Unfortunately, her other observers didn’t seem to notice either. Or maybe they noticed, but didn’t care. She shut that thought down. No one would see a distress signal like that and just ignore it.

Would they?

Day after day, help didn’t come. She was going to have to do something more dramatic. An SOS the audience couldn’t overlook. But what she had in mind would almost certainly get Shannon’s attention. There would be a punishment. Maybe a fatal one. She would only get one shot.

So she needed to build her audience before she tried it.

She threw herself into the performances. Her orgasms became more and more convincing. Even when she wasn’t performing, she was performing. Smiling to herself, singing like a concubine, swaying her hips as she walked around the tiny room. She made her bed, putting her clothes away. Doing all the things that men don’t realise they like, just in case someone was watching. She requested make-up and a hairbrush. Shannon gave them to her gladly, delighted by her newfound enthusiasm. When she asked for a mirror, he stuck one to the outside of the glass. She couldn’t touch it, but she could see herself.

She looked like a ghost. Once upon a time she had longed to be that thin. Long neck, thigh gap, ribs almost visible. She scrambled into the corner so the camera wouldn’t see her cry.

She’d already composed and memorised the message. After she sent it, she might have to endure a period of starvation. If Shannon came in, she might even need to defend herself. She couldn’t do that in this shape.

She started doing yoga in her cell. Plank, runner’s lunge, warrior two. She did it naked, to grow the audience. She told Shannon she thought her breasts were getting smaller, and asked him for more food. ‘Please—it’s making me feel like less of a woman,’ she told him.

He started cooking proper meals for her. Pasta with carbonara sauce. Caesar salads. Schnitzel. She wolfed them down, stronger every day. She thanked him with warmth which wasn’t entirely fake. It was fucked up, how grateful she was for the food.

It was hard to tell when to do it. She had no way of knowing the size of the audience. Was she the most popular porn star on the internet yet? Certainly she was the hardest working.

Then one day Abbey noticed that she had started sleeping well. She looked forward to meal times. She had stopped fearing that she would never escape, and started accepting it. A tide of terror swept over her when she realised that in some part of her mind, this place had become her home.

It was time.