Susan Illingworth woke up as soon as she heard the sound.  Ever since she and Rupert had upped and left Bradford to make Rupert's next million in Brighton, she had been nervous.  The south of England was a frightening place, packed with unhappy, uncommunicative people, rude and brusque, whereas she was used to the friendliness of her fellow Yorkshiremen.  She had tried to become part of the community, but people, in her eyes at least, held up her broad accent as an indication of being too working class for Brighton society.  Despite Rupert's attempts to placate her, all she had wanted to do was go back home.

Back to safety.

Here they were, living in what was supposed to be a fashionable and safe area of the town, overlooking the sea and Rupert's wretched golf courses and still she awoke nightly as soon as a car door slammed, or a voice carried from the road or Volks' electric beach-front railway terminus, which was a popular haunt for the down-and-outs.

But this sound was different from the usual ones.  This was clearly outside their home, outside their front door.  She glanced over to the clock - surely no one would be outside the house at this time?

She was going to nudge Rupert awake, but knew he'd grumpily say she was imagining things and to go back to sleep.  He would do so with ease and she would spend another sleepless night believing they were going to be murdered in their beds.

This was too much.  She was being silly.  A glass of warm milk would settle her - and to get down to the kitchen, she didn't have to go that near the front door either.

As she eased out of bed, Rupert stirred, but rapidly turned over and carried on steeping.  She put on her silk dressing gown, slipped her feet into some slippers and left the bedroom, crossing the hallway and descending the stairs, casting only a brief look towards the front door.

Had Susan Illingworth, beloved wife of Rupert Illingworth, owner and chairman of Brighton Information Technologies, liked cats, she might have remembered old wives' tales concerning felines and how curiosity tended to curtail their string of nine lives.  If she had thought about that, or even if she had stuck by her normal timid code of conduct, she might have avoided the next few moments.  As it was, the moment she took a step towards the front door, she set irrevocable events in motion.

She peered through the tiny spyhole in the door, expecting to see nothing.  However, what greeted her was a tall, dark-haired girl in jeans and a red jacket, one of those personal stereo things so favoured by the youngsters of Brighton blaring music into her ears.  It was the indistinct but steady drone of unrecognisable noise that Susan hated so much about them.  If the music was identifiable, it was not such nuisance, but standing behind people in shops when all you could hear was a distorted version of the higher notes was aggravating to say the least.

And why was this girl standing on her doorstep, listening t music at three in the morning?  The front door of the house was at the top of a small set of concrete steps which rose from a narrow from the shrub-enclosed gate, so this was no casual dossing about.  And standing at that gate Susan could see two figures in white, with the hint of some white estate car parked in the road.  They looked like nurses, dressed in those strange tunics that buttoned up the side - Nehru jackets - and wearing spotless white trousers.