By Heather Allen
Julia lay in her bed, slightly annoyed with herself that she had woken up, but also a little uneasy. She looked at her clock. 2.48am. A cursed time. Maybe one day she might actually get to stay asleep all night. She turned over, tried to settle down, but there was still that uneasy feeling. Something had woken her. It wasn’t her usual random night-time waking. She lay in the dark, listening.
The house sounded different. Silence, but there was a quality to that silence as if it was listening, too. There! Something – a soft ‘thump’ as if something had been dropped in the living room below. Her heart quickened. She knew there should be no-one there. She had no pets, and she had been alone since – but there it was again, another thump, and then a sound that turned her blood to ice.
Someone was whistling. In the dark, downstairs, where no-one had any business being. The sound was faint, but clear. The piece was one she knew very well. Barber’s Adagio – it had been one of his favourite pieces. Complex for a whistling tune, but still, if it’s in your head, he would say, you can dum-dum, or hum, or la-la, but nothing beats a pursing of the lips and a good old whistle, does it?
She must be going mad. It sounded like him, downstairs, but it couldn’t be, it couldn’t because –
Her heart pounding in her ears, she slid out of bed and crept downstairs. The whistling grew lounder as she approached the living room door. There was another soft thump. That’s what he’s doing, she thought, he’s going through the books, finding something, a reference, as he does. Did. On the other side of that door. She pictured him as he whistled his way to the end of the first movement, flicking through a book, putting it down, pulling out another, his glasses on his nose, his lips pursed. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The whistling stopped. A cold blast of air hit her. The French doors were open – had she left them like that? – and a pile of books was on the coffee table, but there was no one there. Certainly not her husband, God rest his beautiful soul.