A hotchpotch of buildings of different ages, different designs, now silent and empty of the 1,200 girls who used to walk the corridors daily between lessons. It had been an impressive site in its day, sitting proudly on the banks of the Foyle, but now it felt claustrophobic, creepy, isolated.

‘Why?’ I asked him.

‘You’ll find out,’ was all he said, getting out of his car door and walking round to me.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I refuse to move, force him to pull me out of the car kicking and screaming? Would anyone hear my screaming, anyway? Would it use up whatever energy I had left? Should I try to negotiate with him?

Surely what I’d seen during our time together hadn’t been an act? It couldn’t have been. Not all the time, anyway. He’d been so tender. So caring. The long chats we’d shared over coffee. The flowers he’d sent. How tenderly we’d made love that first time. The beautiful words he’d written each week for class. I couldn’t think and my head still hurt.

The touch of his hand on the bare skin of my arm made me wince. It was still sore, more than likely bruised by his earlier violence. He didn’t respond to my yelp of pain, simply told me to get out of the car. I felt the sting of broken glass on the soles of my bare feet as I stood up. I tried to move, to hop away from the glass, but I couldn’t see the ground to see where was clear.

‘Move!’ Michael sneered.

‘There’s glass,’ I muttered, feeling the soles of my feet become wet with blood.

He didn’t speak but pushed me ahead of him, down the covered walkway to the door of what we’d always called the ‘Middle Building’. Though the doors were locked and boarded-up, I could see that someone had chipped away at the wooden boarding, smashed the glass within.

Michael slid his hand through the jagged hole in the door and pulled it open, pushing me in and onto the cold tiles of the floor. If it had been dark outside, inside it was darker. No hint of any light, no glow from the moon, all windows covered, electricity long since switched off. I could hear the constant drip of water, felt dust and grit on the floor, now mixing with my shredded foot. Suddenly a bright light, a torch, was shining directly into my eyes. It disorientated me further.

‘Up,’ Michael said, gesturing towards stairs on my right-hand side.

I remembered my form class, my old geography classroom. I remembered climbing these stairs with a schoolbag filled to bursting with textbooks. The scent of our damp coats in the air. The call of a prefect to stay on the left-hand side – ‘Single file, girls!’