While You Sleep: A chilling, unputdownable psychological thriller that will send shivers up your spine!

‘Why am I brave, then?’ Zoe asked, as if this small intimacy might now entitle her to answers. ‘I guess it’s haunted or something, right?’ She tried to make it sound jokey, as if she were happy to play along, but a look of guilt slunk over Annag’s moon face. The girl concentrated on the lipstick, twisting it all the way to the top and down again.

‘I only meant – staying out there on your own. In the middle of nowhere. That’s brave, for a woman.’ She reached inside her top with one hand and twanged a stray bra strap into place. ‘Not that I’m saying— I don’t mean …’ She turned to look at the real Zoe beside her, instead of at her reflection. ‘Whatever folk say about it, you didnae hear it from me, okay? Mick’ll bloody kill me.’

So Mick had warned this girl about telling whatever tales clung to the house. Had everyone else in the town been given a warning too? Charles Joseph apparently had, though he didn’t seem to feel inhibited by it. What could be so terrible that Kaye and Mick genuinely feared it might drive a tenant away? It will be one of those stories like the ones people used to swap at high school slumber parties, Zoe thought: like the one where the girl hears the banging on the car roof and it turns out to be her boyfriend’s head. And that’s what you get for coming to the ass-end of nowhere, she reminded herself: people who take that stuff seriously. But she found that, however dumb the story might be, she didn’t want to hear it on her first night.

‘But I haven’t heard anything,’ she said.

‘Then you’ll sleep soundly in your bed, won’t you?’ Annag flashed her a smile that seemed to contain some element of private triumph, before walking out. As the door banged behind her, Zoe realised Annag still had her lipstick in her hand. She considered going after her, asking for it back, but decided against it. There was no point making an enemy of this girl, who already seemed to resent her presence. But if she was honest, it was because Annag reminded her of the hard-faced girls who had given her hell in high school, and she despised herself for her own cowardice. She made a note to stay out of the barmaid’s way as far as possible. Out of everyone’s way. She caught her reflection’s eye with weary contempt, and slowly wiped away the bright slash of lipstick with a tissue.

Even in the dark, the house looked imposing. Mick had installed motion-sensor security lights at the front; a white glare leapt out of the blackness like a prison searchlight as the Land Rover descended the last slope and rounded the curve of the drive, Mick raising a hand to shield his eyes and swearing under his breath. They lit up a rambling house of three storeys, tall Gothic windows along the first floor, diamond-paned glass, pointed eaves over the windows in the attic, several tall chimneys and a hexagonal turret jutting up from the roof. A warm light glowed from one of the windows on the ground floor. As Zoe swung herself down on to the gravel, she could hear the booming of waves in the darkness beyond the house.

‘Kaye’s left you a few bits and bobs – bread and milk and whatnot,’ Mick said, lifting her suitcase down from the trunk. ‘Should see you right for breakfast. She’s done a wee folder too, telling you where to find everything – it’s got our number on and a few others you might need. I was thinking I could come by tomorrow before lunch and show you the other stuff. How the generator works, where we store the logs, all that business. Then, if you like, I’ll bring you into town so you can go to the supermarket.’

Zoe murmured her thanks, only half listening. She craned her neck and stared up at the night sky. A brisk wind chivvied scraps of cloud across the face of the moon; behind them, an extravagant scattering of stars glittered across ink blue wastes. The seabirds sounded subdued here, their cries reproachful. ‘Why do people call it the McBride house?’

Mick froze, for a heartbeat, in the act of setting down her art case. ‘McBride was the fella who built it, back in 1860.’ He sounded unusually stiff.

‘Was he a relative?’

‘He married my great-great-aunt. It passed to her brother, my great-great-grandfather. Been in my family ever since. But the name stuck. Now,’ he said, forcibly cheery, ‘let’s get this lot inside and you can settle in.’

He carried her cases into the wide entrance hall, set them down at the foot of the stairs and immediately flicked on all the lights he could find. Inside, the house smelled of new paint, furniture polish and the heavy floral scent from an extravagant vase of lilies that stood on a wooden chest opposite the front door.

