The first thing I noticed was the light – bright light, into my eyes, which were closed.

My mouth was dry; I couldn’t open it at first.

Had I been asleep?

For a moment I couldn’t feel my arms, then I realised they were tied behind me, tightly. Everything from my shoulders to my fingertips ached, suddenly and powerfully.

Handcuffs.

I forced my eyes open, panicking now, to see that I was lying on my side, the side of my face pressed into the carpet. Grey carpet, familiar. At home, then, in the spare bedroom.

I twisted my face around as far as possible, but I couldn’t see much. It took a few moments for me to remember where I’d been going, and what happened, and when I remembered it, it came like a crushing, weighty blow. I’d been going to escape. I had been… so… close…

There was no sign of him in here, at least, but I knew he couldn’t be far away. I had no idea how long I had before he came back, so I forced myself to think.

My head hurt. I couldn’t tell, at first, if it was because of lying in such an unnatural position for so long, or if he’d hit me. Every thought felt laboured and painful.

From the airport… back home… he must have driven me, in his car. I don’t remember it. It must have been several hours. I don’t remember any of it.

I had no idea what the time was, and I couldn’t even tell if it was still daylight, because the overhead light was on. The curtains must be closed.

I tried to stretch my legs out, but they seemed to be tied up to my wrists somehow. I was completely hogtied. I could not move at all. I tried to roll over onto my back but had to stop that immediately because every movement was incredibly painful. My head was swimming and for a moment I could see nothing but stars.

What happened? I needed to think. I had to concentrate on this. It was too important.

He said he was arresting me… the people standing watching, and some of them walking past as though nothing whatsoever was going on. He showed his warrant card to the security guards – then they were asking him if he needed any help. I must have been fighting. Dragging me away. I’d been shouting, trying to tell them that he was kidnapping me, he was going to hurt me, but of course they must have all just thought I was a raving mad woman. I would have thought the same, if I’d been in an airport, waiting for my flight to be called, off on holiday somewhere hot, somewhere exotic. Perhaps going on honeymoon, or just somewhere on a business trip. Raving mad woman, being arrested. Drugs, probably. A business trip. Maybe to New York.

I wondered what had happened to my suitcase. They must have pulled it off the plane somehow. I bet the flight was delayed.

How long would it be before I was missed? I wasn’t due to start work until Tuesday – three days. Before that, the landlady of Jonathan’s apartment would likely just assume I was getting a later flight. If she even noticed I wasn’t there. Lee could do a lot of damage in four days.

Tears rolled from my eyes to my nose, dripping off the end and onto the carpet.

How long before he came back? I couldn’t move. He couldn’t just leave me here, surely? I needed to find out what he was planning to do. If he was just going to kill me, I would be dead already. Whatever it was would probably be worse.

Almost as I had that thought, I heard the sounds – the stairs creaking, the sound I remembered from lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, waiting for him to come upstairs, wondering if he would be in a good mood and if he’d leave me in peace.

The door to the spare room was shut, and I heard a key turning, close by. I hadn’t even realised the spare room door had a lock. I’d never needed it before. Just one key, then.

I felt him pulling at the back of my head, and it hurt – pulling my hair. He was untying the gag. I hadn’t realised I was gagged, but I was – with some sort of cloth. And underneath it, the corners of my mouth sore, crusted with blood. I felt fresh blood start to trickle when he pulled the cloth away. I tried to speak but all that came out was a groan. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to look at him. I never wanted to see his face again.

‘If I undo the cuffs, are you going to behave?’ he asked. His voice was calm, controlled. He wasn’t drunk, then. That was something.

I nodded, my cheek scraping against the carpet. It still smelled new. I felt him grab one of my wrists and unlock the cuffs, the rasping rattle as they came away. My arms contracted and I cried out with the agony of the sudden movement.

‘Shut up,’ he said, his voice still calm, ‘or I’ll knock you out again.’

I bit my lip, the tears pouring. Now the cuffs had gone, I could stretch my legs out, although that too was incredibly painful. So much for fighting back, I thought. I could barely move.

After a while, stretched out on my side, I thought I could manage to sit up. I tried to raise myself on one elbow, opened my eyes. The room swam. I could see my arm, my wrist in front of my face, swollen, the skin grazed and raw where the cuffs had chafed.

He waited there, patiently, watching me while I struggled again and again to sit up. When I managed it, and looked at him, he was sitting on the floor with his back to the door, his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked pleased with himself. I wiped the back of one hand over my mouth. It came away bloody, but not much. My head still thumped. He must have hit me somewhere to knock me out.

