Scenarios whizzed around my head like bees in a box, my imagination frantic. Spiders were down here – huge ones – vengeful spiders like Deadly with fangs and eight beady eyes and a savage hunger for human blood. And rats. There were bound to be lots of rats. Rats were attracted to foul, reeking places and this place reeked. And the stranger – the stranger would be worse than Mother. They would be rabid with starvation. To them I would be nothing more than a way to keep themselves fed.

My hands found my head. My temples throbbed against my palms. Dizziness danced behind my eyes. My stomach rippled with anxiety.

Stop it. Think. A wild bird never feels sorry for itself.

I listened hard. I could almost picture my ears perking up, twitching at the ends. But I heard nothing. The silence was as contained and absolute as the dark. All-consuming. I remembered a day Mother and I had played hide and seek. We had laughed and chased one another. Mother had caught me and tickled me. There had been few days like that. Few moments when Mother had relaxed and let me behave naturally, but those moments had been the best … and now she had locked me in a hole in the ground in complete darkness with a stranger. Had this always been coming? Would things have stayed the same for ever if Mother had never taken Emma, or would she have taken another girl later on? Was I going to die down here?

A wild bird never feels sorry for itself.

I took a deep breath. Counted to ten. My breathing slowed.

If she wanted me dead, she would have killed me instead of putting me down here. And if the stranger wanted to hurt me, they would have acted by now.

I told myself this but I didn’t believe it.

Time stood still. I opened my mouth to speak then shut it again. If I was quiet and hid, I would be safer – unless the stranger was some kind of supernatural creature – which of course they couldn’t be – they were as blind as I was down here, which meant silence was my weapon.

Mentally, I retraced my path, recalling the table I had bumped into. I wanted to get back to the bed. The space underneath had been wide enough for me to fit. If I could hide there, I could wait him or her out. They might even give themselves away if they needed to cough or sneeze.

Using the wall for guidance, I turned around and inched back the way I had come. Trying not to think of spiders or rats or the stranger in the room, my fingertips scraped brick and I hoped, even as I tried not to think about them, that any spiders or dungeon-type insects would sense my fingers coming and dart out of the way.