TOYL

other rooms.’
    ‘I think I’d rather believe that she’s talking to herself.’
    Emma smiled nervously at Lizzy. ‘Me too.’
    ‘I couldn’t believe his bedroom,’ Lizzy said. ‘It really gave me the creeps – like something you see in the movies. This whole house gives me the creeps.’
    ‘I know.’ Emma thought back to Stephen’s room. She couldn’t get the image out of her head, the wall plastered with photos of her, shrine-like. A sinister catalogue of her life, compiled by a delusional man who thought he loved her. And then the revelation contained in that one particular photograph – the photograph that could be the key to finding Dan.
    ‘It must have been a real shock,’ Lizzy said, ‘seeing them all like that. It’s really freaky. The guy must still be obsessed with you, to have all those things still on the wall after all those years.’
    ‘Stephen followed me to London.’
    ‘What? How do you know?’
    ‘I found this on the wall upstairs.’ Emma handed the photograph to Lizzy.
    ‘My God, it’s outside my flat.’ Lizzy looked at Emma, her eyes wide. ‘Em, we’ve got to get out of here, now, while we can. What if he comes back while we’re still here? What if he’s actually upstairs now, hiding in one of the other rooms?’
    Emma hesitated, fighting the natural inclination to agree with her friend.
    ‘What? C’mon, Em. What if he comes back? He could do anything, and it’s not like she’s going to stop him.’ Lizzy gestured towards the ceiling. ‘She’s as crazy as he is. Plus nobody knows we’re here; no-one can help us if something bad happens.’
    ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Emma, pushing aside her fears of what Stephen might or might not do. ‘About what that smell reminds me of.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Every Saturday I used to go to dance classes in the town centre, and I had to walk past a butcher’s on the way from the bus stop. Down the side of the shop was an alley where bits of meat used to drop and the cats and dogs would eat it. The alley used to stink. That’s where I remember the smell. Lizzy, the smell in this house, it smells like rotting meat.’
    Lizzy shook her head. ‘You don’t think…?’
    Just contemplating the thought was horrifying in itself, but Emma felt sure she had identified the smell – something was rotting in the house. ‘I have to check it out.’
    ‘But we don’t know where the smell is coming from,’ Lizzy protested. ‘And Mrs Myers will be back down any minute. What if she catches you?’
    ‘Keep a look out,’ said Emma, standing up and moving towards the kitchen. ‘Let me know as soon as you hear her coming down the stairs.’
    ‘Em, I don’t like this.’
    ‘Please.’
    ‘Okay,’ Lizzy conceded, but she looked less than happy.
    Emma investigated the kitchen, but although the smell was stronger there, there was nothing to suggest anything sinister – although the place was a food hygiene disaster area, with sponge-like mould growing in the numerous cups, plates and saucers littered around the room. She wondered whether the cups they had been given also held mould at the bottom. The thought made her feel sick. She opened the cupboards one by one, each time wondering whether something horrible was lurking inside. Most of the cupboards were empty, save for a few cans of food, most past their sell-by date. Just as she was about to return to the lounge, wondering whether the smell was perhaps coming from outside, she saw the door in the corner.
    ‘Have you found anything?’ Lizzy called quietly from the lounge.
    ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ Emma opened the door and grimaced as the foul pungent smell hit her like a tidal wave, rolling up from the bottom of the stairs in the dark abyss. ‘It’s a basement. The smell’s coming from down there.’
    ‘Be careful,’ Lizzy insisted.
    Emma stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness. She looked to her right and found the light switch, but the bulb had blown. She would have to go down there in the dark, or give up. Never a fan of the dark, and having seen too many horror films to feel comfortable in basements, she didn’t relish going down there. But something drove her on to do it.
    ‘Are you okay, Em?’
    Emma progressed gingerly down the stairs, brushing against cobwebs, not daring to answer Lizzy in the fear that any noise would send something careering out at her from the darkness. With only the dim light from the kitchen providing any