I was still wearing the suit – the navy blue suit I’d chosen for the journey to New York because it wouldn’t crease. Well, it was creased now. The jacket was torn across one shoulder, I could feel it give as I moved. The skirt was undone at the back. Had he tried to undress me?

My ankles had rope round them, a blue nylon rope, not very thick, loose at one end. It must have been looped around the cuffs somehow. I wanted to reach down and untie them, but I had no energy at all.

‘D-did you drug me?’ I asked, my voice barely there. My throat was dry.

He laughed. ‘Is that the only question you have for me?’

I gave a barely perceptible shrug. It had seemed like a good question a moment ago, but it suddenly wasn’t relevant any more.

How did you find me? I wanted to ask. How did you know? How did you get down to Heathrow so quickly? And above all, why…? Why hadn’t my plan worked? Why wasn’t I on a plane, somewhere over the Atlantic? Why wasn’t I in New York already?

‘They’ll miss me,’ I said. ‘When I don’t turn up in New York they’ll report me missing. Someone will come looking for me.’

‘Who will?’

‘My friend. He’s going to give me a job in New York.’

‘Your friend? You mean Jonathan Baldwin?’

My blood ran cold at the sound of that name on Lee’s lips.

‘What? What did you say?’

He reached behind and pulled something out of the back pocket of his jeans, threw it towards me. It was a business card. I picked it up with numbed fingers. On one side, in neat black letters in a corporate design of green and gold, I read:

I turned the card over. On the back, in my handwriting, was written:

‘It was in your organiser,’ he said, ‘and you fucking fell for it, every bloody word of it. I always knew you were naïve, Catherine, but I didn’t realise you were that stupid.’

So there was no job in New York. No flat waiting for me. No escape. And nobody to notice my absence: nobody in New York, and nobody here either. It might be weeks, months even before anyone realised I was gone. By that time I would be dead. I felt a huge wave of despair, a black cloud which made it difficult to focus on anything other than the pain. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t. I’d spoken to him, he’d emailed me, it hadn’t been Lee, it had been a different man, a deeper voice, a different accent. Jonathan was a real person, I remembered him. Lee couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t have.

‘You set me up?’ I sobbed. ‘You set all this up?’

‘In my last job, I used to do stings like this all the time. People who are committing crime are suspicious, they sometimes take ages to convince. But you fell for it straight away, didn’t you? And you didn’t even hesitate. You didn’t even think about whether it was the right thing to do. You just jumped at the chance to fuck off and leave me behind.’

So it was true. He’d played me, he’d taken my need to escape and used it against me. There was nothing I could do. All those moments when I’d seen blue sky, when I’d seen that hint of freedom, I had still been in the cage.

My question, the question, had formed itself in the black fog of my brain. ‘What are you going to do?’

That got him thinking. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, but I could tell he was concentrating.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said at last.

‘You can let me go,’ I said.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said straight away. ‘You’re mine, you know that. You tried to leave me. I gave you chances, Catherine. I gave you so many fucking chances. And you let me down.’

‘You know you can’t keep me here forever. They will find out. You’ll lose your job.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah, right. You mean if I’m planning to do anything, I’d better finish you off?’

I nodded.

‘You want me to kill you?’ he said, curiously.

I nodded again. All the fight in me had gone. I wanted it over with.

He got up, suddenly, stood over me. I started to feel sick. ‘You see, that’s what I fucking hate about you, Catherine,’ he said, his voice a growl. ‘You just give in too fucking easily.’

He nudged me with his knee and I toppled back onto the carpet, struggling back up to a sitting position, tears and snot running down my face into the corners of my stinging mouth.

I waited for the blow. I waited for the smack to the head, the punch, or the kick. I wanted it. I braced myself, but I longed for it too. I coveted the oblivion.

When he next spoke, it was through gritted teeth, as though he was so disgusted by me that he could hardly bring himself to speak. ‘You’re a piece of filth. You’re a dirty, slutty whore, Catherine. I can’t decide whether to kill you, fuck you or just piss on you.’

I let out a sob, as I heard the sound of his jeans being unzipped, and seconds later the warm wet splashing of his piss over my hair, the remains of my smart suit, the new grey carpet. I cried, trying to keep my eyes and my mouth shut so none of it would go in. The sound of it, the smell of it. I started to retch.

When he’d finished he left the room for a minute, leaving the door wide open. I started to crawl towards it, seeing the hallway outside, the bathroom beyond, but before I got there he was back. A bucket of cold water, the sponge that I used to clean the bath out, a bar of soap. The water smelled like bleach as he dropped the bucket onto the carpet.

‘Clean yourself up, you cunt,’ he said.

Then he left the room, locking it behind him.

I howled. But he hadn’t put the handcuffs back on.