Abruptly, there was a sound from next door – the front door opening and shutting. Veronica sunk further down into the folds of the sofa. She was afraid, she admitted it! She would, if anybody asked her to, say it out loud, scream it even! She was afraid of Terry. She was afraid for Dominic. She was afraid of all the things she had never said. She was afraid she had gone too far with Amelia, and Sarah. She was afraid George didn’t love her like he used to, or her him. She was afraid she would never have a child of her own.

Nobody, however, was there to hear her confession. Screamed or otherwise. Looking at her watch, it would be hours still until George would be home. At least the water was cold, bracing. Sipping it slowly, thoughts trickled.

She wondered what Dominic and Jasmine were doing. She thought of Amelia and the rest of the class she had abandoned in concession to ‘action’. A number of times she pushed away visions of ‘not pregnant’, and ovulation sticks, and George trying to act strong and un-skewered by them. Twice, she calculated the number of days till she would be ovulating again.

It was hot, so hot. Suffocating her like unwelcome hands.

Another sip.

Somebody slipped something through her letterbox and she flinched at the sound of the flapping metal before reasoning that it was probably just a pizza menu. Terry had ordered pizza.

With Terry back in her mind, she wondered again and again about Dominic, Jasmine, Simone.

She waited for George.

She waited for George.

She scratched at Rosie.

She reminded herself to let Rosie out. To take back her power.

And all the while she felt, even through the blind, even through the shutters, a nagging sense of somebody there, somebody nearby, some malign presence hovering.

Sarah

Sarah had not told David about visiting Veronica the day before. Instead, she’d rearranged meetings and turned up at school to collect Amelia that Tuesday not knowing what she intended. She knew only that she intended something. But Veronica wasn’t there.

On the journey home, she found herself consumed by silent thought, and when they arrived, instead of unwinding with David and the children, she rummaged through Amelia’s school bag, unsure what she was searching for but noting the stark absence of a letter requesting the threatened parents’ meeting. A further taunt from Veronica – making them wait. Sarah rummaged on, and that’s when she discovered a string of barbed comments over the past week in Amelia’s reading record book – tiny, barely-there digs, that David had missed because only Sarah would understand. ‘Amelia read fluently, but is too fixated on the rules of grammar, it is holding her back.’ ‘In choosing longer books, Amelia needs to dare a little.’ ‘I did not have time to hear Amelia read today.’ ‘I’m afraid I did not have time for Amelia again today.’ Now, seeing them, Sarah started spiralling. What else had Veronica done? Was she the cause of all the disappointments poor Amelia had faced that term? Was she the cause of everything?