Page 28 of Cracked Doll

I have no idea what in the world he is talking about. Or accusing me of.

"He's been stalking me," I say, my voice cracking. "Breaking into this house. Watching me sleep. That's not — I never—"

"Then let him." He says it flat, final, chilling in how little it costs him. "Let him stalk you. Let him watch you sleep. Let him knock you up for all I care — I am not going to be the next man that bastard kills over some woman. If he wants you, Ophelia, he has my blessing to take you however he pleases. Even if you don't want it. So don't you ever call for me again when it's him coming after you."

He turns and walks out, leaving me standing there with the spatula still in my hand, egg cooling in the pan, my whole body gone rigid and hollow at once. I don't move for a long time. I simply stand there, staring at nothing, trying to understand how a man can hand his own daughter over like an offering and call it fatherly restraint.

I don't know how long I've been standing there when the landline starts ringing, down through the floor, in the shop.

I already know who it is.

I go down slowly, my hand trailing the wall — the phone works even without electricity, I remind myself, some detached, practical part of my mind still functioning; the telephone line runs entirely separate from the mains — and I stop in front of it, black and gleaming, ringing insistently on its little shelf.

The answering machine clicks on before I can decide whether to lift it myself.

"I do love watching you stare at that vintage rotary, paralyzed, wondering if it's me on the other end," his voice says, unhurried, amused. "Pick it up, Ophelia. Let me hear that little gasp you make right before you realize there's nowhere left to run. Come now, cracked doll. You know you want to."

I snatch the receiver up before the machine finishes recording. "I'll call the police," I say, and my voice shakes despite every effort to keep it steady.

"Will you, now." I can hear the smile in it. "Go on, then. Ring them. Nothing on this earth is going to keep me from you, love — not tonight, not any night after it. You could have the whole of Scotland Yard standing in that shop and I'd still find my way to you eventually."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

"I'm hanging up," I say.

"I know."

I hang up.

I stand there a long moment, breathing hard, before I lift the receiver again and dial three numbers with a finger that won't quite hold still. Nine. Nine. Nine.

"Emergency, which service do you require?"

"Police," I say. "Please — police."

A pause, a click, and a new voice — calm, professional. "Police emergency, what's happened?"

"There's — I have a stalker." The words tumble out faster than I mean them to. "He keeps breaking into my house. He's been watching me sleep. He put a knife to my throat, more than once, and he calls, he leaves messages, he just — he won't stop—"

"Alright, I need your name first, please."

"Ophelia. Ophelia Sorrell."

"And are you in immediate danger right now, Ophelia?"

I glance around the empty shop, every shadow suddenly suspect. "I don't — I don't think so. I can't see him right now."

"Alright. If he appears, or if you feel unsafe at any point, you call us straight back, understood? We'll get someone out to take a full report as soon as we can."

"Thank you," I whisper, and hang up, my hands still trembling.

The rest of the day passes in an unbearable, watchful quiet. No knock. No note. No shape in the street. It should feel like relief. Instead it feels like something coiling itself tighter, waiting for exactly the moment I let my guard down.

I sell a handful of items over the course of the afternoon, and this time, I don't leave the till for my father to empty. I take nearly everything upstairs and hide it in the loose floorboard beneath my wardrobe, leaving only four pounds fifty in loose coins behind in the drawer — enough, I hope, to look plausible, not enough to buy him more than a single sorry pint. It isn't enough yet for the electric bill either, not nearly, but if I keep doing this, a little at a time, it will be, eventually. I am done funding his drinking while I can't even afford a coat that fits.

He comes down that evening, rifles through the till, and finds almost nothing. "Why's there so little today," he mutters, not quite looking at me.