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every time I walked past. Sometimes he made crude gestures at me. I usually ignored him. Apart from him, I rarely saw any of my neighbours. I occasionally got nasty looks from the old lady next door when she came out to prune her hedge, or if I happened to run into the woman from across the street while she was walking her toddler home from nursery, she crossed the road when she saw me coming. They were all such lovely people. It was a very tight-knit community.
    Note my sarcasm.
    I kind of hoped Zack’s honking had at least woken the old hag next door. I was sure the bitch thought I was doing drugs, prostituting myself, or something. Let her believe what she wanted to. At least she was too scared of me to come over and give me a lecture about proper behaviour. My mother did that often enough—hence why trips home were rare for me.
    The windows of my house—well, actually Evie’s house that her loaded parents had bought for her for her eighteenth birthday—were dark. I pushed through the rusting iron gate and walked up the cracked path to the front door, digging in my tiny black handbag for my keys as I went. It seemed impossible that they should be able to hide from me in such a small bag. The grass was getting a little long, I noted. I’d have to get out the lawnmower and cut it soon. Maybe next weekend.
    I was so focused on the grass and finding my keys that it wasn’t until I was standing right at the front door that I noticed the shadow of someone lurking by corner of the house. My heart jumped into my throat, and I gasped, stumbling back a step until my heel sank into the damp grass. The shadow shifted, and I froze, eyes wide, staring into the darkness. I couldn’t make out any features, just the vague shape of a man.
    I was barely breathing, my heart panicking like a trapped bird in my chest. I didn’t dare blink, didn’t dare twitch. The neighbourhood was nice, but it was only a couple of streets over from a less nice part of town. Druggies and assorted other nasties had been known to wander around at night, looking for houses to break into or people to rough up. I made for a lovely target, a girl alone in a quiet neighbourhood, but the criminal sort tended to avoid picking on me because I looked like the type to carry a knife, or at least pepper spray. Little did they know that my best and only weapon was my extremely heavy boots, which I maintained could crush someone’s skull if needs be.
    I continued staring at the shady man standing in my garden, wondering distantly what he wanted from me and exactly what kind of bad guy he was—druggie, robber, or rapist. A druggie I could probably fight off, they tended to be weedy and got nervous when someone fought back. But a robber or rapist? Not a chance. I wondered if I could possibly get my phone out and call nine-nine-nine before the guy attacked.
    I was just getting ready to risk it when, suddenly, he vanished. I stayed frozen for a long minute, heart pounding, and my hand on my bag. Then I blinked twice and stared some more into the shadowy space where I’d seen him, just to make sure. No, he was gone. I let out a slow breath and felt my eyes sting with irrational tears.
    Terrified of where the guy might have gone, and if he was circling around the house to get me from behind, I jammed my hand into my bag and finally snagged my ring of keys. It took me a second to find the right key in the darkness, and then my hand was shaking so badly it took me three attempts to get the key in the lock and turn it. The whole time, I had a creeping, tingling feeling running down my spine, as if the stranger might lunge out of the shadows and stab me in the back at any second.
    At last, I got the door open. I barged through it, whipped around and slammed it shut, immediately sliding the chain on while I fought with the key to lock the door again. When it finally clicked, I backed away and hit the light switch on the wall, flooding the hallway with light. Then, still