While You Sleep: A chilling, unputdownable psychological thriller that will send shivers up your spine!

‘Past the bar, on the right.’ Kaye patted her, as you might a small child.

The bathroom was even more stifling, airless with the heat of hand-driers in a confined space. Zoe took off her flying jacket and tucked it between her knees, splashed cold water over her face and dried it with the sleeve of her shirt. She rested her forehead against the cool of the mirror and watched as her breath fogged a circle on the glass. Her reflection stared back at her with frayed outlines. Her skin looked blanched, the shadows beneath her eyes so deep they appeared bruised. She had taken her make-up off before the flight and been too tired to bother applying any more. Straight off the red-eye, Bradley to Dublin, connecting flight to Glasgow and on to a five-hour train journey to the ferry, to bring her here. When she had planned it, back home, it had seemed a good idea: get all the travelling done at once, no layovers, no breaks for sightseeing. She was not here for tourist attractions. All she wanted was to get to the sprawling old house by that deserted shore that had called to her over the Internet, and wrap its solitude around her. She had no sense of time any more; she struggled to remember when she had last eaten, or showered.

Rubbing away the condensation of her breath with a sleeve, she met her reflection’s eye with as steady a gaze as she could manage. They both seemed disappointed with each other. Turning forty-three, and looking every last day of it. Did she seriously imagine that earnest, handsome boy would have been flirting with her? But it was more than jet lag, she thought, peering closely at her own face in the mirror; all the turbulence of the past year was written into her skin, a bone-deep exhaustion she could not shake off. Perhaps here she would finally be able to sleep.

She fished in her pocket and found a Chanel lipstick, one she had thrown in at the last minute, just in case. In case of what? What occasions to dress up had she imagined would present themselves on a small island off the west coast of Scotland, in winter? She barely wore lipstick even at home. Perhaps it was a defensive measure, a reaction against all the military-coloured hiking gear and shapeless sweaters she had packed. One last vestige of femininity. She opened her lips and slicked it around them, blotting the colour on a sheet of toilet paper. Not too garish; a discreet reddish-brown that she used to think suited her but now seemed to drain all the colour from the rest of her face. She wondered how soon she could reasonably ask to leave.

The door opened; Zoe glanced up and saw that another face was staring at her, unsmiling, in the mirror. The young barmaid, Annag, reached up and adjusted the pineapple of hair balanced on her crown, her eyes critically appraising Zoe all the while.

‘You’re the one who’s taken the McBride house.’ The girl’s accent was broad, rough-edged. ‘Brave,’ she added, cocking one thinly pencilled brow with an air of challenge.

‘It’s Mick and Kaye’s house, I thought,’ Zoe said mildly. ‘Aren’t they Drummonds?’ She did not ask why she should be considered brave, precisely because she could see that the girl was dying to tell her.

‘It’ll always be the McBride house round here,’ Annag said, with a meaningful look. She had an oddly flat face, Zoe thought, and wide, with all the features cramped together in the middle, like a puppet of the moon she had once seen in a kids’ show. Too pale for that unnatural shade of black dye, she added, in her head. This girl’s attitude seemed to provoke a mean streak in her, as if they were both in high school.

‘I’m afraid I can’t pronounce its real name,’ she said, forcing a smile.

Annag muttered a word deep in her throat that Zoe assumed was Gaelic, but sounded nothing like the way it looked on paper. ‘It means “resting place”,’ she said.

‘Oh. That’s nice.’

‘You think?’

Zoe looked up and saw that the girl was smirking openly. A strange chill ran through her as she understood. Clearly, the person who named the house had not stopped to consider its double meaning. Or perhaps they had.

‘Give us a lend of your lippy.’ A pudgy hand stretched out towards her, open; bitten fingernails painted flaking green. Zoe hesitated. Was this a normal thing to ask a stranger? She had grown up without sisters, without a close group of girlfriends; as a result she was possessive about her belongings and a little fastidious, bewildered by the kind of women who presumed all feminine items should be held in common. But she couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse without implying that she considered the girl unhygienic. Reluctantly, she passed the lipstick over. Annag stretched her mouth wide, drew on a red circle, smacked her lips together and pouted, apparently pleased with the result.

