Iain sighed, and she could tell he’d lost patience. ‘Right. I’m trying to help, Meredith. I thought you’d be interested, hey. It could change your life for the better. But never mind. I’ll text you my number in case you have a change of heart.’

I’ll delete it straight away, she thought. And then change my own number. ‘Swear you won’t tell anyone where I am,’ she begged.

He promised, but she didn’t believe him.

When the call was finally over, Meredith sat down slowly in the big wingback chair overlooking the garden. Two blackbirds pecked at the early blackcurrants beginning to ripen on the bush outside the window. She watched the cat, Gavin, unsuccessfully stalking them, weaving around the budding canes.

She believed she had – eventually – got what she wanted from her life. A home, a job she liked, friends, and over the years a gradual lessening of the excruciating fear and paranoia. But Iain’s call made her realise that in an instant she could be right back to where she’d been, twenty-two years ago, and it was a place she never, ever wanted to revisit.

2

One Year Later
Meredith

The security camera’s lens had been poked out, and it had been twisted off its perch above the till, leaving it hanging limply, a useless appendage. But it was a while before Meredith noticed it, her horrified gaze being first drawn to the shelf of Minstead House-branded pottery, now at a forty-five-degree angle, its contents in a smashed pile on the shop floor. Plates, mugs, tea sets, each with its own delicate line-drawn silhouette of Minstead House, now all in a jumble of shards. Who would do this?

She scanned the rest of the shelves, taking a hasty mental inventory of the shop’s stock, but nothing actually seemed to be missing, not even the more expensive jewellery in the glass display case. No money had been taken. They always cashed up and put it in the safe when they closed the shop at night; the safe, hidden behind a painting, was still locked and untampered-with. So strange that there was no sign of a break-in. Someone must have had access to the keys.

Footsteps coming up the stairs. The door handle slowly turning. A heavy black boot through the locked bedroom door. Warm urine tickling my thigh as the panel splinters and shatters and I wait, paralysed.

Stop. Focus. Call security.

‘George, it’s me, Meredith. The shop’s been broken into, but nothing seems to have been taken, just some stuff smashed and the security camera broken.’

‘Hey, love, don’t sound so upset … I’ll call the police and check the exterior CCTV. Leonard didn’t mention anything, useless old bugger. Get the kettle on and I’ll be over in two minutes.’