They were told how he entered and how he left. They knew he’d stood at
the end of their bed, smiling as if offering gifts. They didn’t scream or
reach for the cordless phone next to the large print book, Thirty ways with
cupcakes. They stayed side by side, slit-eyed, heads motionless on
triangular pillows, faded sheet to chins. If he was a thief, there was
nothing much to steal. A black marble cat from Egypt. A long service
watch. Coral beads and freshwater pearls looped on a mirrored trinket
box.

The intruder opened a wardrobe and put on a tweed jacket, leather
patched elbows, a flop of orange from a breast pocket. He shivered ever
so slightly and cracked his fingers one at a time. They linked thumbs,
closed eyelids and crawled in deeper. The jacket smelt of yesterday’s walk
through Linford Wood: pine trees and bluebells, heady in early spring.
He tiptoed to the side of their bed, took the cover from the water jug: a
macramé circle edged with tiny shells, a souvenir from Rhodes. They heard
him pop paracetamol from foil and swallow from the water jug, quietly, as
if not wanting to wake them.

The room lightened. A milk van pulled up and drove away. Dogs barked in
a back yard. The hibernating bee shifted the net curtain slightly. The
intruder cracked his fingers again and left their bedroom. They heard him
lift the toilet lid, his urine flow hitting china. He turned a tap and slid soap
from the oyster dish. He opened every room off the landing. Door handles
squeaked, needing oil again. He went downstairs on tiptoe and into the
kitchen. They heard him open the pink Smeg, place a plate on the work
surface, slide a meat cleaver from the knife block. They could smell salt
roast bacon, last night’s leftovers.

And then he left.

They waited in the warm bed before dialling emergency. The intruder was
picked up soon enough, their description essential. The policewoman said
he was hunched, skinny, the look of Jarvis Cocker about him – the jacket
she supposed. Security came to their house, fitted window locks and a
CCTV over the porch. They were given emergency alarms on blue cords
and reassured. It won’t happen again.

They didn’t tell anyone the intruder hadn’t left. He was by the bed
fingering the macramé circle and urinating in the toilet bowl. His fingers
were inside the pink Smeg, circling a meat dish, one hand on the knife
block. He made salt bacon taste germy. His cracking fingers were in shoe
heels on oak floors, hammering down on sky lights when it rained, in rice
grains poured into saucepans.

When they walked through Linford Wood they hurried past a boxy kennel
thing made of sticks. Crack, crack, crack. They imagined their intruder
crouched inside the kennel, waiting like a starved dog, knowing they were
too old to run.