‘I got used to it gradually, over the weeks, got braver, I guess, probably because I cared less and less whether I got hurt. Bravery and stupidity are pretty close. And it’s easy to be brave if you’ve got nothing to live for. I learnt to attack as well, though they wouldn’t let me have any weapons, treated me like an animal. I went in with my bare hands and teeth. Keeping low like a dog, going for the grown-ups’ legs, biting them in the ankles, so they’d go down. I thought it might make the kids like me, accept me, if I fought well. Didn’t make any difference, though. They kept me chained up the whole time, out in the yard at their camp. Fed me on rotten scraps in a bowl, made me go on all fours to eat and drink.

‘There were three girls, came out now and then to give me some better food. I guess they felt sorry for me, but most of the kids would only come out to take the piss, to tease me, watch me squirm. I suppose they liked having someone in a worse-off condition than themselves, made them feel better. You know what? A couple of them I even recognized from primary school. I knew them. But they didn’t recognize me. I was just the dog, the bitch, the ratbag.

‘Josa was the worst. She was clever. She really thought about it. About how to make someone feel like the lowest piece of crap on the planet. She was a very creative sadist. She’d lead me on and offer me hope and then … I can’t tell you the things she did, Ella. Tyler was just a bully, a stupid bully. He loved to torment me, to torture me. He’d whip me occasionally with a piece of wire flex, just for fun, pretending I was a real dog. He’d kick me and make me do tricks like play dead and roll over. Once he actually pissed on me. The other thing he did, that he thought was hilarious, was use me as bait.

‘They’d take me to a nearby area where they knew there were grown-ups hiding out and they’d chain me up to something and leave me out in the open. All I could do was sit there and wait while Tyler and his gang kept out of the way. For hours I sat out like that. And in the end the grown-ups would come crawling and sniffing out of their holes, and when they came up to me Tyler would pounce, come yelling and screaming out of his hiding place with his boys and girls, and they’d kill the grown-ups.