Five days.

She had to do something now. And she had – she thought – the first glimmerings of an idea.

‘So,’ Max said, oblivious to the tragedy of his surroundings and the fact that, in five days, even this would be taken from him. ‘Are you ready to come on the light beam, Mummy?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

But her mind was elsewhere. It was on what she was going to do.

2

The man stood in the door, a tray in his hand. When he was leaving food or water or cleaning supplies he never came into the room. He put them on the carpet, picked up anything Maggie had left for him – nappies, plates, cleaning supplies – and left. It was only when he was in his blue bathrobe that he locked the door behind him, secured the key on a chain around his wrist, and entered the room properly.

It was the morning, so there was no bathrobe. He lowered the tray to the floor and stood up. There were two paper plates, each covered with creased tinfoil. He liked the tinfoil to be folded and placed back on the tray; Maggie assumed he re-used it.

He was that kind of person. Neat, particular, fastidious. She pictured his house as a museum, the rooms fixed and unchanging, almost unlived in, with patterned wallpaper on the walls and lace curtains filtering the daylight. It was a sham, a face to the world. His life was down here.

The thought made her shudder.

When he walked out she noticed a stiffness in the way he moved. She’d seen brown spots on his hands, the skin loose and sallow. He was still strong but there was a growing unsteadiness in him. He was getting older.

Weaker. More vulnerable. One day she would be able to overpower him.

Today, maybe.

Today she might get out of here. She pictured the newspapers: MISSING GIRL FOUND DECADES LATER. She’d be reunited with her parents. In her mind they were the same as when she had been abducted, but, like the man, they’d be older too. Fifty-three now. She tried to imagine what they looked like. Would Dad be bald? Mum grey? Were they still together?

Still alive?

And James would be twenty-six. He might have kids. She wondered what music he listened to, what books he read, what job he did. He’d have cast his first vote, lost his virginity, gone to university, all of it a mystery to her. She didn’t even know who the prime minister was. Was it still Blair? Surely not. Probably someone from a whole new generation of politicians. Maybe the country was at war; maybe it had adopted the euro. She knew nothing.

She closed her eyes. She’d missed so much. It was weird, though: without the man there’d have been no Seb, Leo or Max, and she couldn’t imagine life without them. Especially without Max.