Page 133 of The Sleepwalker

A deer bolts across the floor in the lounge, past the sofa and towards the hall.

She will never get used to these reflections in the glass, she thinks. Sven Erik’s enormous barbecue always looks like some sort of covered grand piano in the lounge.

The reflections create the illusion that it is snowing inside, that there are great tits swooping over the table and rabbits hopping over the rug.

A few clumps of dust blow out from beneath the sofa and roll towards Ida’s feet, and she turns around and sees the curtains rippling in the sudden draught.

The door to the guest room swings shut with a click.

Ida moves out into the dark hallway.

The only source of light is the little green LED on the alarm unit.

As she grips the handle, she remembers that she locked the door when Linus left.

Outside, the drainpipe shakes again.

Ida turns around and starts making her way back towards the lounge, but stops dead when she sees that the Russian woman is now standing on the deck.

Her dog must have escaped, she thinks, and is just about to go out and ask if the woman needs any help when she realises with a shudder that the windows have tricked her again.

The woman is in the house.

Adrenaline floods through her veins.

Ida turns back around. She thinks she can see the figure reflected in the reeded glass in the front door, and she slowly sinks to the floor.

47

Ida is on her knees among the shoes and boots in the hallway, hands pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound of her breathing.

This can’t be happening, she thinks. This can’t be happening. The woman is in the house.

Ida watched as she bumped into the floor lamp, causing the orb of light to sway.

She needs to call 112, but her phone is on the bench in the kitchen upstairs.

Her breathing is much too quick.

She slowly turns around and squints back towards the lounge, taking in the sofa, the candles on the coffee table, the reflections in the glass.

Her panicked brain desperately tries to come up with a logical explanation, and she asks herself whether Sven Erik might have been calling to tell her that the woman was coming over. Maybe he said she could swing by to borrow something.

If that is the case, she might already have left through the patio doors.

Ida crawls forward over the vinyl floor as quietly as she can, feeling stray bits of gravel and damp pools of melted snow beneath her palms.

She can see a little more of the lounge now.

There is no one there.

She slowly gets up, legs shaking, and hears the parquet floor creaking beneath the weight of someone slowly moving across it.

Ida takes another step forward, glances to the left and sees the woman in the angled window. Her reflection is cautiously picking its way across the patio, past the barbecue and towards the rusty fence.

That means she is actually heading towards the door to the boiler room beneath the stairs.

Ida only has a few seconds.