Paul Braddon: The Actuality

We can’t stay here , Simon says.

She swings her legs over the side of the mattress onto the floor and pads to the door.

We must hide , Simon says.

She huffs. Hiding is what she indeed feels like doing but she is surprising herself by unearthing more courage than that. ‘I need to tell Matthew,’ she murmurs, ‘he’ll know what to do.’

Her husband’s curtains are open. The light outside reveals a swirl of snow blurring the distant outline of the high-rise buildings. The river is obscured by a greenish fog.

She leans over his bed and speaks softly, touching his arm with her fingertips. She gently rocks his shoulder.

There’s no time for niceties , Simon says, just get him up.

‘Matthew,’ she says, more loudly.

His eyes open slowly and he twists his head on the pillow to look up at her. ‘Evie,’ he murmurs, ‘it’s you.’ He lifts a corner of the blankets. ‘Get in, out of the cold.’ Then, seeing her expression, ‘Darling what is it?’

‘There’s someone in the apartment, they’ve broken in.’ She tries to keep her voice steady, hold the fear at bay.

‘Are you sure about this? Where are they?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘How on earth… why did the alarm not trigger? Where’s Daniels?’

‘He went out hours ago.’

‘He went out? Why would he do that?’

They hear the kitchen door open and footsteps at the far end of the hall, then the squeak of the dining room door being pushed back. After that the door of the laundry cupboard.

They’re searching the rooms in turn , Simon says, but she’s already figured that out.

Her husband pushes off the covers and stiffly crossing the floor lifts his dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door. He takes what looks like a last-century army rifle from behind the ledge at the top of the wardrobe and slams into it a metal cylinder. ‘Evie, remain here.’

She nods, quite terrified. Glad as a child to be relieved of further responsibility.

He conceals the gun with his right arm against his side and slowly turns the door handle. He then opens the door carefully to avoid it squeaking and steps into the hall.

Coming to a stop immediately. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demands. ‘Stay right where you are… the police are on their way… Heh, I said stay where you are.’

Apart from the belted back of his dressing gown, her husband is concealed from her by the door but she sees a green beam flicker over the grey varnished waves of the seascape on the wall behind him.

‘Stand aside old man, you don’t need to get hurt.’ The voice is gruff, alien, and out of place in their elevated world.

Matthew is breathing loudly, the mucus in his lungs from his recent illness rattling in his throat.

‘Last chance old fella. You know what I’m here for. Just hand it over and I’ll be gone. Heh what you got there? Put the peashooter on the ground. I said put the pop gun down… oh what the fuck!’

The green laser surges, garishly illuminating the hall. Her husband grunts and staggers back through the doorway, dropping the rifle and knocking her over as he falls to the floor.

The intruder’s boots bang down the corridor towards them.

Blood oozes from under Matthew’s gown. He holds his stomach with both hands, staring down at himself, pressing her to the floor. She feels the wet flow onto her skin, smells his scorched flesh.

While desperately struggling to wriggle out from underneath him.

The shooter reaches the door and peers down at her husband. ‘Sorry old man, I did warn yer. It didn’t have to be this way.’

Then he glances in Evie’s direction as she scrambles to her feet and draws herself upright in the shadow cast by the chest of drawers. ‘Oh, do we have here what I think we have?’

He reaches for her but Evie is too quick, already elbowing past and through the door before he can grab her. She sprints down the dark corridor towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of bloody prints on the polished wood.

‘Stop,’ he shouts, and pounds after her.

She shoves open the kitchen door, crashing it against the dresser. The windows are open wide and the normally cosy room is as cold as the inside of a fridge. Snow, blown in from the garden, lies across the tiles.

He bursts in behind her, almost taking the door off its hinges.

She takes a carving knife from Daniels’s drawer and swivels around. He is dressed in black from head to toe, with just slits for his eyes and mouth cut into a mask. The kitchen table stands to her left and she moves behind it to put something between them, while holding the blade out in front in both hands.

‘No need for that, sweetheart,’ he mutters, suppressing a chuckle. ‘I don’t intend you no harm, quite the opposite. Now put it down on the table.’

‘You shot him,’ Evie murmurs. She is struggling to absorb the rapid sequence of events. Her arms are so tense the knife wavers in the air, as if she is holding something heavy or her muscles are about to give out.

‘Put the blade down,’ he repeats. ‘No one wants to hurt you.’ He holds up his gun flat in his palm, making it clear to her he is turning it off, and the green beam splintering on the glass behind her is sucked back into the barrel. He drops it into the holster under his arm. ‘See. All safe. Now your turn.’

She shakes her head and keeps the knife raised, the tip directed towards him.

Shrugging, he takes slow steps towards her. In her white cotton nightdress she must look more defenceless even than she feels. Only the table and chairs are between them.

‘Stay back,’ she mutters. She takes a step towards the French windows. The freezing air, funnelled through the opening, blows her hair back around her face.

‘Lay the knife on the table,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ Or rather he does not want me to get broken, she thinks. She could as well be a porcelain figurine he has come to steal from the cabinet in the music room.

He clambers up onto the seat she uses, his heavy boots leaving bloody marks on the silk cushion, and from there onto the table. His shadow looms over her and she cowers away.

Evie backs another step nearer the open doors, the blade held up rigidly at arm’s length. Her sleeves slide back revealing the lack of anything like muscle in her slender forearms.

He towers above her, gaping down, figuring his next move. Their eyes catch and she is gripped by his stare, almost hypnotised, before breaking his gaze and turning away and running out onto the terrace.

She hears him bound to the kitchen floor and crash through the doors behind.

Outside she should have an advantage. The garden is small but she knows every inch of it. She runs barefoot, feeling the familiar roughness of the paving slabs through the snow beneath her feet. The snow is at its deepest around the large pots of Nile ferns, their rims floating above the sparkling icy surface. She steers between them and descends down the brick steps to the sunken lawn, crossing it diagonally towards the fountain, covering the ground in seconds. Running is not something she normally engages in but for some reason being fast was a gift she was given: perhaps they overlooked to programme it out. The stiff grass concealed under the snow scrapes her toes. He is only a few yards behind her, navigating between the pots, but loses his footing and trips on the hidden steps and lands on his face.

He curses, shouting a mouthful of bad words, before straightening his mask, brushing the snow from his eyes and clambering back up.

She passes around the fountain and through the shrubbery. The hovacar is almost completely concealed by a powdering of new snow. As she approaches, the door, on a motion sensor, lifts up, cracking a skin of ice from the seal. An orange glimmer seeps from the inside, exposing a panel of instrumentation and hard shiny seats licked by the glow. It is like a mouth in the darkness. Open and hungry for her.