For a whole week beforehand the bucket had come down with only empty bowls. Each time with the same command, written in felt-tip: Answer the question!

But she didn’t want to. She couldn’t.

‘What will happen to me if I confess?’ she’d dared ask the spider.

The answer came the following day with the computer, directly beneath her question.

‘What will happen to me if I confess?’

‘You’ll be allowed to die.’

It was several hours before she’d stopped crying.

She was as convinced that the spider was lying to her about Anouk as she was about the truth of that statement.

‘You’ll be allowed to die.’

For a while she’d pondered whether there was any hope that she might escape the solitary confinement of this stinking prison, but then she’d resigned herself to her fate and made her confession to the computer, and thus the spider:

‘I killed my best friend.’

27

Hell’s Kitchen

One step forwards. Two steps back.

Working with Anouk was similar to his own life.

Her condition had improved slightly. And substantially worsened at the same time.

On the one hand it was a good sign that she recoiled in fear when he entered her room, as Martin could see that, for the time being at least, she was reacting to changes in her immediate environment.

A modicum of progress, possibly a result of the television, which was now showing Tom and Jerry haring around the screen.

On the other hand – and this was the bad news – she was in the process of slipping back into behaviour patterns of early childhood. She sat in almost exactly the same cross-legged position on the bed, sucking her right thumb noisily. And scratching herself with the other hand.

Martin could see that her fingernails had already dug deep furrows in her right forearm, and his heart sank. If she didn’t stop this soon it would start bleeding… and then she’d have to be strapped.

He didn’t want do think of the consequences this would have for her already badly damaged psyche, and he made a mental note to ask Dr Beck for gloves or mittens, even if Anouk were to take these off again the moment she was alone.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you yet again,’ Martin said, placing a brown paper bag at the end of her bed.

Anouk leaned back slightly; she was breathing faster. A sign that he must not get any closer. All the same, she didn’t turn away from Martin or stare right through him. Her eyes were fixed on the bag.

As on his first visit he was now seized by an almost tangible feeling of melancholy, and he thought of all the nice things an eleven-year-old girl ought to be doing on a cruise ship.

Or a ten-year-old boy.