There was no way out of the room.

There was no way out of the room.

And there was no one answering her cries. Was that his plan? To starve her to death in here? No – it couldn’t be. There had to be more to it than that.

The man who looked like a geography teacher – she didn’t know why she chose geography, it could have been one of many subjects, but that was the one that had come to her – had done this for a reason. He’d gone to too much effort for it to be otherwise.

Now she was calmer, the room was silent. It was a kind of silence she had never experienced before. At home, even in the dead of night, there were sounds: plumbing gurgling, floorboards creaking, cars passing by.

But in here: nothing. It felt heavy and dead.

Total, deafening silence.

The smell of vomit.

And then she heard a noise. It came from somewhere behind the door. It was a kind of scraping, like a stone being moved or the brakes of a large truck being hit hard.

A door of some kind being opened, maybe.

She held her breath. The scraping noise stopped, then came again.

The stone being put back. The door being closed.

And then a footstep, right outside the door to the room.

And then the handle turning.

2

At first she didn’t recognize him.

She’d been expecting a man in grey trousers and a scruffy shirt, but he was wearing a blue towelling bathrobe. It had a faded insignia on it – some kind of animal – and was tied tight at the waist. He was wearing socks with snowflakes on them – given, perhaps, by a grandchild – and a pair of dark green slippers.

He was tall and heavily built, but looked soft, his muscles slack and fleshy. There was a sheen to the skin on his face that made him look almost like he was made of wax.

In his hands he held a tray. There was a plate of food and a glass of milk on it. He put it on the floor, then locked the door with a key he kept on a chain around his wrist. She made a note of that.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Something to eat.’

His voice was halting, the words coming in bursts. Something – pause – to eat. It was as though he didn’t get much practice speaking.

Maggie looked at the plate. There were some kind of fried potatoes and a few stalks of boiled broccoli, along with some fish fingers. Fish fingers! How old did he think she was? Six?

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

He stared at her for a while, his mouth settling into a look of resigned disappointment.