourself some good net curtains,’ Malcolm said, and I flinched, imagining faces obscured by densely-patterned white material: His face and Hers.