It is Elaine. She is cautious, and quietly spoken. It takes me a while to lift my head, and by then she has already walked into the room and is staring at me. ‘God. What happened here?’

‘Ben. Go away.’

She scans the room. It’s not that much worse than it was before. ‘We didn’t know where you were. Marko said you were probably just camping or something.’

She sits down next to me. I do not look at her, and I’m not even sure she is real. ‘I was too frightened to ring, because I knew you’d made a decision about me. But then Marko called, wondering where you were, and I started to worry that you’d done something to yourself. I’ve been ringing and ringing.’

I don’t talk, hoping she’ll realise I want her to go away, but she doesn’t take the hint, so I say, ‘Ben kidnapped me.’

‘He what?’

‘Held me hostage in his cool room.’

‘No he didn’t.’

‘Yes he did. Your friend. He just let me out.’

Elaine jumps up. ‘He can’t do that. We’ve got to tell the police’.

‘What do I tell them?’

‘The truth.’

She takes out a phone, and begins talking to someone. I think she has called the police, but then I hear it is Marko. She ends the conversation by saying, ‘Yeah, tell everyone.’

I close my eyes, and wish they would all just go away.

‘You need to tell the police,’ she says again.

‘I haven’t got any evidence. Just my accusation.’

‘We’ll find some evidence.’

‘I don’t think I can trust you.’

‘You can trust me. I did the wrong thing, but I didn’t know what I was involved in.’

We sit still and silently. I don’t have the strength or the energy to work out if she is telling the truth. Ben will do whatever he wants to, and there is nothing I can do about it. I can hear her breathing, and I don’t want to. No one can go back. Nothing can be taken back.

Then I hear her leave the house through the front door. My body relaxes, and I can feel my face flatten. I am alone.

But she soon returns.

‘This arrived for you in a small box.’

‘Of course it did.’ I can’t look at her or hear the mention of another box. It is more evidence that my existence is just repetition, and new ways to experience pain. I’m sure that at any moment Buzzcut and his friends will be at my door, demanding to know where the crockery is.

‘Look at it, Dave, please.’

I bury my head in my hands, and then sit up and begin to slap myself hard, suddenly grasping the possibility that this is all just a hallucination brought on by alcohol withdrawal. But nothing changes.