Silence. Darkness. The smell of gun smoke.

She knew he was wondering if he’d hit either of them and what he should do next. She could see him now, through the bullet holes, peering in. But with the light off, he couldn’t see if she was alive or not. He couldn’t see her standing on the bath.

She counted the bullets again in her head. She calculated that he was down to two bullets now, if that. He had no choice but to come into the bathroom in order to make sure they were dead and finish them both off if they weren’t. He’d want to save those last two bullets for that.

But in order to enter the bathroom he would have to touch the door handle because the door opened outwards and there was no other way to pull it open. He would have to get a good grip on it and wrench it as hard as possible in order to bust the lock.

The big question was whether his thin rubber gloves would protect him from the 240-volt charge that was being conducted from the light socket to the metal door handle.

She was gambling that they wouldn’t. She’d seen the special electrician’s gloves her father had owned – they were huge, thick, heavy items, nothing like the flimsy little things that Dale was wearing.

She waited. She glanced down at Isabel. The little girl’s small round eyes stared up at Bailey, glistening in the dark like those of a diminutive woodland animal.

Bailey tried to smile at her but found that she couldn’t.

‘I’m going to get you, Bailey,’ said Dale in a singsong voice. He sounded like he was very close to the door now.

The door handle suddenly jerked down sharply. Then the door wrenched open with a wooden splintering noise, the lock popping off the door frame, the electrified hairdryer lead jerking away from the door handle and whipping back dangerously inside the room.

Shit. It hadn’t worked.

Dale rushed into the bathroom, levelling the gun in front of him. She saw him squinting and realised that his vision hadn’t fully adjusted to the darkness.

Taking advantage of his fractional disorientation, Bailey leapt from the bath onto the sink just as he pulled the trigger.

WHUMPF. She felt the bullet nick her left ear.

Without breaking her motion, she catapulted herself off the sink to land on top of him, sending them both crashing sideways onto the floor.

He fell on top of her, writhing to try and turn and face her, pulling the gun around to put that final bullet inside her.

Up close, she could smell him. No longer that pleasant fragrance of cologne and musk, but now the sharp acrid tang of fear.

She realised that she was still clutching the hairdryer lead in her right hand, now no longer attached to either the door handle or the light socket. Grasping the other end of the lead with her left hand, she looped it around his neck and yanked it tight.