LITMIR.BIZ

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find me? I cowered in the corner of the room, wedged between the washbasin and the wall, hardly daring to breathe, straining to pick out approaching footsteps over the crashing of blood in my ears.

      Why had I trapped myself up here with no protection but a feeble brass bolt, instead of running next door for help, or calling the police? I thought of my mobile phone, lying uselessly on the coffee table downstairs, and almost cried with frustration. The window above the basin, a small frosted porthole not much bigger than a dinner plate, faced on to the blank brick side of our elderly neighbour’s house. She was deaf and unlikely to hear a call for help, and still less likely to be able to act on it.

      I waited, tense with anxiety for what seemed like hours – perhaps it was, I didn’t have a watch – but around me the house was silent. By degrees, the sense of immediate and urgent panic began to wear off and I was able to emerge from my corner and make myself more comfortable on a pile of folded towels. But I was still too scared to open the door. He might have been Out There, just the other side, waiting and watching through the strange distorted eyeholes of his balaclava. That was what disturbed me more than anything – his masked face, and the thought that he must have seen my every movement in the brightly lit kitchen, while I had no idea I was being watched.

      At the age of fifteen I had discovered something new about myself: I was a coward. Until this moment I had never experienced anything remotely threatening. I had never been abused at home or mugged on the bus, hassled in the street or bullied at school. My life so far had been absolutely peril-free and yet, for some reason, I had just naturally assumed that I was brave. The discovery that I was in fact spineless was a bitter disappointment.

      Eventually I must have dozed off where I sat because I was woken by the familiar sounds of Dad coming home – the car engine and the scrape of his key in the lock, and then the various exclamations of annoyance: “What’s that smell?” “Look at the state of this place!” and “Every bloody light on as usual!” and I knew I was safe.

      At first he was bewildered to find me holed up in the bathroom at past midnight, still in my apron and Marigold gloves, but when I told him about the prowler, he soon stopped smiling.

      “Oh, Robyn,” he said, gathering me into a fierce hug. “You poor thing. Were you really frightened?”

      I nodded, sniffing, from within the hug. He smelled of the office – synthetic carpet and computers and the ozone pumped out by the photocopiers. He hadn’t bothered to change after work then.

      “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” he said, releasing me at last. “Where’s Rachel?”

      “I don’t know. Out with Frankie somewhere.”

      “Phone her and tell her to get the cab to bring her right to the door. Don’t let it drop her off at the end of the close.” Dad had taken his shoes off when he came in; now he started to put them back on again.

      “Where are you going?” I asked.

      “To check the garden.” He fetched the big torch, heavy as an iron bar, from the cupboard under the stairs and strode out through the kitchen, where everything was just as I’d left it: the washing up half done, the cereal bowl in pieces on the floor. A moment later I could see the torch beam – solid and substantial in the darkness – sweeping along the fence and probing into the bushes. Still keeping one eye on Dad, I called Rachel and delivered his message as best I could over the background racket of music and shouted conversation. “Where are you?” I asked, out of habit.

      There was a pause and then, “Where are we?” I could hear her asking someone. Back came the reported answer: “Wadham College bar.” Sometimes I wondered about her state of mind.

      “No one there now,” Dad said, coming in and locking the back door behind him.

      “It was hours ago.”

      “All the same. Got to call the police. These nutters. God, they don’t waste any time, I’ll say that for them.” He disappeared into the study and returned holding the local directory, flipping through the pages with one hand while trying to put his glasses on with the other.

      “What nutters?” I said uneasily.

      “Oh, you know, Animal Rights,” said Dad.

      “Why do you think it’s got anything to do with them? It could just be some random weirdo.”

      Dad shrugged. “Maybe. Funny coincidence if so.”

      “What…” He was thumbing in the number as he spoke and held up a hand to shush me as the phone was picked up at the other end. I wandered into the living room to look out for Rachel, chewing over what Dad had just said about Animal Rights. Of course, I knew that he worked at the Institute, a new high-tech complex just inside the ring road, dedicated to research and development of drugs for everything from baldness to beriberi. And I suppose I must have known that a lot of the experiments and trials involved animals – laboratory rats, specially bred for the purpose. But Dad worked in the office – he wasn’t a vivisectionist; he was an accountant. He’d probably never even set foot in a lab. Plus, he was if anything an animal lover: witness his treatment only last year of the runaway springer spaniel that got clipped by a car on Banbury Road and left for dead. He took it to the vet to get it patched up and paid the bill himself. Then he took out an ad in the local paper and stuck dozens of leaflets on trees to trace the owner. A proper good Samaritan, she had called him, weeping tears of gratitude and relief over the heartbreaking doggy plastercast.

      While this anxious internal monologue was going on I could hear Dad impatiently spelling out his details. “Richard Stenning. S-T-E-N-N-I-N-G…OX2 6FZ…No, F. F for Flatulence. Z for Zoroastrian.” He always got ratty with telephonists, receptionists, all those poor women in the front line, just trying to do their jobs. “Do you really need my date of birth?” he spluttered. “If I was ringing to report a murder-in-progress, I’d be dead by now.”

      He joined me at the living-room window, peering out into the darkness. Always resentful at wearing his suit outside work, he’d undone his top button and pulled his tie down to half mast like a scruffy schoolboy “Sorry you were frightened,” he said again, putting an arm round my shoulders and giving me a squeeze. “They’re going to send someone round. I didn’t think they would.”

      “What did you mean about Animal Rights nutters?” I asked.

      “Oh, there are loads of anti-vivisection groups in Oxford. They picket the Institute now and then, when they can get themselves up and out of bed. Peaceful demonstrations are fair enough. But there’s a hard core who are into direct action. Terrorists basically They’ve even got kids as young as twelve involved in sabotage and stuff. You must have read all that in the papers last year about the place that breeds the rats for us. The guy who runs it has had so much intimidation, death threats, a bomb under his car, family graves desecrated, it’s all but closed down. He can’t afford the security”

      “But you don’t get involved in any of those animal experiments. You’re not a scientist.”

      “I know, but the Institute pays my wages. Everyone who has anything to do with the place is a target. The cleaners, the caterers, everybody Even the binmen. We got a memo about it only last week: the company that gets rid of our toxic waste has had its premises torched.”

      “What do they want?”

      “Ultimately they want the place closed down, and the easiest way to do that is to intimidate people into not working there.”

      “How do they know where you live?”

      “You can find anything off the internet.”

      “But it could just have been a prowler. I mean, they do exist.”

      “Maybe,” Dad said, without much conviction. “Would that make you feel better?”

      “I don’t know.” In truth it wasn’t his motivation so much as his intentions that worried me. “Do you wish you still worked at the John Radcliffe?”

      “No fear.”

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