* * *

Downstairs, in the kitchen, I walked over to the fridge. “You are low on milk,” said the robot voice as I touched the door, making me jump convulsively. “Shall I add it to the shopping list?”

“Er . . . yes,” I managed. Was I going insane, talking aloud to a household appliance?

“Adding milk to your shopping list,” said the voice brightly, and again the screen on the door lit up, showing a list of groceries. “Eat happy, Rowan!”

I tried not to think about how it figured out who was standing in front of it. Face recognition? Proximity of my phone? Either way, it felt distinctly unsettling.

At first sight the fridge contents looked distressingly healthy—a huge drawer full of green veg, tubs of fresh pasta, various pots of things like kimchi and harissa, and a large jar of something that looked like pond water but which I thought might be kombucha. However right at the back, behind some organic yogurts, I saw a cardboard pizza box, and with some difficulty I inveigled it out and opened it up. I was just sliding the baking tray into the oven when there was a sharp rap from the glass wall on the far side of the kitchen table.

I jumped and swung around, scanning the room. It was getting dark, rain spattering the glass, and although the far side of the room was in shadow, I could see very little outside except the jeweled droplets running down the enormous glass pane. I was just beginning to think I might have imagined it, or that perhaps a bird had flown into the glass, when a dark shape moved against the gloaming, black against gray. Something—someone—was out there.

“Who is it?” I called out, a little more sharply than I had intended. There was no answer, and I marched past the breakfast bar, around the kitchen table, and towards the glass wall, shrouded in darkness.

There was no panel over here—or none that I could see—but then I remembered the voice commands.

“Lights on,” I said sharply, and somewhat to my surprise, it worked—the huge brutalist chandelier above my head illuminating suddenly into a blaze of LED bulbs. The blast of brilliance left me blinking and astonished. But as soon as my eyes adjusted, I realized my mistake. With the lights on, I could see absolutely nothing outside now apart from my own reflection in the glass. Whereas whoever was out there could see me very plainly.

“Lights off,” I said. Every light in the entire room went out immediately, plunging the kitchen into inky darkness.

“Shit,” I said under my breath, and began to feel my way back across the kitchen, towards the panel by the door, to try to restore the settings to something halfway between retina-burning brilliance and total darkness. My eyes were still dazzled and hurting from the blast of light from the chandelier, but as my fingers finally sought out the control panel, I looked back toward the window, and thought, though I could not be sure, that I saw something whisk away around the side of the house.

* * *

I spent the rest of the time while the pizza was cooking glancing nervously over my shoulder into the dark shadows at the far side of the room, and chewing my nails. I had turned the baby monitor off, the better to hear any more sounds from outside, but Petra’s sobs still filtered faintly down the stairs, not helping my stress levels.

I was tempted to put on some music, but there was something unnerving about the idea of drowning out the sound of a potential intruder. As it was, I hadn’t seen or heard anything definite enough to call the police. A shape in the darkness and a knock that could have been anything from an acorn to a bird . . . it wasn’t exactly Friday the 13th.

It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes later—though it felt like much more—that I heard another sound, this time from the side of the house, a knock that set the dogs barking from their baskets in the utility room.

The noise made me jump, though there was something more homely and ordinary about it than the hollow bang of before, and when I went through to the utility room, I could see a dark shape silhouetted outside the rain-spattered glass panes in the door. The figure spoke, his voice almost drowned by the hiss of the rain.

“It’s me. Jack.”

Relief flooded through me.

“Jack!” I wrenched the door open, and there he was, standing just under the threshold, hunched in a raincoat, hands in pockets. The water was streaming down his fringe and dripping from his nose.

“Jack, was that you, before?”

“Before when?” he asked, looking puzzled, and I opened my mouth to explain—and then thought better of it.

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter. What can I help with?”

“I won’t keep you,” he said, “I just wanted to check you were all right, with it being your first day and all.”

“Thanks,” I said awkwardly, thinking of the awful afternoon and the fact that Petra was probably still sobbing into the baby monitor. Then, on an impulse I added, “Will you—I mean, do you want to come in? The kids are in bed. I was just getting myself some supper.”

“Are you sure?” He looked at his watch. “It’s pretty late.”

“I’m sure,” I said, standing back to let him inside the utility room. He stood, dripping onto the mat, and then stepped gingerly out of his boots.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said, as he followed me into the kitchen. “I was meaning to come over before, but I had to take that bloody mower over to Inverness to be serviced.”

“You couldn’t fix it?”

“Oh, aye, I got it running. But it clapped out again yesterday. Whatever’s the matter, I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. But never mind about that. I didn’t come to moan at you about my troubles. How was it with the kids?”

“It was—” I stopped, feeling, with horror, my bottom lip quiver treacherously. I wanted to put on a brave face—what if he reported back to Sandra and Bill? But I just couldn’t do it. And besides, if they looked at the security footage they would know the truth soon enough. As if to set the seal on it, Petra gave a long, bubbling wail of grief from upstairs that was loud enough to make Jack’s head turn towards the stairs.

“Oh God, who am I kidding?” I said wretchedly. “It was awful. The girls ran away from me after Bill and Sandra left, and I went to look for them in the woods and then that woman—what’s her name? Mrs. McKinty?”

“Jean McKenzie,” Jack said. He pulled his raincoat off and sat at the long table, and I found myself sinking into a chair opposite. I wanted to put my head in my hands and cry, but I forced myself to give a shaky laugh.

“Well she turned up to clean and found the girls sitting on the doorstep claiming I’d locked them out, which I absolutely didn’t, I’d deliberately left the door open for them. They hate me, Jack, and Petra’s been screaming for like an hour and—”

The wail came again, and I felt my stress level rise in tandem with its pitch.

“Sit down,” Jack said firmly, as I made to rise. He pushed me back into the chair opposite his. “I’ll see if I can settle her. She’s probably just not used to your face, it’ll be better tomorrow.”

It was in defiance of every safeguarding rule I’d ever been taught, but I was too tired and desperate to care—and besides, I told myself, Sandra and Bill would hardly have kept him on the premises if they thought he was a danger to their kids.