When Danger Follows by Maggi Andersen

him last night. We went to the theatre together.” Caitlin pulled her coat on again. “I have to speak to the Garda.”
    “I’ll get someone to cover for you,” Fiona called, as Caitlin rushed down the hall.
    She trembled as she sat in the local Garda station. A Detective Cummins asked her questions and filled in the gaps. Blaine had been walking home as she had, only a few blocks away. He’d been callously knocked down and left for dead on the road.
    Poor Blaine, Caitlin couldn’t get her head around the thought that he’d been killed just because he knew her. She was sure Max was behind it. The policeman listened quietly as she told him how something similar had happened to her.
    “And you believe your ex-boyfriend, Maxwell Haughton, might have run down Blaine Tremlow?”
    “Yes. I’m positive. Don’t just sit here talking to me, you have to find him.”
    The policeman observed her calmly. “You believe that he tried to kill you too?”
    “Not kill, no. He swerved to avoid me. He’s toying with me, like a cat with a mouse.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “He told me weeks ago that if I saw other men there’d be trouble,” Caitlin said.
    The detective wrote something down. “Has he ever been violent towards you?”
    “No, but—”
    He tapped a pen against the desk. “How can you be sure that the two events are connected?”
    “He’s been following me, I tell you. Breaking into my apartment. Ringing my phone and not answering. It’s Maxwell Haughton, I’m positive.”
    He leaned forward. “When do you think he last followed you?”
    Caitlin felt deadening exhaustion sweep over her. “Last night. I saw a man—”
    “What sort of car does Haughton drive?”
    “An old Austin Healey sports car,” she said, as he wrote it down. “But—”
    “Didn’t you say the car that almost ran you down was a silver sedan?”
    “I’m trying to tell you, Max’s family keep several cars in Dublin.”
    “At their home address?”
    She shook her head miserably. “They own more than one property. Garaging somewhere.”
    He threw down his pen and stood up. “We’ll contact him.” He gazed down at her. “I hope you’re wrong about Haughton, Miz Fitzgerald, or the day might come when he’ll stop playing with you. Be careful. Mice are eaten in the end.”
    A week later, the detective contacted her. Max had caught the ferry to Wales and disappeared. They needed more evidence to take it further and she couldn’t supply it. If only she’d been able to identify him as the driver of the car.
    He’d slipped away to England. Did that mean she was safe? She didn’t feel safe.
    Caitlin continued to sleep badly. She had trouble with her breathing every time she left the flat. One night, when she was alone in a train, her heart began to hammer and sweat ran down her neck. She panted, feeling as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the carriage by some malevolent force. Frightened, she consulted a doctor who told her she’d suffered a panic attack. He wrote her a subscription for sleeping pills and sedatives. She refused to take the sedatives, feeling she needed her wits about her, but took the sleeping pills every night. It was the only thing that stopped her lying awake, peering into the darkness. She would wake feeling doped but it helped to shut out the worry for a few hours.
    Caitlin knew this couldn’t go on. The Garda wouldn’t get Max. He was too smart. Her depression grew as her life in Dublin turned into a nightmare.
    On the way home from work one afternoon, she walked into a job centre. They didn’t have any teaching jobs on their books far enough away. England, Scotland and Wales were out of the question. On the notice board, she saw a position for a governess in the Australia Outback It wasn’t what she planned for her career, but she applied for it. Surely Max couldn’t reach her at a cattle station in the middle of nowhere.
    But now, after seeing Conor at Springbroke, she wasn’t so