THE CHECKOUT GIRL DREAMS OF A MURDERER

The girl hunched back down again. She stared at the ground with her chin on her hands.

'I never told the whole thing to anyone before. It's this nightmare I get. Mum and Dad didn't want to hear. They said it's better to not even think about it.'

'It's a recurring dream is it?'

'What's a recurring dream?'

'When you have the same dream over and over again.'

'Oh that. Yes, I have it almost every night. But it's not exactly the same. I can be different people in it. Sometimes one of those, you know, maidservants. Or sometimes a mother with children. Wearing old-fashioned clothes, full-length skirts and stuff. Or sometimes one of the children. It's always me being someone else.'

'As if it happened long ago in the past?'

'Right. Everything's really weird, like in history. You'd laugh, it's so weird. Only it's sort of as if I know it too. Rooms with flowery wallpaper and smelling of leather. I can smell smells in the dream just as if I was there. And the furniture is all made of carved wood. The table legs are like great big claws. I see them when we have to hide under the table.'

'You hide under the table?'

'Yes. That's part of it. We hide under the table and wait for the sounds to go past. All of us together, everyone in the house. Sometimes it's in the middle of the night and we have to get up in a hurry and come downstairs to hide. We grab the cushions off the chairs and build a sort of wall around the table legs, so we can bop down behind. Except it won't do us any good if he comes for us. It's like trying to hide although all the time we know it's no good really.'

'What do you mean, if he comes for us? Who's 'he'?'

'I don't know. It's just this fear. We have to wait for him to go past. There's wheels, we hear them first, coming up the other end of the street. And horse's hooves on the stone. They're coming closer and closer. Then we hold on to each other under the table. We're crouching down on all fours, and we sort of put our hands on each others' hands. We're making a wish together, for him to go past. It's the only thing in the world, for him to go past. And the wheels and the hooves are getting louder and louder, like thunder rumbling, and getting slower too, that's how it sounds, slower and slower and coming to a stop. And we're wishing harder and harder but we daren't look out. Only there's this patch of light on the floor near the table coming through the window and it gets darker and darker. Until the shadow blots it out altogether, and we know he's outside right in front of our house. We can hear the horses breathing and hissing and snorting like they're just on the other side of the window looking in. And then he goes past. The sound of the wheels keeps on turning and thundering and he goes past. He wasn't stopping for us after all. It's someone else this time he's going to stop for. So we're safe this time after all.'