‘Just you.’ Then I heard the rip of gaffer tape being detached and he rolled me over, securing my arms together at the front and taping them together at the wrists. Next my head was pulled forwards off the mattress so he could wrap the tape round and round, covering my mouth. In his haste and my fight, at first he managed to cover my nose too, and I had to vigorously shake my head, trying to make him see that I’d actually die before he could do whatever the hell he wanted me to cooperate with. He must have seen me starting to turn blue, and pulled it down, away from my nostrils, kneeling astride me as he did so. He was wearing a massive, bulky waterproof black coat thing; I remember it rustled whenever he moved. He smelled of sweat and engine oil and just a whiff of patchouli.

When he knelt over me I assumed that was it: he was going to rape me.

But he didn’t.

No grinding or grabbing. Instead he yanked me up by the elbow and frogmarched me to the wrecked door. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

As he dragged me down the stairs, fighting as much as I could, given my bound arms – why could nobody hear? – I had a fleeting thought, clear and sharp in the panic soup of my brain, of Keats’ ‘iced foot on the bottom stair’. It was from that poem I did for A level English, the one that reminded me of Dad’s death. I hadn’t thought of it for decades, but as I saw my own bare feet stumbling and sliding, I knew it was because I was facing my own point of no return; my very own descent into oblivion.

He bundled me, resisting all the way, out of the jemmied-open kitchen door, down the garden and out to the dark street via the alleyway. I struggled, but his meaty arms were firm around my waist, the wet-wool stink of his breath in my face. There was a Luton van backed up at the end of the alley. He pulled open the rear shutter just enough to get me inside, lifting me off my feet and stuffing me through the gap and into its black maw, then climbing in after me and slamming the door back down. Surely my neighbours would hear that? It was such a loud, metallic crashing sound, like someone hitting saucepans with metal serving spoons.