She is shaking me, her fingers gripped around the brow of my shoulder like she is hanging onto the edge of a cliff with a huge drop below. ‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ I say. I force my eyes open and myself upright at the same time. ‘I’m awake.’ I don’t usually sleep that deeply, so it’s disorientating to have to be shaken awake, rather than to simply wake up. In the light cast from the corridor by the open door, I see her kneeling beside the bed, and I notice immediately that fear is flurrying across her face. ‘What’s the matter?’ To force myself further awake, deeper into consciousness, I blink hard and fast. ‘Someone’s trying to break into our house,’ she whispers. My body and mind freeze. ‘What?’ ‘I heard them below my room, they’re trying to break in through the back door.’ Automatically, I glance at Joel’s side of the bed. What would he do? When we first moved here we lived in fear of this happening: we’d never had so much space, so many doors and windows and points of entry that we were solely responsible for.
