“Take care of yourself.” The line goes dead.

Dee shivers and curses her luck. Could Karen trace her cellphone? Maybe, but why would she? Dee has done nothing wrong.

She’s got to be more careful. It would mess everything up if Karen knew she was here. No more going out in the day. She’ll take the bus into the city to do her groceries. She swears to herself in a hiss. When Dee looks out of the window again, Ted is gone.

TED

Is the intruder the Murderer? I think and think but I can’t work it out.

I haven’t been so scared since that time at the mall. That was the last time I came this close to being found out—to being seen for what I am.

Lauren cried and showed me the holes in her socks. She had outgrown all her clothes and she hated the stuff I chose for her. What dad can refuse his daughter clothes? So even though I knew it was a mistake, I said yes.

I picked an older mall, one slightly further out of town, and we went on a Monday afternoon, in the hope that it wouldn’t be too crowded. Lauren was so excited before we left that I thought she would pee herself. She wanted to wear all kinds of crazy pink things in her hair, but I thought there should be limits.

“I simply couldn’t be seen with you,” I said to her in a fancy lady’s voice, and she giggled, which showed what a good mood she was in, because she never laughs at my jokes. I wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and regular clothes in neutral colors. I knew that this shopping trip was a risk, and I was anxious that we should attract as little attention as possible.

Lauren was good on the drive there, looking out of the window and singing to herself, the song about woodlice. There was none of the nonsense that she had tried in the past, trying to grab the wheel and steer us into a ditch or a wall. I allowed myself to hope that this would go well.

When we got to the mall we couldn’t even see it at first, the parking lot was so huge, and we had picked a spot right at the far end. Lauren was impatient and didn’t want to get back in the car, so we walked. It must have been a quarter of a mile, and the morning was close. The big square box of the building got bigger and bigger as we approached. It had fancy writing across it, huge like a giant’s signature. Lauren pulled me on.

“Faster,” she said. “Come on, Dad.”