Okay Sara we are leaving now. Do not forget to bolt up the door,” Sara’s mom advised as she, along with Sara’s dad, were leaving for the market.

“Okay, bye mama,” said Sara and locked the main door.

After seeing off the parents, Sara went to her room which was on the first floor. She had planned to practise her English debate.

She wanted her pronunciation to be accurate so for this, she was using a tape recorder; by recording her own voice and then after listening to it, detecting the mistakes.

Sara was getting fed up, because she was not getting the perfect result. She turned on the recorder’s button to practise for the last time, .

Hardly was she halfway through the debate when the doorbell interrupted her. She was already agitated and the sound of the bell really added fuel to the fire. Leaving the recorder running, she rushed towards the staircase, and during all this time the visitor kept on ringing the bell without waiting for the response — five times!

“Coming! Wait! I think you have forgotten to take away your finger from the button,” Sara muttered. And as she opened the door, two strangers, wearing black masks on their faces, forced their way in and tried to capture her but failed because Sara ran towards the stairs and reached her room with the strangers following her. As soon as Sara reached her room, she bolted the door from inside.

“Soon the door will be broken by them and they will… kill me, perhaps,” Sara thought to herself.

The masked men were banging the door continuously and violently. Sara was feeling very scared, she wanted to escape but how?

First she thought of jumping out of the window, but she was sure to get hurt. She was meditating about the situation when suddenly she got a bright idea but it was a bit risky too. However, she had to act on it as she was in a sticky situation.

She took off her shoe and kept it in the window sill and hung her scarf on the creeper that was near the window, it was merely as thick as a man’s leg near the ground level and became quite slender as it made its way up to the roof. Both these things made it seem as if someone had jumped down the window.

After doing this, she crept inside the bed and as she squeezed her whole body underneath, the door opened with a jerk.

Now, the men were inside the room. One of the men came near the bed to see whether the girl has hidden there. The man was going to bend, and Sara stiffed her upper lip, thinking that she was sure to be caught but fate was on her side.

“She had escaped by the window,” shouted the other man. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s catch her quickly or she’ll run away,” the other man shared his opinion.

They both ran down the stairs, but this time they were not strangers to Sara! She had recognised their voices. They were Uncle Javed and his son, Asim.

Uncle Javed’s family had shifted in their neighbourhood some months back and the surprising thing was that Uncle John was very friendly with Sara’s father. He probably knew about her parents’ plan of going out and leaving Sara alone at home.

She came out of the bed and rushed towards the telephone. “Hello, police station? I am Sara Farooqi, living in…”

The police reached her home and Sara’s parents too. After listening to the entire story, the police man said, “We cannot arrest them because we do not have any proof against them.” Sara was disappointed on hearing the police man’s comment.

“I have the proof! Got it!” she quickly added, “I left the tape on and I am hundred and one per cent sure that their voices are recorded in it,” she informed. Afterwards, with the help of that tape, the criminals were arrested.