I make the loop for a noose, and begin to tie the simple knot. I get it wrong, and try again, remembering how my father taught me. He told me it uses a lot of rope, but it doesn’t jam and doesn’t loosen too easily. On the second try, I get it right. I hang it up in front of my face. And then James is in the room on his motorbike — at least I think it’s him, but I can’t actually tell, because he is wearing a helmet that conceals his head. He rides around the room getting low on the corners, and flattening it out on the straights. Eventually, he stops and takes his helmet off. He is smiling that brilliant, bloody smile, and then he disappears.

I pick up the noose again, and my father says, You’ll be doing what he wants you to do. He nods towards the noose. When you’re done, he might even hang you up in a tree at our place. No one would be surprised.

No, they wouldn’t.

It will take you weeks to die in here if you don’t hang yourself. He’ll have to kill you. Make him kill you, my father says. The longer you’re here, the better chance that someone will come looking.

Who? I ask, and he is gone, right when I needed him. I undo the noose, and throw the rope across the room, then lie down flat on the floor, and sleep.

I am woken by Ben at the door. He has a bottle of water, another sandwich in a bag, and a plastic bucket, all in one hand. With the other hand, he points a revolver at me and says, ‘Move to the other end of the room.’ I shuffle my way over, and sit with my legs up, my forearms resting on my knees. He puts the food and drink down, watching me the whole time, then picks up the plate and the empty bottle, places the bucket in the corner, and says, ‘Shit in this.’

‘What are you going to do with me?’

He ignores me.

‘People will come looking pretty soon. You know that.’

‘No one is going to come looking. You buggered all that up, and you know it. No one gives a fuck about you.’

I want to say, ‘Yes they do,’ but I can’t find the conviction.

‘You still owe me a box.’ He says it in hard, flat tones so I don’t mistake him for a human being.

‘It had money in it. I spent it,’ I tell him.