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She wasn’t, not a
hundred per cent, but even so she fished the totally illegal can of Mace she had bought online out of her handbag before cautiously inserting her key in the lock.  But there was no need to turn it; the dark-green, paneled front door swung inwards under the pressure of her hand alone.

Shit, shit,
shit!  I
knew
I left it on!  And I sure as hell closed the front door when I left!  Burglars!  I’ve been bloody burgled oh God please don’t let them still be in there please let them have gone!

She screwed up all her courage and, taking a deep breath, pushed the door wide open and flapped frantically at the light switch.  Bright light flooded the yellow-painted hallway and no one shouted, no one mad
e a run for it or attacked her; all was still.  Even so her heart was hammering wildly as she started inching her way up the hall towards the living room.  The door was slightly ajar and she kicked it open all the way before stepping quickly back, but still nothing stirred.  A wild hope burgeoned in her heart that they really
had
gone but even so she crept into the living room like a burglar herself, her can of Mace held high in a slightly shaking hand.  In a sharp, stabbing motion she flicked on the living room light and once again stepped back, ready to flee, but she immediately saw that the room was empty.  She blinked, for a fraction of a second surprised out of even her fear; the once pretty room had quite literally been turned upside down.  A mélange of furniture, books and pictures was strewn all over the room in a chaotic jumble, with broken glasses and vases and even flowers scattered on top.  Even the rugs had been flung aside and the broken telly was lying facedown on the floor.

A bright spark of anger flamed inside her, which had the bene
fit of damping down the fear, and she moved swiftly into the room and crossed to the far wall. She couldn’t face repeating this slow, timid investigation in the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen; there was a quicker, simpler way of finding out if any intruders were still there.  Moving to the far corner of the room, well out of the path of either of the two exits from the flat, she opened her mouth wide and screamed as loudly and as piercingly as she could, for as long as she possibly could.

She ran out of breath after what seemed an eternity and stood very still, listening intently; there was no
movement, no sound of running footsteps, no scrambling for the front door; it looked like the flat was empty after all.  She let her breath out in a long sigh of relief; no burglar in his right mind would have hung around after hearing that scream, that was for certain.

What about those
not
in their right minds?
a small, chill voice in the back of her mind asked her,
What if it’s a maniac waiting to rape and murder you?
  She pushed that thought away and remained standing where she was for what seemed a very long minute but still she could hear no signs of life.  Refusing to consciously wish that Peter or
any
man was there to do it for her she cautiously proceeded to search the rest of her apartment, still nervous but not as frightened as she had been; she knew in her mind, if not her heart, that any burglar would have run from that scream.

‘Let’s just hope the bastard’s not deaf,’ she sa
id loudly, and then gave a giggle that was a little too close to hysteria for comfort.  But she searched the entire flat nonetheless.  And found nothing but the same indescribable mess everywhere.

She returned to the
living room, shaking now from nervous reaction and with the first seeds of angry horror forming. 
The dirty, rotten, vicious bastards!  How dared they?  How
dared
they?

And she u
nderstood for the first time why so many people compared burglary to rape.  She wasn’t physically hurt but she felt violated and dirty and
unsafe. 
And as if some gyroscope inside her was broken, leaving her disorientated and confused and close to tears. 
The dirty, rotten
bastards!  Invading her privacy, pawing through her things, stealing or smashing everything they came across.  The insolence, the sheer
effrontery
of them!  As if they had the
right
to do this to her, to force their way into
her
home!  At that moment she would quite happily have voted for the death penalty for burglars.  She might even have volunteered to carry out the executions.

A
furtive movement in the hall made her jump and a squeak of fear escaped her suddenly tight throat, but fortunately she instantly recognized the elderly, balding man who entered the room as Brendan Kelly, one of her neighbors above.  He was wearing pyjamas and a bathrobe, and he was blinking uncertainly in the bright light as he entered the living room.  ‘Er, is everything all right?  We thought we heard... Oh my God!’

Kate gave him a lop-sided
, slightly teary smile, ‘No, I don’t think it was Him, but yes, I have had an unexpected visitor.  Quite a mess, eh?’

Kelly gazed around in shocked but also fascinated horror, his eyes enormous behind his thick glasses, ‘The
state
of the place... Have you phoned the police?’

Kate shook her head, ‘I haven’
t had time, I only just got in.’  She felt closer to tears than ever and bit her lip in anger; she was
not
going to cry.  But a tear crept down her cheek in spite of her resolution.

The tear
galvanized her neighbor into action, very much the man on the scene taking charge now that womanly weakness had been evinced.

‘I’ll
call them for you,’ he said in a firm, authoritative voice, ‘And then I’m taking you upstairs for a cup of tea while we wait for them to arrive.’  He gave her a shy, timid smile at odds with his bossy manner, ‘And I’ll get the wife to make up the spare bed for you.  You won’t want to stay here tonight.’

Kate shook her head, wanting to protest.  Wanting to say
that staying elsewhere would mean giving in to the bastards, would mean losing more than just possessions to them.  But she said nothing as she immediately realized that she really
didn’t
want to stay there that night.  And in any case it might not be safe; the bastards could come back.

She almost stopped Kelly as he went into the hall to the phone but then
realized she was being foolish; if it had to be done it was best to get it over and done with.  Besides, if the culprit was still in the area the Garda might even catch him.  Possibly burgling someone else in the neighborhood; from her liaison with the Oxford police she knew that burglars would often hit several properties in the one night, to ensure a good haul.  And let’s face it, he or they were unlikely to have gathered much loot from
her
.

