His eyes settle on the TV power lead. He steps forward, meaning to grab it.
The younger man steps into the living room and stabs Marcus in the back with a hunting knife.
Mia stands frozen. She can feel the heat of the cooker on the back of her neck.
Because she’s eleven years old, her life so far has been full of horror: the horror of lying in bed at night and worrying about Mum and Dad dying in a plane crash or getting divorced.
The horror of the wardrobe door. And the thing under the bed. And worst of all, the teddy bear Grandma bought her for her fourth birthday. It’s perched on the edge of Mia’s bed and glares at her through glassy, malevolent eyes. When Mum and Dad have gone to bed Mia covers Bad Bear with a fleecy blanket, making him just a vague lumpy shape. It freaks her out to think of his amber eyes blazing in rage. But it’s better than having him glower at you all night. (She’d wet the bed a few times, and made up some stories about drinking too much water before going to sleep. But really, it was Bad Bear.)
One day, Mia told her the au pair (in those days, a Spanish girl called Camilla) that she was too big for bears now. Perhaps it was time for a Poor Child to have him (the world, she knew at five years old, was full of Poor Children).
Camilla was touched by this gesture. And so was Steph. So Steph and Mia sat in Mia’s room, on the edge of the bed, holding hands.
Steph said, ‘Camilla told me you’re too grown up for Cuddle Bear.’ (Cuddle Bear was what Mia’s mum and dad thought Bad Bear was called.)
Mia nodded and bit her lower lip. She could feel her eyes welling, because she was sure Mum was going to say no, that Bad Bear was a gift from Grandma, who had now passed.
Steph misread her daughter’s welling eyes. She stroked her brow and her soft hair with a firm palm. ‘Where would you like Cuddle Bear to go?’
Mia shrugged: I dunno.
‘Well,’ said Steph. ‘I know they always want toys at the children’s hospital.’
Mia endured a little shiver of terror at that thought: at how Bad Bear would delight in all those beds, all those sleeping children! But (and she feels a throb of guilt about this, even six years and half a life later) she nodded and said yes. And that was that. Bad Bear went to hospital.
No fear since has been anywhere near as bad.
Except for now. She stands in the kitchen and terrifying noises come from the hallway. The noise of men shouting and things falling over and what sounds like a horrible laugh, a screeching hysterical laugh. But it’s not a laugh.
Mia pisses herself. The warmth runs down her legs and over her bare feet and pools on the tiles.
Dad calls out for the second time, ‘ Mia, run! ’
Mia remains frozen for a moment. Then something snaps inside her and she runs.
After stabbing Marcus, Patrick hurries to the front garden to drag Daniel inside.
Daniel’s semi-conscious. Patrick dumps him near his mother.
He sees that look, the look that Henry told him about.
Henry was right. It looks like adoration.
Patrick hates Daniel for it. He stamps on Daniel’s shattered knee.
After Patrick has incapacitated the husband, Henry turns to the au pair.
Although under normal circumstances he’d like to fuck her, Henry’s not interested in her tonight. She’s more of a pet than part of the family.
So he drags her by the hair to the middle of the room and cuts her throat in front of Marcus. There’s a satisfying jet of arterial blood.
She twitches comically and Henry laughs. He catches Marcus’s eye, the way two strange men will catch each other’s eye on the seafront when a pretty girl walks past.
Marcus jellyfishes on the floor. He’s muttering something about God.
Henry laughs, enjoying himself. He slips on the old brass knuckles and punches Marcus in the face — woom woom woom.
Marcus’s nose explodes across his face. Henry thinks he’s dead. But he’s not.
‘Pleath,’ Marcus says, through his shattered mouth. ‘Pleath. Pleath. Pleath.’
Henry loves that.
‘Pleath what?’ he says.
But then he remembers why he came here.
He says, ‘Patrick?’
Patrick steps into the room. He’s treading blood everywhere.
He’s hangdog and surly, slope-shouldered.
Henry finds him disgusting, physically repulsive. He’d like to smash his stupid fucking sulky face in with the brass knuckles, woom woom woom, and that would be that. He’d leave him here, face smashed, brains plopping into his lap like Play-Doh.
Henry says, ‘Where’s the little girl?’
‘Who? Mia?’
‘Yes,’ says Henry, with exaggerated patience. ‘Mia.’
‘I thought you had her.’
‘Does it look like I’ve got her?’
Patrick doesn’t answer.
‘So go and get her,’ Henry says.
‘What about the mother and son?’
Henry shrugs off his backpack, unzips it, takes out the new hatchet. ‘I’ll sort them out.’
Patrick sets off to find Mia. He steps over the au pair — her foot is still doing a farcical little twitch, as if she’s pretending to be asleep but unable to resist dancing to a favourite song heard on a distant radio.
For some reason this makes Patrick sad. That twitching foot, a single brown freckle on the sole.
Patrick heads to the kitchen. It’s a big house with a big kitchen, but he knows his way around. He’s been in here before.
Somebody’s been making an omelette; there’s a jug smeared with egg, a fork still sticking out of it. There’s the black pan, a serious cook’s pan, cooling and greasy in the butler sink.
Patrick’s senses are heightened. He can feel heat radiating from the stove.
Nobody’s in here.
He looks down. There’s a puddle of piss on the floor.
The cupboard under the sink is open.
Patrick kneels. He opens the cupboard door. Sees cleaning equipment. Sponges. A roll of bin bags.
No Mia.
He opens the next cupboard. And the next.
He opens the pantry.
No Mia.
He clambers onto the kitchen bench, looks in the high kitchen cupboards. That would be a good place to hide. That’s where Patrick would think about hiding if he were Mia’s age. (Except Patrick hadn’t hidden at all, had he?)
Mia’s not in the kitchen.
He pads down the hallway. He checks the cupboard under the stairs. A Dyson, a cobwebby Swiffer floor mop, a whole bunch of crap. He shines his little torch into the spidery corner.
No Mia.
He stands at the bottom of the stairs and shines his torch up and into the darkness.
If he were Mia, would he hide up there?
In the darkness? With Henry downstairs?
No.
Patrick heads to the garden.
Mia didn’t want to go upstairs. It was dark. She knew she’d be trapped. So she sneaked out, into the garden.
It’s a pretty big garden, high-walled on three sides. The walls are too high for her to climb.
An old potting shed abuts the back of the house. A long time ago, it was an outside lavatory or something. It’s spidery and horrible. The old bricks are crumbly at the corners.
Mia’s barefoot. She straddles the corner of the outhouse, digs her fingertips and toes into the crumbling mortar between the bricks. She tests it for depth, then lifts herself. Her fingers tremble with the strain.
Her feet scrabble. She rips a toenail. But Dad calls her a monkey because she’s good at climbing.
She’s halfway up the wall of the outhouse when a man walks into the kitchen.
Mia freezes on the wall like a gecko.
The only moving thing is her heart. It feels conspicuous, a sick, wet, whim! wham! in her thin chest.
She watches the man, who has a strangely gentle and worried face, like a boy soldier. Then he opens a cupboard and looks inside. He sweeps all the stuff inside across the floor.
Mia knows the man is looking for her. It’s difficult not to watch, the way it’s difficult not to watch scary movies sometimes, because sometimes looking away is worse.