1.

Startled awake by a noise in the darkness, she was gripped by a feeling of inquiet. She struggled to prise her eyes open as the digital clock blinked 04:07. A barely audible groan escaped her lips. “Too early!”

Fighting to wake, her brain scrambled to reboot from sleep mode; never having meant to work so late, or should it be so early, she’d fallen asleep working on her laptop again. She was beyond exhausted.

She heard it again. Someone stirring in the blackness. Her mother had trouble sleeping recently, and she’d resorted to taking a couple of sleeping tablets at night. Oblivious to the unfolding drama across the landing, she would have slept through the second coming.

No, it wasn't her mother he was trying not to disturb. She strained to hear more. He was definitely moving around now, trying to be quiet. She dug her finger-nails into her wrist until it hurt and made her gasp. No, it wasn't imagination or a dream this was real, but why was he coming for her so early?

She strained to hear each footstep as he quietly crossed his bedroom. There was a momentary pause as he closed the door, before the creaking floorboard on the landing caught him off guard again. He was coming, he was in the hallway. She sensed him outside her door.

She imagined how it would play out in her mind; He would enter her room, wake her, touch his finger to her lips indicating she remains silent as he leads her downstairs. No, she couldn't let him catch her again. Quick! She shut her laptop and clutched it to herself pulling the quilt against the wall hoping he wouldn't notice what she was hiding. She closed her eyes tight as her body went rigid.

“Please think I'm asleep. Please.” she pleaded silently.

The door handle turned with the faintest of clicks. She held her breath. She could feel the disturbance in the air as he entered the room. Yoda, her cat, poured himself off the foot of the bed and hid under it in one single fluid movement. He was a real pussy, no use in a fight, he would seize the first opportunity to silently slink unseen from the scene of the crime.

He is standing over her now. She could feel his warm breath on her face. He inhaled her sweet perfume, caressed her brow with kisses and stroked her hair. It smelled of fresh coconut oil hair conditioner. He watched her 'sleeping' for a moment before whispering.

“We'll talk when I get back. Love you KT.” he whispered.

She kept her eyes shut pretending she was asleep. She wondered if he knew she was awake. Then he was gone. She never saw him again.

2.

Her eyes were shut tight 'asleep' as she recalled the events tonight in a dream-like state. It could have been a lucid dream except for that faint smell of his after-shave, the one she'd bought him for his birthday. The scent of his aftershave lingered after he was gone was the abiding memory of that night, that and the nagging thought that he knew she was awake.

Her new overnight bag stood packed and waiting, ready. The one she bought especially for the trip - soft, buttery, luxurious to the touch, smelling of polished leather, its smell and feel had seduced her fingers in the shop; she'd had to have it. He bought it for her; She hated shopping. She stroked its buttery leather distractedly now as she tried to recall the events of the previous day.

She'd wanted him to wake her, to embrace her and tell her she could go with him. She'd only need to pull on her jeans, top and jacket so they could go running into the night together, as her mother slept unaware of her dilemma. She pictured them laughing together like conspirators, falling into the car, driving until the darkness engulfed them. She'd wanted him to wake her, to embrace her and tell her she could go with him.

“We need to lay the right foundation first; next time you can come, I promise,” he said. “Anyway it's a school day and you've had more than enough unapproved time off this term already,” he'd insisted firmly. So he didn't wake her. He was stubborn.

“Only one day, the others were when I was off sick,” she'd countered. Didn't he understand that sometimes a girl just didn't feel well?

Why didn't she 'wake' and plead with him again? She was stubborn like her father. She'd pleaded and tried to co-opt her mother to her side. That was when it got nasty, and she'd realised it wasn't about her, it was between her parents. She was fighting about going to Berlin on business with her father, but they were fighting about a letter from some woman he was meeting in Berlin. She didn't pick up on it at the time.

She remembers being so stressed out she'd slipped upstairs into her bedroom, sweeping the similarly traumatised Yoda with her. He mewed, she stroked him, they didn't notice, she'd always fled from conflict. Her parents were so engrossed in their fight that they hadn't even noticed she had gone!

Kellie had laid on her bed with her ears covered so she would hear; it didn't work. She crept to the landing laying on her belly, and peeped between the railings where she could eves-drop better. Her father was against her taking time off during term time but otherwise, he had no objection, but her mum was adamant that there was no way she was going to allow her daughter to go to Berlin with 'some strange German woman'. Apparently, she had a daughter too; She was a few years older than Kellie. Kellie had been the answer to her mother's prayers after six years of trying. Pregnancy has been difficult and birth traumatic. She had been told she wouldn't be able to conceive again. But she'd still tried, in vain.

