‘Hello Siobhan.’

We looked at each other, neither of us saying a word. I could see her chest rising and falling rapidly. Excitement? Fear? Both, I thought – the blend of dread and exhilaration that we all feel before any momentous encounter; the same gut-churning sensation you get when you take your seat on a rollercoaster. She took a step towards me – she was wearing a blue robe; her bare feet had left damp footprints on the carpet behind her. She was unbearably beautiful – so beautiful that it was painful to look at her, like staring at the sun.

‘How did you get in?’ she said. Her voice was husky.

I reached in to my pocket and took out the key, holding it up towards her. She nodded slowly, a look of comprehension coming into her eyes. ‘How many times have you been in here?’

I shrugged. ‘Two or three. I… I wanted to get to know you better. To learn about you. I met Biggles and he seemed to like me.’

She came a step closer. She had her hands out in front of her, her palms towards me. She glanced towards the phone, which was over near her desk.

‘You don’t need to be afraid, Siobhan,’ I said. ‘I love you. I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘No…’ she said, very quietly.

‘I promise, Siobhan. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you? You’d never hurt someone you love or who loves you.’ I almost added ‘unless’, but stopped myself.

‘You don’t love me,’ she said. ‘You think you do, but you don’t, not really…’

‘I do!’ I stood up and she took a quick step backwards, fear flashing across her face.

‘Sit down,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘Please.’

I did as she asked, wanting to obey her: to love, to honour, to obey. When we get married, I thought, I’ll want to say those words – they’ll be part of my vow. To love her until I die, to cherish from this day forward and… what else? For better, for worse, forever and ever and ever amen.

She looked at the phone again and seemed to think for a moment. Then she turned back towards me. ‘Alex,’ she said, ‘you have to listen to me. You don’t love me. You’ve… developed a crush on me, a fixation. You might think you love me but you don’t really know me. This…this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. You’re supposed to meet someone, go out for drinks, go to dinner, date, talk, kiss, go to bed, and then, if you’re lucky, at some point down the line, you fall in love. I know you wanted to go for a drink and I lied to you, but that doesn’t mean – I mean that doesn’t give you the right to stalk me.’

Stalk? It took a few seconds for the word to sink in. I said it aloud: ‘Stalk? You think… I’ve been stalking you?’

‘I… look, it doesn’t matter what you call it, but it has to stop. This is…this is wrong, Alex, this is fucked up. You should not be in my house! You should not have a key. I don’t even know how you got it. But I now know that’s how you got my credit card details.’

I didn’t speak.

‘What do you think the police would say if I told them about that? It’s theft.’

I swallowed. ‘Are you going to call them?’

She hesitated. ‘Not right now. But I will – unless you pay me back the money you spent. All of it.’

I hung my head. ‘I will.’

‘And you’re going to have to stop coming to the class as well. I don’t want to see you there again.’

‘But…’

‘No. If you come, if I even see you lurking around outside, I’ll call the police straight away.’

‘But I like the class. I want to learn from you.’

‘It’s too late for that. You’re not going to see me again, Alex. No more cards or flowers. No more presents. Certainly no more visits to my house. I want you to put the key on the sofa beside you and leave it there. That’s it. Good.’

‘How will I pay you back your money?’

‘You can post it to me. You obviously have my address.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And now I want you to go, to leave my house. It’s over, Alex.’

She fell quiet, folding her arms and staring at me. I stood up, leaving the key behind me. I walked across the room towards her.

I stopped right in front of her. There were just three or four inches between us. If I took another step that distance would increase, would keep growing with every step, until I was out of sight, out of her world. The thought made me feel so sick and scared. I knew I had to obey her – to move, to go – but my legs wouldn’t follow orders. And there was something else, something that told me this was all wrong, that Siobhan was making a mistake: I could feel it – a current running between us. Electricity. Chemistry. She was trembling. I wondered if she realised what she was throwing away.

‘Go, Alex,’ she said again, and, finally, I went.

Out of the door. Out of her life.

When I got home I lay down on my bed and cried. But even as I felt myself sinking into a pit of despair, hot tears burning my eyes, I knew it wasn’t over. No way. Fate wouldn’t allow it.

PART TWO

Chapter 15

Siobhan

It seems to be taking a long time, getting over the shock of finding Alex in my house like that. It’s been a week, and I still can’t stop thinking about it. About the way he looked at me; sort of greedy, ashamed, and defiant, all rolled together. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as vulnerable as I did right then, standing dripping onto the carpet. I felt as if my dressing gown was invisible – he was staring fixedly right at my crotch and my nipples. At times he seemed as terrified as I was – although at other times he really frightened me.

What would I have done if he’d leaped at me, ripped my dressing gown off my shoulders, unzipped his jeans and jumped on top of me? Like that creep in the alley, but this time going all the way. I’ve often visualized how it must feel to be raped. The dry unwelcome thrusts, the pain, the humiliation. Wondering if you’re going to escape alive, or be killed so you can’t run to the police.

I don’t know how I would have reacted; how much I could have hurt him back. I know what you’re supposed to do – the poke in the eye, the knee in the balls, the screaming – but knowing and acting are two entirely different things, when you’re standing there petrified and half-naked, like a teenage virgin on a sacrificial altar. Even thinking about it makes me feel as if my lungs are closing up, as if it’s oxygen which is the invader, trying to force itself into my body while I rebel against it.

I’m quite proud of myself, actually, managing to tell him that he has to pay me back. I want him to know I mean business, so yesterday morning I looked up his address in my student files and wrote him a note, a brief but businesslike letter reminding him of the exact amount he owes me for the clothes (£324.98), and that he is barred from my class. If he shows up again, I will not only explain to the college exactly why I barred him, but I will also go straight to the police. Ditto if I don’t receive the money within one month.

I’ve changed the lock on the front door too, just in case he had two copies of my key made. Coming home after my first post-Alex venture out, I convinced myself he’d got into the house again. Got in a bit of a state, actually. The air in the hall had that sort of occupied feel to it; an unnatural kind of stillness to the dust as it hung there, lit up by the sun through the stained glass panels.

Mind you, I thought I sensed it before I even opened the front door. I’d turned the key and crept in, really quietly, with my can of pepper spray at the ready in one hand (Jess bought it for me), and my tallest, most pointy stiletto in the other, ready to sink it into his head the second I saw him. But nothing. I tiptoed (well, as much as you can tiptoe wearing one stiletto and holding the other. I kept the other one on in case I needed to kick him in the nuts) round the whole place, but found nothing except a large spider in the bathtub, and Biggles, rolling his eyes at me, in the bedroom.