She glanced at the cats gathering around her bed and the trinkets crowding each dusty shelf. At the dog-eared books featuring muscle-bound heroes and the litter trays which carried an odour she had grown accustomed to. At the sweet wrappers, the crisp packets and litres of chocolate milk. This was her life. She was only as happy as she had a right to be.

Silence, close your eyes, kneel.

The bones of a memory returned as the words echoed from the corridors of her mind: the red velvet cushion introduced to their weekly sessions after her teacher noticed her knees were grazed. Then afterwards, her mother entering the room and tidying the cushion away. Out of sight, out of mind – at least, for another week. The most hurtful betrayal was her mother’s blind eye to her father’s weekly ‘blessings’ which carried on long after Elsie was old enough to understand they were wrong. There was no peace when Elsie closed her eyes. In her darkest hours she could still hear the rasping sound of her father’s zip being undone. His heavy breath as his hand guided hers, shouting both prayers and obscenities as he demanded she follow his instruction to ‘cleanse her soul by releasing the power of his righteous seed’.

With a creeping sense of horror she wondered about her son. What if he remembered what he saw? The question made her grip her blankets and draw them up to her chest. Her bed was her safe place. Nobody could see her here. She was invisible to the world. But what if Christian had remembered? He was just four years old the night he hid in her room, a silent witness to her father’s evil. Nobody knew he was there until it was too late. It was over twenty years ago. What if the sight had planted a compulsion which grew into something black and evil – a sickness he could not control? Was that the real reason why the police were snooping around? Did they think Christian was involved in that awful Midnight Game the poor girls had played? The question was insistent, tugging on the skirts of her consciousness for an answer. She had bigged up her son, gushing about how heroic he’d been. But who was she trying to convince? What if Christian wasn’t Libby’s saviour after all?

She thought back to Halloween night, to when he’d changed the batteries in her novelty clock. She had given her son an alibi, saying he’d been home at midnight. But was it midnight when Christian noticed their damaged garden gate? And why had he encouraged her to report such a minor thing to the police? She hadn’t heard any kids messing about, much less seen them take her gate off its hinges. Christian had been awfully quiet in his room that night. It was almost as if he wasn’t there.