She was jolted from her reverie as someone scuffed a breakfast-stool back from the kitchen island. Kellie scampered back into her room acting unconcerned. She put her earbuds in pretending she was listening to music on her bed trying to act normally until the danger had passed.

She was still rehashing the conversation as she dozed. It was just a visit to a conference and a meeting with Siemens in Berlin; Wasn't it? Who was 'that woman', and her daughter, and what did she have to do about it? Obviously, she'd missed something. She repeated it over and over in her mind. She didn't understand.

Now she was ignoring them, her parents, and they were ignoring one another. Huffs and sighs punctuated the silence when she went downstairs again. They were both being stubborn. She decided that she wouldn't want to go anyway, not now, not even if they both pleaded on bended knees. She could be stubborn too. She went back to her room. Embroiled in their argument, they didn't appear to have seen her listening halfway down the stairs.

She reviewed her app again for the hundredth time. The demo was ready for Siemens. She'd become lost work in her and now it was after four in the morning as she lay there. She was toying with charging downstairs, asking for his forgiveness and pleading to come with him again. Decision made, she'd pulled on her clothes and quietly opened the bedroom door. The smell of coffee brewing and toast assailed her nose - despite the hour - as her tummy rumbled in response.

She was in mid-step when he cursed, a really bad one. He was mightily peeved. Yoda trilled a demand for food. The traitorous feline was consorting with the enemy and for food. That said it all, a typical male he was always thinking of his belly. The cat had managed to trip him and caused him to spill his coffee. She heard him curse again; he didn't have time for this, he moaned. He mopped the spillage. She stopped stock still hoping momentarily before continuing to tip-toe back into her room, praying that she hadn't been heard. If he'd caught her while he was in such a bad mood she dreaded what he would do.

She was still thinking about it as she heard the front door close followed by the taxi door slamming before it vanished into the blackness. When she finally allowed herself to relax, he'd gone without her. Too late. She told herself it was all for the best. Having had enough excitement for the night, she decided to run the 'backup and shutdown' routine on her laptop and eventually surrendered to sleep.

Of course, half an hour later she was woken by Yoda again demanding to be admitted to her bedroom. She tried ignoring him but he could play the doorstop game forever. For as long as she had remembered there had been one of those spring door stop thingys on her door. She'd played with it with Yoda when he was a kitten, but now he'd re-purposed it to his personal door entry system. He'd reach under the door and twang it relentlessly until he was granted entry. His ability to twang far exceeded her ability to ignore him, so she dragged herself to the door to let him in. To add insult to injury he beat her back to bed commandeering the warm patch on her quilt. She scooped him off the bed as he made his opinion about that clearly heard. At least she had the sense to leave the door ajar for him later when he wanted breakfast.

Her mother finally managed to half-bully, half-bribe her out of bed in the morning ready to drop her at school; late as usual. She combed her fingers through her choppy bob to tease it out of its sleep-flattened mess. 'Practicality before fashion' was her mantra. She purloined a slice of toast from her mother's plate and a couple of swallows of her coffee and practically fell into the car beside her mother groaning at the effort.

She was so weary. She was still working on her laptop when her father got up to catch his flight to Berlin. When she finally slept, the letter and phone calls, along with 'that woman' plagued her dreams. Why hadn't she noticed her earlier, who was she? She must be on his schedule, the schedule she wrote for him so how had she missed it? Maybe he'd added it at the last moment. No time to check and too tired to do anything about it now, it would have to wait until after school.

Innocently she's asked her mum about it but she claimed she knew nothing about it. As if! Het mum had never gotten into a snit with dad like this since, like, well, since never. They rarely uttered an angry word between them, but this had been a real doozy and now she'd unintentionally fanned the embers again. Obviously, something was not right, something that really got her mum angry. Silently they continued the journey to school in an icy truce. Later she wondered why she hadn't seen it earlier; She wished she hadn't seen it at all.

In retrospect, Maddie sensed the moment when Kellie first realised on the school run. It was as they stopped at the traffic lights at the Cams roundabout that her mother saw her put the pieces together. She’d stiffened momentarily and gave an involuntary gasp as she glanced at her. She curled up in her seat staring through the passenger seat window to avoid her mother's eyes. She knew.

