THE OTHER SIDE OF SYDNEY

CHAPTER TWO
The Woman in the Mirror

The third knock was the one that convinced me.

Not that the first two had been particularly reassuring.

Three knocks. Slow. Almost polite.

From somewhere inside my apartment.

Ollie stood in the bedroom doorway, growling at a hallway I couldn't see beyond the rectangle of light coming from my bedside lamp.

I was holding a book. A hardcover copy of Pride and Prejudice, which seemed like a particularly stupid thing to defend myself with. Although Elizabeth Bennet had survived worse company than most people.

"Ollie. Come here."

He didn't move.

"Ollie."

One ear turned toward me. Wonderful. My dog was considering whether I deserved obedience.

I looked at my phone. 3:14 a.m.

Something had woken me before the knocks. I remembered opening my eyes. Ollie growling. That strange certainty that something wasn't right.

And there had been a smell. Floral. Not my perfume.

Then Ollie barked.

"Jesus, Ollie!"

I nearly dropped Jane Austen.

I shut the bedroom door, locked it, and called the police.

• • •

The dispatcher was considerably calmer than I was.

"Are you somewhere safe?"

"I think so."

"Is your bedroom door locked?"

"Yes."

"Stay there. Officers are on their way."

I sat on the edge of the bed. Ollie paced. I watched the door handle.

Nothing happened. Which, somehow, made everything worse.

I'd always imagined I'd react decisively if someone broke in. Instead I sat in pajamas with a dog who wouldn't stop pacing and a novel about nineteenth-century marriage.

I kept thinking about the hotel. Room 814. Marianne. The photograph on my coffee table.

And the ridiculous silver anklet. Still around my left ankle. I could feel it move whenever I shifted my foot.

I'd put it on last night, in Room 814. I hadn't taken it off since. Not deliberately. It had simply become part of the ankle, the way a watch becomes part of a wrist. Already the shape of it felt more familiar than it had any right to.

I almost took it off.

Didn't.

• • •

Two officers arrived at 3:37.

They checked the apartment. Every closet, even the little laundry room where I'd been meaning to replace the lightbulb for four months. The balcony. The kitchen. The cupboard stuffed with reusable shopping bags.

Nothing. No forced entry. No intruder.

The female officer came into the living …