he front door slammed. There was the familiar click of the catch meeting the frame, and a rush of cool air. Carol froze and felt the breeze on the back of her neck. She turned sharply expecting to see someone standing there. The hall was empty.

Carol heaved the bags of shopping over her shoulder and carried them into the kitchen. She'd bought far too much stuff - tins, vegetables, eggs. Enough to feed two people instead of only one, and she didn't even feel hungry. Still, she reasoned, it would save a trip to the supermarket next week.

Next week. Perhaps it wasn't as far away as it sounded. Just lately, every day seemed to drag by at a snail's pace, every hour felt, every minute counted. Next week felt like next year. But it was only a bad patch, Carol told herself. Everything would come right in a month or so, and she'd wonder what all the fuss had been about.

Carol glanced up at the clock over the cooker. The time was ten-past-one. Lunchtime, Carol thought, but it was more out of habit than anything else. Her appetite had left along with him.

The bags of shopping sat in a pile by the door, waiting, patiently it seemed, to be unpacked. Carol silently wished the various items would grow legs and wander up to the cupboard shelves by themselves, to save her the tedious putting-away job.

Yet it did not take her as long as she had expected, and by twenty-five minutes past, everything was sorted and stacked neatly away. It was about this time, that the telephone rang. That wasn't a strange thing in itself. Carol liked to think she had many friends, all eager to ring for a chat - and they often did. Carol remembered numerous occasions when she'd felt a terrible sinking feeling as she looked at the mail and realised there was a fat BT stamped envelope sitting on the doormat. It was true, the phone was usually red hot.

Today however, it was not technically possible for the telephone to ring, seeing as the receiver was off the hook and the socket on the wall stood unplugged. Carol hadn't been in the mood to talk to anyone for the past week or so. She'd disconnected the stupid thing after it refused to leave her in peace, sounding off all hours of the day and night. Carol needed space to think, even if she was becoming reclusive.

At the moment when the phone rang, Carol was slicing onions to go in a salad, on the kitchen worktop. When the bell sounded, Carol's first thought was of joy - a voice to speak to at last. But that soon turned to horror when she turned and saw the phone cord dangling down the wall, connected to nothing.

She didn't even realise what she was doing, until she felt a sharp stab of pain and looked down at her hand. The knife had slipped deep into her wrist, scoring a deep groove that was filling with blood. The crimson liquid was already beginning to trickle along her arm, a lonely red snake.

Carol felt sick. The phone was still ringing, loud and insistant, shrill high-pitched ringing. She wasn't sure whether to answer it, knowing it could only be something wrong with the telephone, but she had to shut it up somehow.

Taking a dizzy step, and lifting the hanging receiver to her ear, Carol noticed the ringing stopped at once. She could hear a faint crackling sound, tickling almost, and she could have sworn, a whisper. Someone had said her name. Carol slammed the phone down - still disconnected - as if it burnt her fingers, and it rang again almost immediately.

"Hello," Carol said slowly, picking it up once more, feeling a shiver go down her spine. "Who's there?"

The line squealed at her, shrieked, almost like a human scream. Carol let the phone fall to her side, too shocked to move. The blood was drying on her arm, irony orange in colour, and the knife was still clasped in her other hand, the blade stained.

Carol didn't want to see. For a moment, she thought it wasn't even her blood dripping from the point. The sight was so familiar like something out of a recurring nightmare. A body lay face down on the cold kitchen tiles, in a pool of dark blood pouring from a stab wound in his back. Carol was holding the murder weapon between her fingers and praying in her head for forgiveness. She was crying pointless salty tears. Like they'd turn back the time to before it happened.

Then the vision was over, and Carol was sitting thoughtfully on a stool in the dining room, wiping her cut and feeling silly. Everything was under control now. Everything was normal.

She stared out the window across the the tidy, well-kept back lawn, and past the apple tree and the vegetable patch. The whole garden was bathed in sunlight, save the bare section of damp earth by the side of the shed, where it was always dark and where nothing ever grew. She'd tried to plant every type of flower or shrub there at one time or another, without success. So now she'd decided to use the place as a compost heap, a rotting pile of dead weeds and potato peelings upon the uneven, newly turned earth. Anything to cover up that empty barren look.

Carol felt guilty at that moment, an emotion she'd promised herself she'd never feel. Guilt could drive you insane, and make you take leave of your senses. The incidents that day only proved that. And, Carol told herself, there was absolutely no need to feel guilty. She hadn't done anything wrong. Richard had had it coming to him for a long time.

It was then that Carol snapped. It wasn't right, she thought, to forget everything like she'd been trying to. It hadn't worked, her resolve to carry on as normal, as if it never happened, as if he'd never existed. And the lonely silence of the house only served to jog her memory, when she didn't want to remember. She needed to get out, talk to people - but, Carol realised, she was afraid. That they'd know just by her eyes and her voice that she was lying to them. That everything wasn't 'fine' - not for her, and especially not for him.

Carol hardly heard the doorbell amidst the voice of her conscience, and when she did, her first instinct was to hide away from whoever was calling, and pretend she wasn't in. Everything is normal, she told herself, as she walked out into the hallway, at the same time noting a musty, rotting smell which hadn't been there when she came home. Thinking she would find the cause of the smell later, Carol lifted the latch on the door and swung it open, ready to speak to a fellow human for the first time in ages.

Instead, she had to stifle a scream as she saw her visitor on the doorstep. Even as he moved forward into the house, Carol understood, it all made sense. As he drew nearer, arms outstretched in a welcoming embrace, she closed her eyes in sick horror.