Knowing that she should be checking to see what was missing but unabl
e to face it just then, Kate dragged her favorite armchair upright and sank dejectedly into it.  She looked around at the devastation with rising fury and, for the first time in her life, wished that she smoked; a cigarette might have helped calm her jangling nerves and shaking hands.  No, on second thoughts perhaps it was just as well she didn’t smoke; if she had matches in her hand at that moment the temptation to simply torch the place and walk away might prove too strong.  And it wouldn’t have been any great loss; she had not yet lived there long enough for the flat to become truly a home to her, and after this she doubted it ever would.

She shook her head slowly, in disgust and rage, but shed no more tears; they might not be there to see it but she still wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction of making her cry.

       Kate woke up slowly and reluctantly, dragging herself from the depths of sleep only with an effort.  She lay and stared with unseeing eyes at the white ceiling above her head for two or three confused seconds, her mind a blank, until she realized that this was not
her
bed.  It wasn’t even her apartment, and that thought brought the full memory of the previous night’s events crashing into her mind, bringing her fully awake and causing her to sit up abruptly.

Feeling as though she was suffering from the mother of all hangovers, she looked around at the Kelly’s blue-painted, sparsely furnished spare room as every detail of the previous night crawled through her mind with a clarity she could have lived without.
So it had really happened then; it wasn’t all just a bad dream. 
Shit.

She slowly got out of the lumpy old
double bed and looked at her watch;
God
Almighty, it was almost eleven o’clock!
  It wasn’t like her to sleep in on a school day but then, she wasn’t burgled every night either.  Nor did she commonly have to sit up until almost seven in the morning trying to answer routine questions from clearly disinterested policemen.  Make that
bored
policemen, who clearly felt that they had more important things to do, and that chasing random burglars was a waste of time and effort.  The two Gardai who had eventually turned up, a good two hours after being called, hadn’t even pretended there was any hope of catching the perpetrators, or recovering her stuff.

S
he put on the same flimsy black dress she had been wearing the previous evening, thinking to herself;
wha
t
stuff? 
She hadn’t hung around her apartment to wait for the police, hadn’t even thought of changing her clothes, but instead had immediately accompanied Mr. Kelly upstairs to await them on neutral ground.  So she didn’t even know what was missing yet, apart from a couple of obvious absentees like her laptop and the DVD player.  And she wasn’t keen to go back down there and start finding out, even though she had agreed to ring the Garda Station in Blackrock before lunch with a list of the missing items.

She opened the door and went out into the hall, where Lucy Kelly was just putting away the vacuum cleaner that had probably been the cause of her waking
up.  Her neighbor was a heavy, gray-haired woman in her sixties who strongly favored tweeds and sensible shoes, with whom Kate had never got beyond the “nodding and smiling in the street” stage.  Until now, of course; being the victim of a crime like burglary could change your life in many unexpected ways.

‘Oh dear,’ fluttered Lucy when Kate appeared, h
er faded brown eyes concerned, ‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’

Kate managed a smile in spit
e of her mood, ‘No, of course not.  It’s past time I was up anyway.  I have
so
much to do today.’

‘Of course.  But you’r
e not doing anything until you’ve had a nice cup of tea and something to eat.  It’s like the old Royal Navy; they never sent men into battle on an empty stomach.  You’re not going into battle, of course, but the principle holds true for any unpleasant duty.  Once you’ve had breakfast we’ll start sorting things out together.’

Kate didn’t much care for her
neighbor’s unctuous, instant sympathy and had a sudden, repellent image of Mrs. Kelly gossiping about all this with her friends, showing them all how caring and generous she was, and so ready to rise to any occasion and help out a neighbor in distress.  Then she realized that she was being an ungrateful bitch, taking her frustration out on the nearest available candidate since she couldn’t reach those who truly deserved it.  So she gave another, more heart-felt smile and said, ‘That would be great, thank you.  But I have a lecture at half-eleven that I’m going to miss and I really should ring the University and tell them.  Could I possibly use your phone?  I forgot to charge my mobile last night and the battery’s dead.’

Lucy
waved a hand towards the phone mounted on the hall wall, ‘Of course! Go right ahead, I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re finished.’

She bustled off, a heavy, matronly woman who in truth did seem to be enjoying the drama
just a little, leaving Kate to dial the administration office in Trinity.  After several delays she finally got through to the Bursar’s secretary, a less than pleasant woman with whom Kate had clashed several times before.  Kate briefly told her that she wasn’t going to be in that morning, and why, whereupon the secretary sucked in her breath and said glacially, ‘You really should give us more warning if you’re going to miss a day, you know, Ms. Bennett!  There are strict procedures for unscheduled days off, as you’re perfectly aware.’

This
wasn’t the morning for listening to rubbish like this but Kate managed to keep her temper.  Rather than scarifying the officious hag, as was her first instinct, she instead said, in her sweetest voice, ‘I couldn’t give any notice because the bastards who broke in and destroyed my apartment didn’t give
me
any warning!  If I had known a week ago that I was going to be burgled I could have given you plenty of notice, but unfortunately burglars don’t give a shit about you or your procedures, and they weren’t so obliging as to inform me that they were coming!  Thank you
so
much for your sympathy and concern!’