Well, now, it was no longer a problem.
There was a pile of her books balanced on the end of the bed, placed exactly at the corner, leaning slightly to one side. Ten books, a dozen? They were paperbacks. She recognized them all, but they belonged in her study or reading room. She could not remember bringing them up here. On the top was another by Douglas Dunn: Europa’s Lover. Then Nell Dunn’s Poor Cow, J. W. Dunne’s An Experiment with Time, Dorothy Dunnet’s The Unicorn Hunt, Gerald du Maurier’s The Martian.
She never alphabetized her books by author. She either stacked her books by type, or more commonly left them in unsorted heaps that she would get around to tidying up one day. She always knew where her books were, or could find them quickly using the habitual reader’s radar. The poetry came from her study, the other books from her reading room. She felt her fingernails biting into the palms of her hands, the cold press of her perspiration-soaked blouse against her back.
Trying to stay calm she went to the books but the slight pressure and vibration of her feet on the floorboards was enough to cause the pile to topple. She lunged forward to catch them but they thudded down on the floor, some of them landing with pages open and the spines bent. She knelt to pick them up.
On that level, face close to the floor, she paused. She was next to the bed, close beside the dark area beneath the bed.
Melvina bit her lip, leaned forward and down, so that she could look under it.
No one there. As she straightened with some of the paperbacks in her hand she felt exposed and vulnerable, moving backwards and getting to her feet without looking, not being able to see behind her, or to turn quickly enough.
But she stood up, looked around the room, then placed the books on the floor so that they would not fall again. She headed for the stairs.
Still feeling her knees quivering as she walked, Melvina went through every room in the house one more time, feeling that perhaps the worst was over. Both doors to the outside were secure, and everything was as she expected it to be.
Just the books. Why had the intruder moved her books around?
She went to the kitchen, closed the Venetian blinds and made herself a cup of hot chocolate. It was already long past midnight, but she was wide awake and still jittery.
She returned to her study and switched on her computer. Her mailbox would be full of Hike but tonight she would just delete everything from him without reading. She stared at the monitor, sipping her chocolate drink, while the computer booted.
She browsed through her emails, skipping over Hike’s or simply deleting them unread. For a while he had been sending his messages from an email address that did not contain his name, apparently trying to get under her guard, but he had quit doing that last week. She stared at the screen, only half-seeing, half-reading the other notes from her friends. None of them ever mentioned Hike; to all her friends, he was a figure of the past.
She knew Hike was stalking her, and that one of a stalker’s intentions was to make the victim think constantly about him. She also knew Hike was succeeding. It must have been him who came to the house. Who else would it have been? But then why had he taken back none of his property, which he knew she repeatedly asked him to have moved, but which he constantly used as one of his excuses for keeping in close contact with her? Perhaps he had said something about coming to the house in one of the emails she had already deleted?
Changing her mind, she found the trash folder of previously deleted emails and opened every one of his messages from the last three days. She skimmed through them, deliberately not reacting to his familiar entreaties, threats, reminders of promises imaginary and real, his endless emotional blackmail about loneliness and abandonment, his pleas for forgiveness, etc. Nothing new, nothing that explained what had happened today.
All she had to do was wait him out. Give it time.
She clicked away the trash folder, but a new message had arrived in her in-box, from Hike. The date stamp showed it had been sent a few seconds before.
Melvina closed her eyes, wondering how much time it would really need. When would he leave her alone?
Behind her there was a sound, heavy fabric moving.
Immediately she stiffened, was braced against fear. She strained to hear. There was a slight sense of movement, then a quiet noise that sounded like a breath.
In the room with her. Someone was behind her, while she sat at her desk.
She froze, one hand still resting on the computer mouse, the other with her fingers beside the keyboard. The computer’s cooling fan was making a noise that masked most of the quiet noises around her. Noises like the sound of someone breathing.
She waited, her own breath caught somewhere between her chest and her throat. She hardly dared move.
Her desk was about a metre away from the bay window, so there was space for someone to stand behind her. She turned in a hurry, accidentally knocking some pencils from her desk with her hand. As they clattered to the floor she looked behind her.
She stood.
Every light in the room was on. She could see plainly. There was a figure standing by the window, concealed by one of the full-length curtains.
She could make out the bulge, the approximate shape of the body hidden behind. She stepped back in alarm but her chair was there and she knocked against it. She stared in horror at the figure. The bulge in the curtains, the sound of breathing, the source of every dread.
Whoever was there had taken hold of another of her books, because she could see it, a black hardcover without a paper jacket, held at waist height in front of the curtain. It was the only clue to the actual presence of the person hidden there. She was so close she could reach out and touch the book. It was being held somehow at an angle, an irregular diamond halfway up the curtain, in front of the bulge, supported from behind... by someone breathing as they stood behind the curtain.
The curtain moved slightly, as if lifted by a breeze. A breath.
Another involuntary sound broke fearfully from her. She pushed back, shoving her chair to one side until she was pressing hard against the edge of her desk. She groped behind and her hand touched some pens, her notepad, the mouse, her mobile phone... and a ruler. A wooden ruler, a solid stick, the sort that could be rolled.
She grabbed it and without a thought of what she was doing she struck with revulsion at the book, like someone trying to kill a snake or a rat. The wooden ruler thumped hard against the book, dashing it to the ground. It fell in a violent flurry of pages, spine upwards, pages curled beneath it.