‘Why am I brave, then?’ Zoe asked, as if this small intimacy might now entitle her to answers. ‘I guess it’s haunted or something, right?’ She tried to make it sound jokey, as if she were happy to play along, but a look of guilt slunk over Annag’s moon face. The girl concentrated on the lipstick, twisting it all the way to the top and down again.

‘I only meant – staying out there on your own. In the middle of nowhere. That’s brave, for a woman.’ She reached inside her top with one hand and twanged a stray bra strap into place. ‘Not that I’m saying— I don’t mean …’ She turned to look at the real Zoe beside her, instead of at her reflection. ‘Whatever folk say about it, you didnae hear it from me, okay? Mick’ll bloody kill me.’

So Mick had warned this girl about telling whatever tales clung to the house. Had everyone else in the town been given a warning too? Charles Joseph apparently had, though he didn’t seem to feel inhibited by it. What could be so terrible that Kaye and Mick genuinely feared it might drive a tenant away? It will be one of those stories like the ones people used to swap at high school slumber parties, Zoe thought: like the one where the girl hears the banging on the car roof and it turns out to be her boyfriend’s head. And that’s what you get for coming to the ass-end of nowhere, she reminded herself: people who take that stuff seriously. But she found that, however dumb the story might be, she didn’t want to hear it on her first night.

‘But I haven’t heard anything,’ she said.

‘Then you’ll sleep soundly in your bed, won’t you?’ Annag flashed her a smile that seemed to contain some element of private triumph, before walking out. As the door banged behind her, Zoe realised Annag still had her lipstick in her hand. She considered going after her, asking for it back, but decided against it. There was no point making an enemy of this girl, who already seemed to resent her presence. But if she was honest, it was because Annag reminded her of the hard-faced girls who had given her hell in high school, and she despised herself for her own cowardice. She made a note to stay out of the barmaid’s way as far as possible. Out of everyone’s way. She caught her reflection’s eye with weary contempt, and slowly wiped away the bright slash of lipstick with a tissue.

Even in the dark, the house looked imposing. Mick had installed motion-sensor security lights at the front; a white glare leapt out of the blackness like a prison searchlight as the Land Rover descended the last slope and rounded the curve of the drive, Mick raising a hand to shield his eyes and swearing under his breath. They lit up a rambling house of three storeys, tall Gothic windows along the first floor, diamond-paned glass, pointed eaves over the windows in the attic, several tall chimneys and a hexagonal turret jutting up from the roof. A warm light glowed from one of the windows on the ground floor. As Zoe swung herself down on to the gravel, she could hear the booming of waves in the darkness beyond the house.

‘Kaye’s left you a few bits and bobs – bread and milk and whatnot,’ Mick said, lifting her suitcase down from the trunk. ‘Should see you right for breakfast. She’s done a wee folder too, telling you where to find everything – it’s got our number on and a few others you might need. I was thinking I could come by tomorrow before lunch and show you the other stuff. How the generator works, where we store the logs, all that business. Then, if you like, I’ll bring you into town so you can go to the supermarket.’

Zoe murmured her thanks, only half listening. She craned her neck and stared up at the night sky. A brisk wind chivvied scraps of cloud across the face of the moon; behind them, an extravagant scattering of stars glittered across ink blue wastes. The seabirds sounded subdued here, their cries reproachful. ‘Why do people call it the McBride house?’

Mick froze, for a heartbeat, in the act of setting down her art case. ‘McBride was the fella who built it, back in 1860.’ He sounded unusually stiff.

‘Was he a relative?’

‘He married my great-great-aunt. It passed to her brother, my great-great-grandfather. Been in my family ever since. But the name stuck. Now,’ he said, forcibly cheery, ‘let’s get this lot inside and you can settle in.’

He carried her cases into the wide entrance hall, set them down at the foot of the stairs and immediately flicked on all the lights he could find. Inside, the house smelled of new paint, furniture polish and the heavy floral scent from an extravagant vase of lilies that stood on a wooden chest opposite the front door.

