I’m in shock. Martin’s face is so close to mine that I can smell his rank eggy breath. But I’m too terrified to turn away. My instinct is to run as fast as I can back up the stairs and out of his house. But the door to the basement is open. I have to see what’s back there. If I don’t find out now, I’ll never know.

‘I saw someone hanging around your house,’ I say, bluffing, my voice unnaturally high.

His eyes narrow. ‘Where? And what are you doing down here? You know you shouldn’t have come down here.’

I can’t help shuddering. He reminds me of an anaemic spider, gangly and creepy.

‘Anyone there?’ I cry out, trying to look over his shoulder into the space beyond.

He presses a switch and the room behind him goes dark. ‘What are you doing, Kirstie? Why are you shouting? No one else is down here.’

‘Hello!’ I yell, ignoring him. ‘Is anyone in there?’ I try to edge past him, pushing at his torso through his thin shirt, feeling an unpleasant combination of protruding bones and loose flesh.

‘Kirstie,’ Martin says. ‘Are you quite all right? I witnessed your behaviour yesterday at the party, and I have to say it seemed quite out of character. I never pictured you as the drinking type. Are you intoxicated again?’

Finally, I manage to move past him into the breathless dark of the room. I slam the heel of my hand into the wall, trying to locate the light switch. Martin is behind me, agitated, still talking. I know I’m in a vulnerable position now. He could easily lock me in here. I realise too late that I should have taken the key out of the door. I can’t seem to find the light switch, so instead I turn around and stare into the gloom, shards of light from the stairwell helping me to see. But I still can’t quite understand what it is that I’m looking at.

The room is large. It must be around thirty foot long and twenty wide. A massive table takes up the majority of the space, on top of which sit strange shadowy shapes. I also notice a pile of bulging Toy Shack carrier bags stacked up in the corner of the room. My heart thumps uncomfortably. I want to get out of here, but my feet are glued to the ground. I can’t seem to move.

‘What is that?’ I whisper, turning back to look at Martin, who has followed me into the room.

‘I don’t appreciate you barging in like this, Kirstie…’

Then I spot something else. Something that makes my skin go cold. To my left, pushed up against the wall, stands a child’s cot. With a cry, I stumble towards it.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Martin shouts.

Suddenly the room is bathed in artificial light and I blink and squint against the brightness. My eyes gradually take in the struts of a white painted cot, pink blankets inside and the hard, plastic, unmoving face of a doll. The doll from the photograph in Martin’s lounge upstairs.

‘Get away from her!’ Martin shouts, making me jump.

I ignore him, pulling aside the blankets, my hands scrabbling around inside the cot, searching beneath the covers for a baby. But there is no baby inside this cot; not a real one at any rate. ‘It’s a doll,’ I say, letting out a sigh.

I turn back to face Martin, his mouth a hard, thin line, his eyes narrowed, blazing, his body trembling. ‘Priddy keeps me company while I’m working down here,’ he says, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Keeps you company? Working down here?’ I step away from the cot, my heart beating wildly. Martin has kept his late wife’s doll to keep him company, to give him comfort. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him or completely creeped out.

Martin glares at me. ‘I was trying to keep my project a secret until it was finished. I was going to have a grand unveiling. But you’ve spoiled the surprise.’ His voice is petulant, like a child who didn’t get their own way.

‘Unveiling?’ I echo stupidly, slowly realising that I may have got things completely wrong.

He holds his hand out, gesturing to the space behind me.

I turn around, still disorientated by the brightness. The table I saw earlier is now thrown into sharp relief beneath two buzzing, fluorescent strip lights. On top of the table are hundreds of multicoloured blocks – Lego blocks. Most of which have been made into buildings. ‘Lego?’ I say, exhaling. ‘I thought you were… Actually, what is this?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘like I said, I was hoping to keep this a secret until I had my grand unveiling… But if you must know, I’m actually creating a replica of our cul-de-sac. It’s Magnolia Close in Lego form.’ His features become more animated. ‘It’s a scale model and will be an exact copy of our close and of each house and its occupants.’

‘I… I don’t know what to say.’ I’m aware my mouth is hanging open and that I’m trembling with shock. I’m also aware that I may have made a monumental error in judgement. I don’t know whether to laugh with relief, or to cry with the realisation that all my paranoia regarding Martin was totally unfounded. ‘But why did you need to build a basement for this?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to put it all in the loft?’

‘No, Kirstie, I couldn’t do that. My train set’s in the loft.’

Of course it is. Of course his train set is in the loft. Here’s me thinking my odd neighbour is some kind of pervert, when in reality he’s a harmless man who I’ve managed to malign with my paranoid thoughts. I’ve been so obsessed with Martin and his basement that I didn’t even consider the possibility that I might have been mistaken. My instincts were way off. I think about what Dom will say when I tell him about this. He’ll probably laugh his head off. I miss Dom already. I miss our easy relationship. Where did it go? How did I let it deteriorate? I’ve screwed this up so badly.

‘I would show you my train set-up,’ Martin says apologetically, ‘but it’s undergoing track repairs at the moment, so maybe another time.’

I stare at my geeky neighbour, still wondering how I managed to get things so wrong.

‘Now, Kirstie,’ he continues, ‘I’m disappointed in your quite frankly antisocial behaviour today. You shoved me out of the way a minute ago and you quite frightened poor Priddy. But, more importantly, my model is nowhere near finished yet. I’ve only completed my house and yours, so you must promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to the neighbours. Like I said, I’m going to have an unveiling ceremony once it’s complete. I think the local paper might be interested, too.’ His eyes bore into mine and I realise he’s waiting for me to agree.

