I went home, defeated. Three days later a cheque arrived for the money they owed me. Two weeks after that he rang me. I said, ‘Hello?’ and heard only silence, but I knew it was him. I said his name—a common, popular name, one that gives me a jolt of shock every time I hear it, even all these years later.

He asked me to come round. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘Have you left her? Are you going to leave her?’ I asked.

He said yes.

I didn’t believe him, but I got into my car and drove to Cherub Cottage because I wanted it to be true. He was alone when I arrived. He gave me a glass of red wine. It tasted funny but I drank it anyway. He told me she had gone, that she wouldn’t be back, and tried to persuade me to go upstairs with him. I refused. Her possessions were still all over the house—her dog slippers, her magazines, her diary. I knew he was lying to me. ‘Give me a cuddle, then,’ he said. It seemed like a harmless request, and my desire to touch him after not having seen him for a fortnight was stronger than ever before. We lay down on one of the white sofas in the lounge. I didn’t care, as I fell asleep with his arms around me, that he hadn’t told me the truth. I could well understand why he wanted to pretend, and I assumed he knew she wouldn’t be back any time soon. Perhaps she’d gone to stay with a friend, I thought. I kidded myself that he might still leave her, that he’d obviously found he couldn’t go on without me, since he’d summoned me so urgently.

I didn’t resist the sleepy feeling when it came. If I thought about it at all, I probably put it down to the wine, or to feeling happy and relaxed with him. I didn’t find out until later that he’d drugged me—crushed four two-milligramme Clonazepam pills and put them in my wine.

When I woke up, or came round, I was tied to the stone plinth in the back garden. My arms were tied against my sides so that I couldn’t move them, and there was something in my mouth, which had been taped shut with the thing inside it. I know now that it was a pink bath sponge. A lot of the detail I only found out later from the police, or in court.