One thought keeps jostling its way to the front of my mind. There are still two women in that cellar. They can’t be left to the life that Thea and the doctor have planned for them – the domestic slavery, the weird games of trust. I may not have a clue how to solve my own problems, but thinking of them distracts me for a while.

I had persuaded myself that Hannah didn’t abduct a baby, but I realise now that my conviction allowed me also to believe that I didn’t kill Ian, and I was wrong about that. So if I make an anonymous call to the police about Hannah, will I be committing her to a life in prison for kidnap or will I be freeing her from Thea and Garrick?

And what about the other woman who was in the cellar with us – the one whose name I never discovered? What is her story?

I have a momentary flashback of the man who came to the house – the man called Vincent who shouted at Thea. He had wanted to see Judith. If she wasn’t one of the women in the basement with me, then who was she – and more to the point, where was she? I had lived upstairs in that house for days, and I had never seen or heard anyone else.

I know that by thinking of the other women I am merely putting off the moment when I have to make a choice, but I can’t run from the police forever. I have nowhere to hide. I haven’t eaten and I can’t bring myself to steal food.

After a day of hunger, cold, and confusion about what is best for me and for the other women, I know I am out of options. My eyes are dry – there are no more tears – and with a sense of hopelessness I finally accept that I must hand myself in. I am not a hardened criminal and have no idea where to get money, a passport or anything else I would need to start a new life.

I shudder at the thought that if I don’t do this, I might reach a point of desperation where I feel I have no alternative but to go back to Thea and the doctor. Then I think of the horror of last night – the setting, the staging, the ritualistic quality of it all. It felt like a seduction scene, but I know it wasn’t. It was the request that I should wash him, the suggestion that it was some bizarre act of trust. Most of all, though, it was the doctor’s words: ‘Tomorrow it will be your turn.’

I put the car into gear. I’m going to drive to the police station, and then I’m going to work up the courage to go in.

CHAPTER 58

58

In the end Becky didn’t have to call Tom; he called her.