The sky was white with snow, a pair of blackcaps landed on my bird feeder, and the hospital ward I used to love was becoming a different world. It was as if the air there had changed, so the oxygen levels were barely enough to keep me going and an excess of carbon dioxide was leaving me struggling to breathe. Or maybe the problem was that I had mutated into an altered life form.

Whenever Zac swaggered past the reception desk, he had another request, made with unimpeachable courtesy.

‘Can you do me a favour and find the notes for Mr Hopper, Holly?’

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d print me some labels for Mrs Walker.’

‘Do you know where the continuation sheets are?’

As I visibly spun from filing cabinet to printer to desk to telephone and back again, Zac said, ‘Let me look after you. Even part-time is getting too much. You don’t have to do this any more.’

Milly told me that the way to boil a creature alive was to increase the temperature slowly, so they didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late to get out. ‘You’re in too deep,’ she said. ‘He’s got you now – that’s why he wanted you pregnant.’

‘No.’ I crossed my arms.

‘You’ve lost all of your confidence. You’re too dependent on him, practically and emotionally. He hates for you to be out of the house. He doesn’t like you being in contact with any human being other than him.’

‘Stop it, Milly.’

‘I used to think not being loved by Fergus was the catastrophe of my life, but it leaves me free. Maybe there’s even a part of me that chose that. You make me see that being loved too much is far worse.’ And she hurried away before I could continue the argument.

I couldn’t think clearly. I was a woman on the moon without a spacesuit to equip her for the new environment.

On the ward, Zac was a useful and benign king, and it made me want to kill him. The nurses were his prime targets. In rare interludes of quiet, he oozed around them, bearing food and drink, which he knew was a valuable currency there.

‘Any drug timings which aren’t working? Anyone you want reviewed? Any cannulas?’ He knew the nurses loved that stuff, but he went further. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee? A biscuit?’

‘You’re pale, Holly. Your face is pinched.’ He came behind the counter, into the nurses’ station, squeezed my shoulder, and logged on to a staff computer to work on the discharge summaries that went to the patient’s GP, outlining why they were admitted, how they were treated, and any changes to medications and actions the hospital wanted the GP to take. When Zac finished the last discharge summary, he double-spun his chair.