She nods. ‘I didn’t know how else to explain why I was so hurt and upset. And then you were so kind it made me feel worse, but now I know why.’ Her eyes go dark and she bares her teeth. ‘How could you?’ she hisses. ‘How could you hold my hand and rub my back when all along you’ve been having an affair with my husband and keeping him here?’

‘Naomi,’ calls out Michael, ‘Naomi, you have to listen to me.’

I stand there staring into the abyss, transfixed by the insanity of the situation.

‘Look at me, Naomi!’ Michael yells, in an attempt to rouse me from my stupor. I numbly turn to him. ‘You know you have no part to play in this. You know that what she’s saying is completely untrue. She brought me here. She tied me up. And she has kept me here for the past five days.’

Vanessa snorts. ‘As well as being a cruel, cold-hearted bully, you also have a vivid imagination.’

‘So – what? You think I’ve done to this to myself?’ he screeches, looking between us both. ‘Naomi, please, just think about what she’s saying. She’s exactly who I’ve told you she is. If you’ll just free me from this’ – he nods towards the bars that with just one more strike will free him from restraint – ‘I promise I’ll prove it to you.’

I raise the hammer I’d forgotten I was holding and see the look of terror in Vanessa’s eyes. She screams as I bring it down with all my might and strike the bar one more time.

‘You’re making a big mistake,’ she cries, as Michael’s still handcuffed wrists are released. ‘You have no idea what he’s capable of.’

For a moment, I’m poleaxed, waiting for him to run or lunge at me, but he does neither. He just stands there with his shackled hands hanging in front of him.

‘We need to call the police,’ he says, looking at me.

I nod. ‘I haven’t got a phone,’ I say, struggling to think clearly. ‘But there are police on site, just a few hundred metres away.’

Vanessa stumbles backwards out of the stables as I move towards the door, her face frozen in fear of what I might be about to do to her.

‘Please,’ she says, blinking rapidly as her eyes adjust to the sunlight. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I won’t stand in your way if you want to be together. I’ll do whatever you want, but please don’t hurt me.’

The smile she’d displayed less than an hour ago is replaced with a look of abject terror as I get closer. I have to make her understand that she’s got it all wrong.