‘Beautiful flowers,’ Zoe remarked, to fill the silence.

‘Oh, aye. Kaye did those.’ Mick seemed distracted, his eyes flitting around the hallway as if he half expected to see someone appear from one of the doors leading off it.

‘That was such a kind thought – will you thank her?’ It was gone eleven, by the grandfather clock in the hall; Zoe had lost all track of what time her own body thought it was, but the whisky sat heavy in her stomach and she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She wished he would hurry up and leave.

‘I will. Well, then. There are your keys. Those are the front door. The ones for the back are on a hook in the kitchen.’ Mick dropped a weighty keyring into her palm, dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, then took them out again as if unsure what to do with them, glancing back at the front door. He seemed reluctant to go, but at a loss as to how to prolong his visit. For one awful moment, Zoe wondered if he was hovering for a tip, but it didn’t seem likely. ‘Shall I take these up for you?’ he asked, his gaze alighting on the cases.

‘Oh, no, I can manage,’ she began, but he was halfway up the stairs, telling her it was no trouble.

‘Well, then,’ he said, when he returned. ‘I suppose I should let you get on. The water from the tap’s fine to drink, by the way. And you remember there’s no broadband? I mentioned that in the email.’

‘It’s fine. It’ll be good for me to get offline.’ She forced a smile.

‘They haven’t got the cables out to this side of the island,’ Mick explained, keen to make clear it was no failing on his part. ‘In the next year or so, they reckon, not that that’s much help to you. You can come and use ours up at the pub if you want to send emails and whatnot.’ He hesitated once more, running a hand over his thinning hair. ‘Like I said, our number’s there in the folder. Call us if you need anything, anytime. We’re only five miles away, I can be here in a jiffy if there’s a problem.’

‘I’ll try not to disturb you if I can possibly help it. I’m pretty self-sufficient.’ She was not sure if this was actually true. It was a long time since she had put it to the test, but it was important that Mick should believe it. All she wanted now was to find the bed and fall face down on it.

‘Aye, well, that’s good. But we’re here if you need us. I mean it – anytime at all. Day or night.’ He said it more emphatically this time, and his gaze darted away to the top of the stairs. At the front door he turned back, holding it half open so that moths hurled themselves towards the light, wings whirring. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow at noon. I hope you have a comfortable night.’

‘I’m sure I will.’ She almost had to push him physically out of the door. She stood on the threshold, a narrow fan of light spilling through on to the step in front of her, determinedly waving him off so she could be sure he was finally gone. He raised his hand as he reversed the Land Rover with a scattering of gravel, but in the white cone of the security light his expression was anxious, just as it had been in the hallway.

When the sound of the engine had died away, Zoe leaned her back against the inside of the front door and allowed herself to slump to the floor.

He’s a new landlord, she told herself; he’s bound to be nervous the day his first tenant arrives. It was sweet, she supposed, how concerned he and Kaye were about her well-being, their little thoughtful touches. She hoped they would ease up once she’d settled in, though; she was troubled by the way they kept referring to her as their ‘guest’ rather than their tenant. She hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to take her under their wing while she was here, save her from being lonely. Sometimes it was hard to make people understand how much you desired solitude. Or deserved it.

There was a telephone on a console table at the side of the entrance hall. She briefly considered calling home, but decided she was too tired, too fuzzy with whisky to deal with the conversation. She had texted Dan from the airport to say she had landed safely; she would call tomorrow. Instead she pulled herself to her feet, switched off the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs. On the first landing, to the right, she found her cases propping open the door to a lit room; inside, a master bedroom furnished neatly in crisp white, slate grey and duck-egg blue, with a small en suite leading off it. She threw her jacket over a chair, pulled off her biker boots in the bathroom doorway, bent her mouth to the tap and gulped down cold water, then collapsed on to the bed, where she fell asleep, fully clothed. Outside, the security lights snapped off and the McBride house was folded into the darkness once more.

2 (#ub5e9202d-7191-5822-bded-edca3cf7cbc1)

That night, Zoe dreamed.

