Having a stalker is neither glamorous nor exciting; it can be horrific.

When the postcards started being hand-delivered to our home, that fear became a living thing that followed me around during the day, and when Ben said he started seeing a woman hanging around outside the house, I stopped being able to sleep during the night. When I saw her myself, I thought I’d seen a ghost.

I know who you are.

The message was always the same, and so was the signature: Maggie.

Ben and I hadn’t been together long when it started. A few profile pieces about me had appeared in the papers for the first time, with my picture, and previews about the film I had been cast in, so I guess you could describe her as a fan. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. The police didn’t take it seriously, but I did. When Ben called me in L.A. to say someone had broken into our old home, I knew it was her and decided to do something about it.

I agreed to move to a house I had never seen, and I bought a gun.

Guns don’t frighten me, people do.

I didn’t tell Ben about it because I know his opinions on firearms, but Ben and I had very different lives growing up. He thinks he knows the world, but he hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. I know what bad people are capable of. Besides, I’m good at shooting, I enjoy it, it’s something I’ve done for years to help me relax. I was still a child when I held my first gun. There’s nothing illegal about it: I have a license and I belong to a club in the countryside. Not that I get much time to practice now.

I feel beneath the bed, where I normally keep it.

It isn’t there.

The thoughts and fears colliding inside my throbbing head stop when I hear the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs towards the bedroom. I reach down again, my fingers desperately feeling beneath the wooden bed frame for my gun, but it’s gone.

Someone is right outside the door.

I try to scream, but when I open my mouth, no sound comes out.

I see the door handle start to slowly twist and experience a sickening sense of déjà vu.

I could hide, but I’m too scared to move.

The door opens and I’m completely shocked by what I see.

Twenty-seven

Essex, 1988

I’ve tried to go to sleep, like Maggie told me to, but every time I close my eyes I can see the three bad men with woolly masks and shouty voices outside the shop.

I didn’t know Maggie had a gun.

I thought only bad people had things like that.

My ears still feel funny, as though tiny bell ringers have moved inside my head. I’ve thought about it, a lot, and I’m sure she missed the bad man on purpose, that she just wanted to warn him or something. I pull the duvet up over my head; it feels safer under here. It’s warm too, but I still can’t stop shivering.

Maggie and John have been arguing a lot tonight, even more than normal. They are still at it now, but they’re doing the quiet kind of shouting that they think I can’t hear, their words hissing like snakes. I need the toilet, but I’m too scared to walk past their bedroom to get there. I’m also scared of wetting the bed if I don’t go. I get up and creep over to my bedroom door, the pink carpet soft beneath my toes. I put my ear right up against the bare wood, to see if I can hear what they are saying.

“I told you we should have found a shop further out,” Maggie says.

“And I told you it wouldn’t have made no difference. What kind of men pull a stunt like that in front of a child anyway?” says John.

“Exactly the kind of men we’re dealing with. I asked you not to take Aimee, you put her in danger.”

“Well, I didn’t take Aimee, did I? How could I have? Aimee is dead.”

I hear something smash.

I’m not dead.

I climb back into the bed and hide under the duvet again. Seconds later my bedroom door opens and I hold my breath. In my head this makes me invisible.

Invisible, but not dead.

I hear someone walk closer to the bed and I hope that it is Maggie, not John. He comes into my room sometimes at night. I think he must be worried about me being too hot or something because he always takes the duvet off the bed. He does it slowly and quietly, as though he is trying not to wake me, so I pretend to still be asleep, even when I’m not. Sometimes I hear his Polaroid camera and wonder what he is taking pictures of in the dark. Sometimes I hear other things.

Somebody pulls the covers back, then gets in beside me. She puts her arm around my tummy and kisses my head; I know that it is Maggie because I can smell her perfume. She calls it “number five” and it smells nice, but I always wonder what the other numbers smell like. Maggie is squeezing me awful tight, so that it hurts a little bit, but I don’t say anything. She is crying, and the back of my neck is soon wet with her tears.

“Don’t you worry, Baby Girl. Nobody is ever going to hurt you, not while I’m alive.”

I think she says this to make me feel better, but it makes me feel worse. My first mummy died the day I was born. Maggie could die anytime and then I’d be all alone. She stops crying after a while and goes to sleep, but I don’t. I can’t. I know she is sleeping because small snoring sounds come out of her mouth and into my ears, playing a little tune with the tiny bells that are still ringing. I try to sleep too, but all I can think about is Maggie dying, those three bad men coming back to the shop, and nobody being here to save me.

Twenty-eight

London, 2017

“Don’t worry, this will save you.” Jack walks into my bedroom with two steaming mugs of what looks like coffee.

“What are you doing here?” I pull the duvet up around me.

“Well, that’s gratitude for you! I was just going to put you in a taxi last night, but I wasn’t sure you’d make it, and I was right. You puked on the journey home. Twice. And that was just the beginning. I thought you said you could drink? I stayed the night to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit. I think the words you are probably looking for right now are thank you.”

“Thank you,” I say after a little while, processing everything he has just said, unsure whether his words fit the gaps that the holes in my memory have left behind. I take the coffee, it’s too hot, but it’s strong and I gulp it down. I look at the pajamas I’m wearing, wondering how I got into them if I was as out of it as he’s suggesting. It’s as though he reads my mind.

“I helped get you out of your dress, mainly because you’d been sick all down the front of it just after you got out of the cab. I cleaned you up a bit and you got changed yourself. I didn’t see anything I hadn’t already seen on set, and I slept on the floor.”

I look at where he is pointing and see a pillow and a blanket on the carpet. My cheeks are so hot I’m certain my face must have turned purple with embarrassment. I can’t seem to find the right words to say, so I stick with the two that seem most appropriate given the circumstances.

“I’m sorry.” As soon as the whisper of an apology escapes my lips, my eyes fill with tears. I just keep making endless mistakes and messing everything up, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Jack puts down his empty coffee mug and sits on the bed. “You’re obviously going through a difficult time in your personal life right now after everything you said last night.”