There was nothing in the cell other than the bed and the combined desk and bench, all of which were bolted to the floor. No free weights to work with. That would be a major problem for as long as they kept her confined in this cell. But Andrea was, she knew, on suicide watch and she would be moved from this empty space eventually. Until then, she could use her own body weight to exercise the main muscle groups. She knew that without free weights she would lose mass, become leaner, but at least she could maintain tone. She stood up and went to the corner of the cell, braced her feet against the wall to maximise the load borne by her arms, and started a set of push-ups. She knew that a nurse was watching her through the spyhole in the door. They wouldn’t deny her access to a gymnasium for her entire confinement. There would be weights or resistance machines in the gym. Then she could start building muscle again. And strength. In the meantime she would do her press-ups: sets of twenty, six sets a day, three days a week. A total of nineteen thousand press-ups a year. Every other day, while her arms and upper body rested, she would run through a similar routine with sit-ups.

She would time her routine so that it would not conflict with therapy sessions, work details, meal breaks, communal exercise. She would be a model patient – or prisoner – whichever it was she was supposed to be in this place. They would let her out one day. Not for a long time, perhaps, but she would convince them she was healed and no longer a danger. That she had, once more, become someone else.

One thing that Andrea had learned during her earliest days of bodybuilding was that to focus your body you had to focus your mind. Set a goal. Concentrate on it. She clenched her teeth as the final repetitions of her set strained her arms. When she had first started, it had been the face of the Karneval clown who had beaten and raped her, half-strangling her with a necktie. She had burned that image into her mind with each exercise, every day for seven years. It had given her the focus that she had needed.

But now she had another focus. With each push-up she repeated in her head a new mantra: the words she would say into herself with every exercise, every day of her confinement.

Jan Fabel.

When she was released, she would still be strong.