She was stripped naked and laid across a low couch in the long gallery that ran the length of the house on the west side, facing the sea. Both arms were stretched above her head and pinioned so that she could not move them. Around her the room lay steeped in shadow, save for the pale shaft of moonlight that filtered through the tall windows, silvering the bare boards of the floor. Though she could not see them, she sensed someone else in the room, moving closer. Two hands, reaching out of the darkness, expertly began to trace slow patterns across her skin. Hot breath on her neck, whispering down across her shoulder. Her muscles tensed; her nipples stiffened and her hips rose as she felt herself swell and open. Despite the apparent helplessness of her position, she was not afraid; instead she felt an unfamiliar boldness, a pleasure and pride in her own body that made her want to arch her back, display herself for him. Somehow he knew her, this unknown lover; he understood how she needed to be touched, and she trusted him, the certainty of his hands, his mouth, anticipating her want and need. His breath brushed her cheek and she parted her lips for him but he had moved away without a kiss and she was powerless to pull him back. She could only wait for him to continue moving around her, over her, the ghost of lips on her breasts, the hands now clasped firmly around her waist with a sense of ownership. As his tongue finally made contact with her nipple she tried to cry out, the jolt of it so sweet and sudden, as if she had been wired to an electrode, a shockwave that juddered the length of her body and shot through her groin, but – as always in dreams – she could make no sound. His mouth closed over her breast and his teeth tightened and tugged, gently at first, but sharply enough to remind her that he could, if he chose, bring her pain as well as pleasure. She pushed her hips out towards him and one hand slid down over the curve of her buttock and between her legs as his mouth moved across the softness of her belly. Good, he whispered, inside her mind.

Zoe was aware of a level of lucidity within the dream, of existing in some liminal state between sleep and waking. But though she could direct the movements of her own body, as far as the restraints around her wrists allowed, she could not influence the shadowy lover who was deliberately withholding from her what he knew she wanted; slowly, softly, he skirted between her legs with his tongue, drawing out the torment. In one instant she would feel the heat of his breath right where she needed him, at the sharp pinpoint of her pleasure, before he moved away, licking the inside of her thigh or the smooth skin above her pubic bone, gently biting the jut of her pelvis or the soft curve of her waist while she tried pleading with him, begging him, though her words emerged soundless as she strained against the restraints binding her hands. When, finally, his tongue made stealthy contact with her most sensitive point and he slipped two fingers inside her, it felt like a concession, or a reward; her whole body was illuminated, shocked into vivid colour. One hand held her hips steady as the rhythm of his flickering tongue quickened and his fingers drove deep into her; bucking and grinding against him, she heard herself screaming, a wild, animal cry, as she felt the first spasm of muscle and the sudden hurtling, as if over the edge of a waterfall, the exquisite frustration of the desire to pull him into her and her inability to touch him at all. As the ripples of her orgasm rose over and over, she could already feel him slipping away, melting back into the shadows, and she cried out again to make him stay but her voice was stifled, stopped in her throat; her mouth worked noiselessly and she could not move her hands to reach him or claw him back.

She woke at her own mewling sounds, feeling disorientated and raw, blinking into the dark to find that she was indeed lying on a couch in the long gallery, her arms stretched above her head and crossed at the wrists. A draught from the curtainless windows stirred goosebumps over her naked skin and it took her a few moments to locate herself, to understand that she was no longer dreaming. How had she ended up here? She lowered her arms gingerly, as if afraid she might meet with some resistance; her shoulders ached and her fingers had grown numb from being held aloft. She had no recollection of leaving her bed, or having undressed herself, but the memory of the dream remained vivid, the imprint of him on her most tender parts. She looked down at herself, bewildered, as if her body was strange to her, no longer recognisable, feeling the heat of her desire sticky on the insides of her thigh. She slid a tentative finger between her legs and flinched at the coldness of her own touch; she was still engorged, still aroused. She pressed her finger harder and began to circle it; within moments she was rising to a crescendo and a ragged, gasping climax that was fierce and necessary but lacked all the wonder, the other-worldly magic of the dream lover’s caress. She stood in the room’s silent shadows, feeling flayed, exposed to the elements. And yet, how stunning! It had been as if something had possessed her, as if her desire were a slumbering beast buried so deep for so long that she had forgotten to notice its absence until it was awakened. He was no one she recognised from her waking life, of that she was certain. A figment of her imagination, then, an ideal lover who had touched and manipulated her with such authority, such intimate knowledge.

