Page 68 of The Perfect Son

How secure is the house? How strong is the new lock on the side door? Should I grab Jamie and make a run for the car? Who is out there? Watching and waiting. And why? It has to be him, doesn’t it?

“I have no intention of hurting anyone,”he said. But he’ll scare me half to death though.

I wish I was braver. I wish I could throw open the side door andmarch out there with a torch and a hammer and swear at the night and the man in my garden watching us. There is something a little familiar about that thought, and I realize it’s because I did that once, not long after we moved. There was a God-awful noise in the garden, like two people fighting. You were still at work, Jamie was asleep, so I strode out into the night, swinging the beam of the torch this way and that until I saw the glowing eyes of two foxes, startled from their fight by my presence. I threw back my head and laughed and told them to keep the noise down as they darted away.

Where did that person go? And if I’m not that person anymore, then who am I?

I move quickly back through the house to the living room.

The credits of the show are moving across the screen and Jamie is grinning up at me.

“Time for bed.” I force a singsong voice and switch off the TV.

He nods and disappears upstairs.

“Love you,” I call up to him, swallowing back the tears.

“Love you too,” he calls back.

Only when I’m sure Jamie is in bed do I turn off the living room light and grab the phone from the dining room and call the only person I can think of.

“Shelley,” I say, whispering her name before she has a chance to say hello.

“Tess? What is it? Are you OK?”

“There’s a man in my garden.” I feel the fear, the adrenaline, in my stomach. I take a step into the darkness of the living room, keeping the phone and its white light pressed to my face as I inch sideways to the window. “He’s by the trees, underneath the tree house.”

The light is gone but there’s a pale crescent moon in the sky andwith the lights off I can just see the shadow of a figure moving behind the tree.

“Oh my God,” Shelley gasps, her voice mimicking my own and dropping to a whisper. “Call the police!”

“Oh... OK. I didn’t think,” I reply, feeling stupid.

“Tess, hang up and call the police. Don’t answer the door to anyone but them. I’m not far away. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

I hang up, my fingers shaking so the buttons take longer to press than they should. Shelley is right. I need to call the police. I have to tell them everything. I have to keep us safe, Mark. Whatever happens, I have to protect Jamie.

Suddenly it’s real. There is a man in our garden, leaning against one of our trees casual as anything, watching the house, watching Jamie and me. Hearing Shelley’s panic rams reality down my throat and I’m stumbling over myself to get out of the living room.

I sit on the bottom step of the stairs and call the police. It’s never as quick as they make it out in the movies. It takes ages just to give my name and address and tell the operator what service I want. The minutes tick by and all the while I wonder if he’s still out there watching. The man who called me last week and chased me in Manningtree—it has to be.

The operator is cool, no-nonsense. “And you’re sure it’s a person?”

“Yes. I saw a torch or a phone light.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes... I mean no, my son Jamie is here, but he’s only seven.”

“Is the house secure?”

“I think so. I checked the doors and they’re locked.”

“OK, we’re sending a unit to your address now. It’s a busy night, so it may take some time.”

A banging echoes through the house and then Shelley’s voice shouts, “Tess, it’s Shelley.”

“What was that noise?” the operator asks.