Good. There is some fight, after all. It won’t help, but it might give me the pleasure of hearing her beg for mercy.

I reach behind her head and undo the ball gag. I cannot have them find it with her body.

I get a sudden déjà vu – it’s positively Proustian – of all the other times I have used this gag. It’s my favourite.

Then I let it drop to the ground. I will pick it up afterwards.

‘So,’ I say. ‘Any last words?’

Annabelle

The gag dropped to the ground. It was a wonderful relief, although her tongue was swollen and her jaws were sore and were going to take ages to feel better.

Guy was smiling at her.

Fucking smiling.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Any last words?’

She had nothing to say to him. Nothing at all, ever, just in case it made him happy. Although there was one thing that would let him know exactly how she felt.

She gathered a gob of saliva in her mouth and spat it into his face. It landed on his left eye and spread down his cheek.

His head jerked back, and his mouth twisted in disgust. Instinctively, he closed his eyes and wiped his hand across his face, flicking the phlegm from his face.

She hadn’t done it for any reason other than to do the nastiest thing she could to him, but now, for a split second, his eyes were closed and his focus had switched from her to his disgust at being spat on. It was a hard-coded human reaction.

And it was her chance.

Not much of one.

But a chance.

And she had sworn she would grab whatever chance she got with both hands and not let go until there was no chance at all.

She slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose as hard as she could. She felt a vicious pain – she was sure she must have fractured her skull – and then heard a crack as something broke.

It was his nose. He staggered back and she saw that it had moved across his face to somewhere beneath his left eye. Already, blood was streaming out of it, and his eyes were wide in shock.

She rammed her head into his ruined nose, then, when he tried to pull away, she clamped her teeth around his cheek and bit.

Hard.

She tasted the metallic taste of blood in her mouth and then there was a lot of blood, and she had to spit it out because it was threatening to choke her.

Guy screamed, and tried to pull away from her.

She felt, for the first time since this had started, as though she was in control.

She felt powerful.

And she was not going to waste the moment. She bit down again, as savagely as she could, and a chunk of his cheek tore off.