The moon slipped out from between two banks of cloud, spilling pearly light across the floor. Outside, she could hear the low, insistent roar of the sea. She shivered, and was on the point of turning to leave the room, when a shadow shifted at the edge of her vision: the faintest hint of a movement. She stepped towards the windows, peering out at the black water. Immediately she flinched back. There was someone on the beach, huddled into the overhang of rock at the southerly curve, looking up at the house. Or, at least, she thought she saw a figure; panicked, she stifled a cry and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch, wrapping it around herself before she dared approach the window again. A cloud moved across the face of the moon and the pale rim of sand was lost in darkness; when it reappeared, there were only the rocks and the steady, breaking waves. Zoe breathed out, feeling her pulse hammering in her throat, and almost laughed with relief. She needed to sleep, she told herself; her brain was wired and exhausted, that was all. She rested the tips of her fingers against the glass and took a last look at the beach, to reassure herself that there was no one there; a seabird, perhaps, or even a seal, or the movement of a cloud casting shadows. The beach remained empty. She sighed, letting her breath mist the pane.

Slowly, she became aware of a sound behind her. Barely audible, a faint scratching of nails on wood. Drawn-out, unnerving; her neck prickled and a sick chill flooded through her. Someone was trying to get in. Though the sound had stopped, the stillness that followed was the silence of held breath. She could feel it, unmistakably: a presence on the other side of the door. She did not dare turn around; instead she stood, frozen rigid, her head bowed as if waiting to receive a blow, naked shoulders stippled with cold and fear. The scratching came again, a slow raking against the wood. Zoe heard herself whimper, biting the flesh of her thumb; the sound stopped, abruptly. Whatever was out there knew she was here. Setting her jaw, squeezing her fists so tight she felt her nails cut the skin of her palms, she straightened, crossed to the door, grasped the handle, and in one movement, before the fear could undo her, she wrenched it open—

The landing outside was empty. She slumped, pent breath tumbling out in a gulp that was half-sob, half-laughter, relief turning her limbs to water. She would have to tell Mick Drummond in the morning that, for all his painstaking restoration work, he still had mice in his walls.

She returned to her room, wrapped in the blanket, and was puzzled to see her clothes neatly folded on the armchair beneath the window. When had she done this? She squinted at the clothes, trying to summon some recollection of folding them, placing them, but a great weight of tiredness had descended on her; she could not, at that moment, bring herself to care. There were pyjamas somewhere in her case, but it was padlocked shut and she could not be bothered to rummage for the key. She slipped under the duvet, still wrapped in the blanket from the couch, drained and exhausted, her body sinking into the sheets. Sleep had almost reclaimed her, when the singing began.

It was the song Kaye had sung that evening, the lament that had made the old men cry and stirred such unexpected emotion in her, though she had not understood the words. The song Kaye had told her was a woman grieving for the one she loved, lost to the sea. And now a woman was singing it, somewhere in the house, though with none of the beauty or passion Kaye had brought to the melody. This voice was thin and sickly, scored through with desolation and loss. Zoe’s eyes snapped open; as she lay there listening, it seemed that the singer was in danger of being overwhelmed by the force of her grief; at times the voice would tail off, choked, and Zoe held her breath, waiting, until it resumed, the same refrain, quavering and hoarse. Though she knew it was only the echoes of her memory, another trick of her tired mind brought on by the emotional intensity of her disturbed night, she could not stand to listen to it any longer; she threw off the cover, pulled the blanket tight around her and opened the door to the landing, tensing on the threshold with her head on one side. The song was drifting from the floor above. She groped about on the wall at the foot of the stairs, but could not locate the light switch.