Night Of Fear

She took her things one by one out of her bag and put them away carefully. She thought about her home in Easingstoke, with flowers in all the rooms and photographs of the family.

She thought about her poor brother, working so hard. She felt a little sad, but only for a minute.

Her time in France was to be quite short. She was going to be home again soon. Now she must get a good night's sleep.

But first that hot bath...She took off her day things and put on her nightdress.

Then she picked up her washing things and went to the bathroom, closing her bedroom door quietly.

She lay in the hot water and thought about the nice young girl in the hotel getting her bath ready.

People in this hotel were very friendly- always ready to help. There was so much she wanted to tell her brother when she got home.

She got out of the bath and put on her nightdress again. She cleaned the bath very carefully. She did not want French people to think that the English were dirty.

Then she left the bathroom and went back to her bedroom. She went in quickly, put on the light and shut the door.

Then, one of those unlucky things happened: the door-handle came off in her hand. She tried to put the handle back on the door but she could not.

"How do I do it?" she thought.

"It is going to be very difficult to open the door now. Do I ask that nice girl to come and help me? Perhaps by now she is in bed."

She turned away from the door, and suddenly, she saw something much, much worse than the door-handle.

There was a man in her bed! She took one look at his thick black hair and his big black moustache and immediately felt quite ill with fear. For a minute or two, she could not think.

Then her first thought was: "I must not scream!"

She stood there but she could not move. She just looked at the man's dark head and the big line of his back under the bedthings. She began to think very quickly.

Her next thought was: "I am in the wrong room. It is the man's room."

She could see his jacket and trousers lying on a chair and his big black shoes on the floor. She must get out quickly. But how? She tried again to open the door with her fingers but she could not.

Here she was, shut in a hotel room with an unknown man- a Frenchman! She must think, she must think! She turned off the light.

"Perhaps with the light off, he is not going to wake up," she thought.

'That gives me more time to do something. But if he does wake up, what do I do? He is not going to believe my story. Nobody is going to believe me. In England perhaps but not here. How can they understand? So, I must get out of this room. By waking him? By screaming? By calling the young girl?"

"No, it is no good. If I scream or call out, people are going to come running immediately. And what do they find? She is from Easingstoke in a man's bedroom after twelve o'clock at night. Just think of all the talk back home when my friends hear about that! And if I climb out of the window?"

She thought of the big hairy man pulling her back by the legs as she tried to get out. He could wake up at any minute.

She thought that she heard somebody going past outside the door. But it was too late to scream now.

Suddenly, she had an idea. It was now nearly one o'clock in the morning. Perhaps the sleeping man was not dangerous. At seven or eight o'clock, he must get up and go out to work.