‘He’s doing a little more than shearing them,’ said Bailey. ‘He obviously has a deep-seated hatred of women.’

‘He’s working through some stuff.’

‘What? Mummy issues?’ Bailey was unable to repress her scorn. Then a thought occurred. ‘Is she the one who locked you in the cages?’

Amber raised one eyebrow. ‘Cute analysis. And not far off the mark. But ultimately trite. You’ll never understand what my brother and I went through.’

‘You’re right. I don’t think I ever will.’

Amber shrugged indifferently.

Silence once again occupied the space between them.

Despite her current predicament, Bailey wasn’t about to give up just yet. She had a job to do and she was determined to extract as much information as possible from Amber.

‘Where’s the well?’

‘You’ll know soon enough.’

‘How did you find out about it?’

‘So many questions…’ Amber tutted.

‘The mysterious escape of Felicia Lee is prison legend in here.’

Amber puffed up proudly. She looked at her watch.

‘Well, I suppose we do still have a few minutes to kill. And I guess telling you is not going to make a difference either way. Are you sitting comfortably?’

She looked at Bailey tied to the mangle and smiled amiably.

‘I guess not. Still, never mind. So… not long after I got locked up in here, I decided I needed to earn some extra cash for my canteen account so I got a job in the laundry. Pretty boring, but pretty easy.

‘The day I escaped, I’d had a really bad night the night before. Nightmares. No sleep. That kind of thing. Know what I mean?’

‘Only too well.’

‘Anyhow, the upshot was that by the afternoon the only thing I felt like doing was taking a nice long nap. But I had to go and do my annoying job in the laundry.

‘So there I was, pushing this big trolley full of nice clean sheets along and I was looking at it thinking how inviting it looked. It looked so inviting, in fact, that when the laundry supervisor wasn’t looking I climbed in and pulled the sheets over me and took a little nap.

‘The next thing I knew was that this noise had woken me up. When I opened my eyes, I realised that all the lights were off and the place was empty. No one had noticed me asleep in the trolley. They’d all finished up for the day and left the laundry and locked me in. That was the first thing I realised.

‘The second thing I realised was that the noise that had woken me up had come from someone else who was in the laundry with me. To tell you the truth that got me a little scared. I hardly knew if I was still dreaming or not. So I stayed in the trolley hidden under the sheets and peeked out at whoever was in there. Just like a little kid hiding in their bed from monsters.

‘Who should it be in the laundry with me? Yep, you guessed it. It was Terry. The noise that woke me up was the sound of him coming out of the well. I could barely believe what I was seeing. I instantly knew he was up to no good. Why else would a prison officer be entering the prison secretly?