Chapter One - i

All she wanted was some sleep, but it continued to elude her. Night after night she lay awake. She wasn’t stressed or worried about anything and this was what puzzled her the most. What on earth was keeping her awake? She was scheduled to visit her doctor on Thursday after work and her psychologist on Friday night. ‘Perhaps they will shed some light on this,’ she thought, she hoped they could at least. If she didn’t get some sleep soon she knew what would happen and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. Nothing she tried worked – warm baths and warm milk, aromatherapy and relaxation music. Even her Yoga Nidra routine wasn’t working, and it never failed, until now. She was loathed to use the pills, they gave her horrid dreams and she knew she would only wake in a terrified, cold sweat. The dreams always contained her worst-case scenarios, no, she could hold on till tomorrow’s visit to the doctor. If only….

Well, nothing she could do about it now. The dawn light was beginning to seep through the blinds and the birds were chirruping a cacophony. ‘That’s strange,’ she thought, as she rolled out of bed and her feet touched the cold floorboards beneath the bed, ‘they’re usually quite peaceful, I wonder if something is amiss?’ She wrapped her robe around her tightly, it was still crisp in the early mornings, and she went to the window. Drawing open the blinds, she looked out over the street to the park opposite her apartment. A pack of stray dogs were encircling something that she couldn’t quite make out. ‘That’s what all the noise is about, whatever could it be?’ She hurriedly slipped into her jeans and sweater and pulled on her boots, no time for socks or hairbrush, those dogs could attack at any moment!

She grabbed her tennis racquet as she raced out the door and down the two flights of stairs. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic at this time of the morning and she was able to cross the road straight over to the park. “Hey!” she called out; “Hey!” the dogs ignored her. One of the larger ones growled and barred its teeth. She shivered, she still could not make it out, but she could hear a faint whimpering. “Hey!” she yelled again and began swinging the racquet close to the ground, it hit one of the smaller dogs and it scampered away to a safe distance. The larger dogs continued to growl and bear their ferocious teeth, but Kate had now managed to beat a path through them and she could make out what they had encircled. It was a small child; she couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl. “Hey!” she called, “It’s all right, just hang on, I’m going to pick you up.” She threw the racquet hard at the largest of the dogs and bent to gather up the child, keeping her head up and her eyes on the dogs all the while. The racquet had hit the largest of the dogs square on its snout and it had cowered, backing away a little. It was obviously the leader, for as soon as it did this the other dogs also backed away and ceased growling. She gathered the small child in close and whispered softly, “Its okay now, you’re safe.”