Be kind to him, Mags, she said. You’re his big sister and he looks up to you. He always has. He was an anxious toddler, and often the only way we could calm him down was if you were there. He needs you. And he was hoping you’d love that sculpture.

Her words sank in. Maggie fished the sculpture out of the bin and put it on her shelf. It was still there.

The thought of James looking at it in her empty room made her head swim with nausea.

She yawned and lay on the mattress. How could she be tired? She did nothing but sleep and lie around. She needed to start doing some kind of exercise, if only for something to do.

She heard the scraping noise. The door opened and the man came in. He placed two boxes on the floor.

‘Is this what you need?’

He prodded the boxes towards her with his toe and she picked them up.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘These are fine.’

‘I had to go far away to buy them,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want anyone to see me. That’s why it took a long time.’

She nodded. She pictured him in a supermarket in some out-of-town retail park, a cap pulled low on his head, buying the tampons in silence then hurrying to his car and driving back on the motorway. For the first time she wondered what would happen to her if something happened to him? What if a truck hit him and he was killed? How long would it be before someone found her? Presumably wherever she was was well hidden, so it could be days. Weeks.

Months.

He nodded at the food he had brought earlier. It was untouched.

‘You’re not hungry?’

She shook her head.

‘You need to eat.’

Maggie looked away. She didn’t need a lecture on nutrition from him. ‘Like you care,’ she said, aware she sounded like a surly teenager.

She wasn’t too bothered. She wasn’t normally a surly teenager, but she had a pass this time. She had plenty to be surly about.

‘Of course I care,’ he said.

‘No,’ Maggie said. ‘If you cared about me you wouldn’t keep me in here.’

‘That’s why I keep you in here. Don’t you see that? I told you. I have to keep you safe.’

‘How is this safe?’

‘Because it’s not out there.’ He pointed above his head. ‘Out there will corrupt you, Maggie. And you must not be corrupted. I can’t let that happen to you.’

‘It won’t,’ Maggie said. ‘I promise. I’m a normal teenager, really.’

‘You are not a normal teenager. You’re special. Like I told you before, I’ve been following you Maggie, keeping an eye on you until the time came to save you.’

Maggie shrank back on the bed. This was crazy.