Every nightmare you ever had where evil people were chasing you, and your feet were dragging heavily as though made of lead, was a thin echo of this. And you know it is. For this isn’t a dream. This is real, and they can do to you whatever they like. And they will like to do the very worst things, because they hate you.

They took hold of my arms and started to pull me down the stairs. The banisters were shuddering as I banged against them. I heard Phyllis’s tremulous voice saying ‘Don’t hurt him’ sounding very far away now, a muffled, twittering plea from a distant universe. And one of them answered matter-of-factly, as though this reply had become as routine as the acts they were about to commit, ‘Shut your face you stupid oul bitch.’

At the bottom of the stairs, one of them held my arms down while the other made me open my mouth and then tied a gag round it. It was a thick bit of white cotton, and it smelled faintly of paint. We went out the front door, and the other two were waiting. Three of them picked up their baseball bats from where they had set them beside the door. One of the bats, I saw, had nails in it. They were silent and businesslike, intent on their common purpose, like men setting out together on some fine morning for a fishing trip.

You don’t really think when four people are walking you towards waste ground. But there are almost-thoughts, embryo thoughts that are conceived and just as quickly miscarry. How had they known that I was in there? Had they been watching the front door all the time? What were they going to do: would I get just the baseball bats? Did they have guns?

There was a big moon out that night, sailing lazily across the sky. As we moved down the street, we passed Titch’s house. All the lights were off. There I had been, warning Titch. I thought he had been stupid not to get out. He wasn’t half as bloody stupid as me.

I turned my head to look over at the house where Marty lived. I hadn’t expected it, but there he was, watching from his bedroom window. For a second, I saw his face pressed up against the glass looking straight back at me, the gagged hostage walking in the centre of the four hoods. His pale, triangular face seared itself on my memory, a red-hot iron on a thin cloth. It bore a strange expression, one I had never seen on him before: fearful, transfixed, but with something else in it, too. Something like complicity. And it struck me then like a hammer blow straight to the back of the head: He had known. He had known they were coming for me.