‘Unlock this fucking door right now and stop screaming,’ he hissed, ‘otherwise you’re a dead woman.’

I struggled but I felt like a car in a scrapyard being lifted in metal jaws, about to be crushed. He had pulled my arm through the hole, up to my shoulder, and was now twisting it backwards, threatening to dislocate it.

‘Open. The. Door.’

‘What do you want?’ I gasped in agony, as a stream of warm urine gushed down my inner thigh and puddled on the wooden floor. ‘Please stop.’

‘Do as I say, bitch,’ he ordered, ‘or I’ll snap your arm in two.’

‘I can’t reach the key unless you let me go,’ I screamed, and he released his grip enough to allow me to twist around, but kept tight hold on my wrist.

What should I do? I had no choice. I had to open it. If I didn’t, he’d destroy the door completely and break my arm. There was nowhere to run apart from into the bathroom, which didn’t have any lock on the door. My phone was out of reach. Perhaps if I just gave him my jewellery and the stack of notes I kept hidden at the back of my knicker drawer, he’d go away.

Or should I just jump through the window and take my chances? No, too risky; I’d land on the flagstoned patio and probably break my neck.

I grabbed hold of the rubber doorstop and unlocked and opened the ruined door, feeling like I’d just sealed my own fate. He let go of me, just for a moment, and I pulled my arm back through the hole, pain shooting up into my neck and through my shoulder. I turned to run, planning to barricade myself inside my ensuite bathroom with the doorstop; the door of that was more solid than the original pine-panelled bedroom one. But I didn’t take more than two paces before he was on me, shoving me face-down on the bed and twisting my arm up behind my back – the arm he’d already hurt. My screams were muffled by the duvet.

I’d caught a glimpse of a well-built, featureless figure: he was wearing a balaclava – not a standard-issue, ghoul-rapists black one, but bizarrely, one in dark autumnal stripes of russet, brown and green. Like someone’s nan had knitted it. A nightmare personified, nonetheless.

‘This will be so much easier if you fucking cooperate.’ His voice was a weird combination of gruff and simultaneously high, for a man; at odds with his muscled frame.

‘I will,’ I mumbled, above the sound of the shriek of pain from my shoulder. The foxes had nothing on me. ‘Take whatever you want. I’ll tell you where it is.’