He was trying to come in the window

Just to give you some background information, I am a 29 year-old female and this happened to me 4 years ago. My family lived on a farm in rural outback Western Australia (just north of Geraldton) in a modest-looking wooden farmhouse. My son and I lived here alone most of the time, while my husband worked on rotation up north on the mines.

We had no neighbours, no mobile phone reception and very little connection with the outside world with the exception of the television. There was only one window in the house, situated above my bed in the bedroom. It was a small old wooden framed window with no curtains. However the window was completely jammed and as much as I had tried to close it, there was about 2 inches of opening near the bottom of the window frame. My husband and I had spent a while trying to oil the hinges and loosen it up the day before he left to go to work again, but we gave up as it wasn’t a huge issue at the time…

Fast forward to a couple of nights later, I am standing in front of the television doing the ironing and watching Sex and the City reruns while my son is asleep in my bed. As I walk up the hallway to enter the laundry to grab another load of washing, I pass my bedroom and pop my head in to check on my son. My heart stops. The window frame above my bed is shuffling from side to side, my eyes scan down and what I see next will never leave my mind again. There were two hands squeezed through the gap of my window trying to lift up the jammed frame. I screamed the house down, grabbed my son, the phone and locked myself in the bathroom and called the police.

I’d hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t have been walking past my bedroom at that exact moment…