Pain was resonating through my abdomen. I crawled on all fours back to Ben. He had managed to pull himself fully upright and I could see how one of his legs had a thick circular bracket around it and a thick chain running from it which was attached to the radiator. The sight of him in that way, looking like an animal, made me feel sick.

‘Ben… what the… how did this happen?’

Ben lips were dry and cracked. His skin looked grey. His breathing was ragged. ‘That day Daisy… that day I spoke to you last… I went to the kitchen to talk to Mum, she tried to show me all this stuff about you… but I already knew about her. I had been tracking this story about a woman who had lost her son. I only had to look at the photos of him as a baby and a toddler, photos I had never seen from my own mother. I just always knew, Daisy. And then she told me, the other day, she told me the whole story. She stole me.’

Ben’s words made me realise the true horror of what was happening, and as the panic overtook me, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. ‘We need to get out, Ben’ I began looking frantically around. ‘There must be a little window or hatch somewhere?’ I forced myself to focus and breathe.

‘I know this room.’ Ben coughed. ‘I used to play in it when I was a kid.’

My head fell into his lap. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought I knew, but I didn’t know.’

‘How could you know?’ he whispered.

‘I promise you. Everything will be okay, it will.’ I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my chest. It was easier to soothe someone else than feel my own fear.

Ben’s eyes were flickering. His breathing was uneven.

I let out a big breath and looked around the room again.

‘I’ll start hitting the hatch. It could take a while, but I’m sure I can break it open.’ I didn’t believe my own words, the reality was I wanted to lay with Ben and hold him, but I could see he was falling in and out of consciousness, his head dropped to one side.

‘We have to get out of here.’ I said taking another frantic look around the room.

I looked down at Ben, still slouched but not moving. His mouth remained fixed. He was dying. I had to do something.

I had managed to drag my way back to the top step, every movement sent splintering pain through my body, but finally I got there.

I touched my stomach, where my son had been just a few hours earlier and tears fell down my face. I leant on the top of the step with my head in my hands realising I was done for. I was ready to give up. But somewhere, still ignited, was the desire, the maternal instinct to get back to my son that Annie had stolen from me was there. I couldn’t give up until I drew my last breath. Then I smelt it, smoke. I turned around to see streams of white smoke seeping through the cracks in the door. Automatically I let out a cough and terror surged through me, along with images of Ben and I suffocating to death.