‘Beautiful flowers,’ Zoe remarked, to fill the silence.

‘Oh, aye. Kaye did those.’ Mick seemed distracted, his eyes flitting around the hallway as if he half expected to see someone appear from one of the doors leading off it.

‘That was such a kind thought – will you thank her?’ It was gone eleven, by the grandfather clock in the hall; Zoe had lost all track of what time her own body thought it was, but the whisky sat heavy in her stomach and she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She wished he would hurry up and leave.

‘I will. Well, then. There are your keys. Those are the front door. The ones for the back are on a hook in the kitchen.’ Mick dropped a weighty keyring into her palm, dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, then took them out again as if unsure what to do with them, glancing back at the front door. He seemed reluctant to go, but at a loss as to how to prolong his visit. For one awful moment, Zoe wondered if he was hovering for a tip, but it didn’t seem likely. ‘Shall I take these up for you?’ he asked, his gaze alighting on the cases.

‘Oh, no, I can manage,’ she began, but he was halfway up the stairs, telling her it was no trouble.

‘Well, then,’ he said, when he returned. ‘I suppose I should let you get on. The water from the tap’s fine to drink, by the way. And you remember there’s no broadband? I mentioned that in the email.’

‘It’s fine. It’ll be good for me to get offline.’ She forced a smile.

‘They haven’t got the cables out to this side of the island,’ Mick explained, keen to make clear it was no failing on his part. ‘In the next year or so, they reckon, not that that’s much help to you. You can come and use ours up at the pub if you want to send emails and whatnot.’ He hesitated once more, running a hand over his thinning hair. ‘Like I said, our number’s there in the folder. Call us if you need anything, anytime. We’re only five miles away, I can be here in a jiffy if there’s a problem.’

‘I’ll try not to disturb you if I can possibly help it. I’m pretty self-sufficient.’ She was not sure if this was actually true. It was a long time since she had put it to the test, but it was important that Mick should believe it. All she wanted now was to find the bed and fall face down on it.

‘Aye, well, that’s good. But we’re here if you need us. I mean it – anytime at all. Day or night.’ He said it more emphatically this time, and his gaze darted away to the top of the stairs. At the front door he turned back, holding it half open so that moths hurled themselves towards the light, wings whirring. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow at noon. I hope you have a comfortable night.’

‘I’m sure I will.’ She almost had to push him physically out of the door. She stood on the threshold, a narrow fan of light spilling through on to the step in front of her, determinedly waving him off so she could be sure he was finally gone. He raised his hand as he reversed the Land Rover with a scattering of gravel, but in the white cone of the security light his expression was anxious, just as it had been in the hallway.

When the sound of the engine had died away, Zoe leaned her back against the inside of the front door and allowed herself to slump to the floor.

He’s a new landlord, she told herself; he’s bound to be nervous the day his first tenant arrives. It was sweet, she supposed, how concerned he and Kaye were about her well-being, their little thoughtful touches. She hoped they would ease up once she’d settled in, though; she was troubled by the way they kept referring to her as their ‘guest’ rather than their tenant. She hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to take her under their wing while she was here, save her from being lonely. Sometimes it was hard to make people understand how much you desired solitude. Or deserved it.

There was a telephone on a console table at the side of the entrance hall. She briefly considered calling home, but decided she was too tired, too fuzzy with whisky to deal with the conversation. She had texted Dan from the airport to say she had landed safely; she would call tomorrow. Instead she pulled herself to her feet, switched off the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs. On the first landing, to the right, she found her cases propping open the door to a lit room; inside, a master bedroom furnished neatly in crisp white, slate grey and duck-egg blue, with a small en suite leading off it. She threw her jacket over a chair, pulled off her biker boots in the bathroom doorway, bent her mouth to the tap and gulped down cold water, then collapsed on to the bed, where she fell asleep, fully clothed. Outside, the security lights snapped off and the McBride house was folded into the darkness once more.

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