‘No, I mean, yes. Of course, I promise I won’t say a thing.’

‘Would you like to see your house?’ Martin’s eyes glitter.

‘Um…’

He walks over to the opposite end of the table and I reluctantly follow.

‘Now this,’ he begins, ‘is number four, your house. You can see, I’ve faithfully copied the interior as well as the exterior. Here’s Dominic in the lounge…’

I look through the front window and spy a tiny Lego figure that looks uncannily like Dom sitting on the sofa. The layout of the room is spot on, down to the positioning of the coffee table and footstool. I wonder how he managed to make everything so accurate. ‘How did you…’

‘… and this is you upstairs with Daisy in her room,’ he continues, pointing through an upstairs window.

Pinpricks of unease dot my back as I peer through the miniature window to see a Lego version of me sitting on the futon in what appears to be an exact replica of Daisy’s room. In my Lego arms, I’m holding a Lego version of Daisy. How does Martin know what Daisy’s room looks like? I should ask him, but I’m scared to hear the answer.

‘Wait a minute,’ he says, his eyes narrowing, ‘didn’t you say you saw an intruder? We must go upstairs and check.’

I can’t admit my reasons for breaking in here. I can hardly tell him I suspected him of being a child-snatcher. ‘Yes,’ I lie, ‘I thought I saw someone go around the back of your house. But, well, I haven’t been feeling myself lately so I suppose I could have been mistaken. I just thought I’d better come and investigate. I know you would have done the same for me if you’d seen someone hanging around my house. All part of the Neighbourhood Watch service, right?’

‘Yes, absolutely. We must all look out for one another. After all, that’s why I set up the Neighbourhood Watch in the first place. Look, Kirstie, why don’t you go back home and I’ll have a check around, make sure it’s all clear?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, yes. You don’t look well at all. You’ve gone quite green around the gills. Go back home, I insist. Thank you for coming to investigate, dear. Thank you.’

‘Okay.’ I let my shoulders slump. Suddenly I feel quite weak, as though the slightest gust of wind could blow me over.

‘Well,’ he says, his face brightening, ‘there is a silver lining to all this, of course.’

‘There is?’

‘Yes. I now have someone to discuss my model with! It’s been a terrible strain trying to keep it all a secret.’

That’s all I need – hours spent listening to Martin bombard me with details about his creepy model. But in light of what I thought him capable of, I guess listening to him talk about Lego is the least I can do. Something else occurs to me. ‘Where’s your car, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Ah, yes, my car. I was in a traffic collision last week – not my fault, I hasten to add.’

‘That’s awful, are you okay?’ I ask, trying and failing to forget that Martin is creating tiny models of all the neighbours.

‘Mild whiplash. Would you believe the insurers wrote off my car? Apparently it’s cheaper to get a new vehicle than to fix the old one. Terrible state of affairs, very wasteful. Nevertheless, I’m waiting for the cheque to come through from them before I can purchase a new one.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Yes, well. Nothing I can do about it. Luckily, I have my Lego model to take my mind off the stress of it all. You know, this project is the reason I’ve been so concerned with the building works next door – the vibrations from their drilling have resulted in some of my buildings destabilising. It’s extremely frustrating.’

I nod and give a sympathetic murmur as I turn to leave the basement, running my eyes one last time over the table with the Lego, and the strange doll lying in the cot. It’s then that I notice a large mirror at the end of the room, and next to the mirror, set into the wall, is another door, painted white to match the walls, its silver handle glinting.

‘What’s through there?’ I ask, pointing at the door, a strange ringing starting up in my ears.

‘Boiler room,’ Martin says, his face going blank. At that moment, the room plunges back into darkness as he switches off the light.

I gasp and head for the exit, at the same time wishing I had the courage to go and try that boiler-room door to see if Martin is telling the truth. But my nerves won’t take it. I need to get out of here, back into the fresh air, before I pass out.

I rush past Martin out of the Lego room, trying to quell the resurging panic in my chest, telling myself that Martin is probably telling the truth. He’s building a Lego model, nothing more sinister than that. That other door is probably nothing but a boiler room, like he said. I need to stop imagining things where there is nothing. I need to keep my runaway thoughts in check.

As I race up the stairs, away from my neighbour, a million things fly through my head. I must go home and try to put my thoughts in some kind of order. Because something else is also occurring to me – if it wasn’t Martin’s voice in the baby monitor, and if he wasn’t responsible for that threatening phone call, then who was?

---

At last, I’m back in my own quiet garden, slightly shell-shocked and somewhat chastened, with nothing but the sound of birdsong in my ears and the sigh of a warm breeze on my skin. It feels like hours since I was last here, but it can’t have been more than twenty minutes ago. My legs are trembling and my dress is sticking to my back and to my legs. I need to go inside and sit down where it’s cool and quiet. To process everything. I can’t be sure if Martin was telling me the truth when he said the other door leads to the boiler room. He could be lying. The Lego room could be a cover for something more sinister. But, no, I should stop this. I’m doing it again – making wild assumptions without any proof.

I realise I left my back door open – not a smart move. I must really be out of sorts. Now I’ve discovered that Martin may not be responsible for whatever’s going on, I need to be even more on my guard. It could be someone else out there who threatened me on the phone. Someone else who attempted to snatch a baby. After all, didn’t I hear two voices in the monitor that night?

I quickly head inside and turn to close the doors, but as I do so, I feel a prickling sensation snake its way down my back.

I’m not alone. Someone else is in my house.