Emily woke up before her alarm went off and knew instantly something wasn’t quite right in the house. Bailey, her chocolate-coloured pet Labrador, should have been there at the bedroom door demanding food but there was no sound of him. She decided to get up and go and see where he was. It felt cold in the hall but she knew she had left the heating on last night. As she walked down the stairs she heard a noise in the kitchen; the strange feeling that something was wrong was getting stronger. What was going on? She got to the bottom of the stairs and opened the door to the living room, which led to the kitchen. Why was the door closed? She always left it open. Bailey was nowhere to be seen and his toys, which were usually all over the living room floor, were in a neat pile in the corner next to his basket. Had they been there when she had gone to bed last night? She couldn’t remember.

She walked into the kitchen and turned the light on, it didn’t work, nothing happened. She stood very still and listened, nothing. There wasn’t a sound. That was really strange; she lived in the middle of a busy city, there were always people around. She woke up to the sound of traffic, car horns, police cars, her neighbors shouting in the house next door. How could there be silence at 8 o’clock on a Friday morning? She went back into the living room and turned the TV on, but again nothing happened. She went back into the kitchen and looked out of the window; it was a bright clear day.

The back door was shut but when she tried the handle she realised it was unlocked. She walked out into the tiny back garden and opened the back gate; still nothing, not a sound and no sign of Bailey. She called him but he didn’t come. She went back into the house and did what she realized she should have done as soon as she got up and called her mother. But there was no answer. She called her boyfriend but his mobile was switched off and she got the answer phone message. She tried a couple of other numbers but with equal success. She sat down on the sofa and thought about what she could do.

She couldn’t decide if she should stay at home or go out and find someone. Just as she decided the best thing would be to stay at home and wait, there was a loud banging on the front door. She jumped up and ran to the door. “Who is it?” she shouted through the door. “It’s me,” came the reply. But she had no idea who “me” was. She didn’t want to open the door until she was sure she knew who it was, not with all the other strange things that were happening this morning, and she didn’t want to shout through the thick front door, so she walked back into the living room and tried to look through the front window to see who was standing at the front door. It was a man but she couldn’t make out who he was; he didn’t look familiar.

He was tall and was wearing a big coat with a hood over his head. Just as she was thinking of running out the back door she saw that the man had Bailey with him, and Bailey seemed quite happy, which meant that the man had to be someone he knew and liked; he would have been barking otherwise. She still wasn’t taking any chances though; she put the safety latch on the door and opened it just enough to see who was there. She was instantly relieved; it was her brother, who lived just a few streets away. She opened the door all the way and let him in. As he walked through the door he was almost knocked over by Bailey jumping up and looking more pleased than ever to see her. “So what’s going on?” she asked her brother. He looked at her as if she was stupid.

“Haven’t you heard?”