Kellie had never been an emotionally demonstrative child, but she'd hugged her mother with a hint of a tear in her eyes and a look of sadness that almost broke her mother’s heart as she exited the car and turned for school. Her daughter's turmoil was obvious to her as she commanded the in-car phone system to call her husband's cell number. She couldn't bear to see Kellie's suffering. She would stop this now. She would text Kellie that everything was OK, and it would be. The system announced that the call couldn't be completed. She cleared it and tried it again. It went to answer-call mode again so she decided to try again when she got home. It was too distracting; she was welling up and her driving was getting ragged. He was probably in a meeting anyway.

It was as Kellie walked from the car to the admin block to sign the 'late register' that she finally contemplated the enormity of her discovery. It all fitted as far as she knew. Although it wouldn't be the first time she'd had that particular piece of math wrong, adding two and two and coming up with three. She knew her first instincts were often suspect when dealing with emotions.

She toyed with skipping her first lessons which had already started or going to the computer lab to research her theory. She went with the safe option and headed to lessons. Not that she had a prayer of concentrating on her work; she was exhausted.

Her dad would be in Berlin by now at the conference, or was he with that woman and her daughter? Was it about the conference and meeting Siemens or was that just a convenient excuse? He'd been determined that she wasn't going with him; Why? Was he visiting an old girlfriend? Had he had an affair in Berlin while mum was at home in England? What about the daughter? Was she his daughter? Did she have a secret half-sister? Her twisted thoughts tortured her. She felt sick.

She barely managed to make it to the final bell, she was tired and emotionally drained as much from her thoughts as her disturbed night. She'd gone home across Bath Lane recreation park. She needed to pick up a couple of cheap notebooks and went through the car park entrance of Wilko's to buy the first ones she'd seen. It was only a few yards across the road for WHSmith, a world of choice, but she was tired and she hated shopping. She exited through the West St entrance next to the betting shop. She was functioning on autopilot; that's probably why she didn't notice the guy following her at first. She couldn't be certain he was following her. It could be paranoia or stress due to her lack of sleep playing tricks on her mind. Whatever it was, it was beginning to get scary.

He'd noticed her immediately as he left the BetFred betting shop. He paused in the doorway and dug a butt of a hand-rolled cigarette out of his baccy tin. He lit up and casually blew a cloud of smoke in her face as she passed. He saw her jaw clench as she fought her instinct to react. It was a deliberate act of provocation and intimation designed to get her attention, and it worked.

At first, she thought it was Solo's dad but he was older. Solo's dad was bigger, gone to seed, always looked like he needed a haircut, a bath and a fresh change of clothes. This guy was young, fit and wiry. His eyes were different, angry, wild. She marched by, eyes straight ahead trying to quell her rising sense of disgust and panic. She felt an involuntary shudder across her shoulders, and a tingle of danger ran down her spine.

She was a cool one pretending she hadn't noticed him. She was playing with him, teasing him. He'd lost track of her after she moved home a few years ago. Life intervened, life and death. The lost years, but he was back now. He didn't know she was still in the area. Now that he'd seen her, he needed to find where she lived. He let her get a few yards behind his eyes, locking laser-like on his prey as he followed.

He looked her up and down; drinking her appreciatively. She'd grown up; Hadn't she just? Her slim frame with long legs that emphasised her short skirt and tights under her school blazer. He watched the sway of her hips and the flipping movement of the back of her short skirt as she walked. It was almost hypnotic. He liked school girls, especially ones like her.

It was at the Kings Road traffic-lights that she really began to panic. It was the smell of his cigarettes that first spooked her. The smell made her feel queasy; she associated it with danger. The lights changed and she had to wait. She was trapped at the edge of the pavement with about ten other people waiting to cross. It was crowded. She was aware of him getting closer. She edged to her right trying to put more distance between him until she was on the corner with nowhere else to go. He was right behind her, almost touching her. He shuffled closer to her left. He could smell her perfume, not a cheap girly scent from the high street, she smelled of expensive custom designer perfume, young, light and intoxicating. She heard him sniffing her hair before blowing another cloud of smoke over her. He was freaking her out. She could feel him breathing on her; a mixture of alcohol and stale ashtray smoke in every breath. Every fibre of her body screamed danger as she felt him press himself against her.

There was a car travelling south straight across the lights. It was moving fast. She was trapped. A car horn blared. A squeal of tyre rubber against the tarmac followed with a couple of screams and cries of, “Oh my god!”

Everyone heard the sickening 'crump' sound of flesh and blood hitting plastic and metal followed by the noise of a bicycle crashing into the road, its rear-wheel spinning freely and clicking to a standstill. Later, the on-looker's accounts of what happened were confused. Someone said 'she jumped in front of the car, the driver didn't stand a chance!'

