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Mary!

Good news! You have been chosen.

There are many reasons I chose you from all the others. They will become clear over time, but for now all you need to know is that it is you.

Rejoice! This is the first day of the rest of your life. It will be better from now on, I promise.

Better for you, certainly.

Better for me, as well.

Have a great night’s sleep! For tomorrow we begin anew.

Her hands shook as she folded the note. If she put it back in her bag, if she left it there, could she pretend she hadn’t read it? Pretend this had never happened?

She looked at the windows; from the well-lit interior, all was blackness. Anyone looking in would have been able to see her clearly.

She shuddered. They would have seen her read the note. They would know how terrified she was.

How terrified they had made her.

Not that they needed to see her read it to know she would, either tonight or in the morning. It was right there in her bag; she could hardly avoid reading it.

And they had put it there. That evening.

At the library, that evening, someone had put the note in her bag.

She looked out of the kitchen window. The night was black, and starless.

Out there, someone was watching her.

Part Two

Two Months Earlier

So this is where she lives.

You followed her from her gym, one of those cheap, mass-market places that litter the less salubrious parts of the city, onto a bus, a cramped, overheated city vehicle that made its way slowly out of the centre and through a series of ever-scruffier neighbourhoods, each one more rundown and worn out than the last.

Eventually, she rises from her seat, two rows in front of you and so close you could reach out and touch her bare arm, and steps onto a cracked, uneven sidewalk. The stop is in front of a laundromat, and the air is heavy with the fragrance of soap and cleaning fluids. It is a scent you hate. You look away from her, fighting the urge to gag.

She walks quickly down the street, keeping her eyes down. It makes her easy to follow; she is trying not to draw any attention to herself, trying to make herself as anonymous as possible. It’s ironic; her attempt to be invisible is the very thing that makes her stand out.

She takes a left turn, then a right. You keep your distance now; it is much more obvious in these quieter residential streets that you are tracking her.

She pauses in front of a rundown town house and takes a key from her bag. She glances nervously around – you wonder why she is still so nervous, so vigilant, but then you understand that this is how she has stayed hidden for so long, this is why it was so hard, even for you, to find her. She runs up the stone stairs to a heavy, dark blue front door.

No. 17. You look back and make a note of the street name.

Now you have her address.

It is not a pleasant neighbourhood, not at all. Why is she living in a place like this? She could do better, surely?

Then you remember why: this is a good place to hide. Maybe she pays cash, month to month, for her rent. Then there would be no records of her address.

You could not find it, after all, and you have been looking for a long time.

Neither could the private investigator you employed. She may not have found her address, but she did find her employer. For a fee.