“She was pushed! It was that man in black!” One said, and yet another said. “I saw him shove the girl in front of the car and then he pushed the cyclist into the car as he ran off.”

The traffic was starting to edge past voyeuristically as though trying to drink-in the scene. A knot of pedestrians bunched up on the pavement spilling onto the road shuffling to get a better view. The cyclist was lying injured on the road and the car diver was pacing up and down as he gesticulated with one arm as talking animatedly on his phone. In the distance, several sirens wailed as emergency teams converged on the scene. The girl was long gone. She was unaware of the shock and confusion she left behind as she ran up West St. She didn't stop running until she reached the War Memorial beside the church.

He was gone too. He'd crossed the road and was legging-it, running parallel to her on the other side trying to follow her. The good thing for him was she wasn't difficult to spot while she was running, the problem was keeping up with her without arousing suspicion. He slowed to a fast walk. It was hot and he soon started sweating. He pulled off his Tee-shirt leaving him wearing a grubby white wife-beater. He guessed she would cross the road to the same side as him.

She was alert now, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds, trying to see if he was still following. She couldn't see him. She hadn't noticed that he'd crossed the road and she was still looking for a man dressed all in black. She slowed down unaware that he was now within striking distance. He was still stalking her on the other side of the road. She glanced around looking for a chance to cross unaware of the danger she would be walking into.

She was literally walking into his arms. He couldn't believe his luck. He checked his progress. Don't get too close. Don't spook her. The lights stopped the traffic and she turned to cross. She was coming to him.

A horn from the car stopped at the bus stop ahead of her. It was her father's blue Mercedes with her mother frantically trying to attract her attention.

“Get in quick! I tried to catch you as you came out of school. I thought we might like to get something special for dinner.” She explained as she rejoined the traffic just before the bus arrived.

“I'll skip dinner. I just want to go home and go to sleep for a week.”

----- o O o -----

He cursed out loud as he tried to work out where they had gone. He craned to see where they had gone but at the vital moment, a bus and a truck had blocked his view. He cursed again as they vanished. He guessed that they had turned up Grove Rd, and they could have gone almost anywhere from there. He walked along West St. turned up Grove Rd without any realistic chance of finding them. He decided to circle the block.

He couldn't believe his luck. There it was, a blue Mercedes parked on the hard standing of one of the houses. It was a wagon version exactly like the one she'd been rescued by earlier. What were the chances that there could be two identical blue Mercs within the same block? Now he knew where she lived. He slowed down as he approached the house on the other side of the street. He opened his baccy tin and lit a smoke as he passed the house, hoping to get a glimpse of her through the window. At the corner he stood loitering, appearing to memorise the scene and then he slunk away. He needed to think.

----- o O o -----

Inside the safety of the family home, Kellie decided it would be better not to tell her mother about the events of the afternoon. It would only be a couple of days before her father came home; he'd sort it out then. Her mother would make a fuss insisting the authorities should get involved; her father would sort it out without any drama for the women. Anyway, she was starting to convince herself the incident wasn't real, but rather was a figment of her overactive imagination coupled with a lack of sleep. She confirmed that she was too tired to eat before vanishing up to her room. She fired up her laptop and laid back on her pillow but was asleep before the boot sequence finished.

She was still in her school uniform and her mother was shaking her awake as she finally woke; She'd had over twelve hours of dreamless sleep. She needed a shower and a fresh uniform. Another late school day, another 'late mark', another detention loomed. As it happened the traffic co-operated and she slipped unobtrusively into the back of the assembly hall as the bell rang.

----- o O o -----

In contrast, he'd had a deeply disturbed night. He'd been thinking about her. He'd dreamed about her. She was different from the silly little school girls he saw around town. He'd only ever seen her with that loser Frank Jnr. She didn't hang with a bunch of girls endlessly gossiping about Harry, Louie, Zane or whoever the preening poser who was the flavour of the month was. Boy crazy, that's what they were. They didn't know what a real man was.

He'd graduated from the University of Life, school of hard knocks, with a Masters in tough love, as he liked to say. He lived in the real world, a man's world where a teenage boy would learn a trade, do manual labour, or join the army, not be a sallow, long-haired, whiny snowflake of a mummy boy. He loathed them, walking past braying into their phones trying to sound like a 'cool bro', like a gangsta-rapper 'man', constantly boasting and bragging and bigging themselves up. Yeah! Six feet of 'cool' carrying a kiddies skate-board or scooter! Huh! Punks!