Even now, the sound of the shutter door at the rear of a van, any van, going up or down makes me weak with terror. I have to sit down and jam my head between my knees to stop myself fainting, no matter where I am. On the kerb, or the middle of the car park, if there’s nowhere else. In my mind it has become conflated with another, long-ago sound; the metal shutters across the windows of the record shop in Salisbury. I’ve always thought that was a shame. I’d liked that job, working with little hippie Caitlin and grumpy Alaric. Now the memory of it is ruined, in a jumble of other bad stuff, like Dad dying, what happened with Samantha, falling out with Pete. That grinding, shuddering sound would forever confuse and shut me down.

As I lay panting with shock, the floor cold and smooth beneath my right hip and shoulder, I felt my ankle being yanked, then encircled in cold metal – handcuffs, with a chain welded to one half. The other end of the chain was attached to a metal ring, and I had a mental flash of a defeated, bow-backed donkey chained to a fence. Why was the floor so smooth and slippery beneath me? It wasn’t like the rough floor of a normal van.

It took me a moment to realise I was lying on thick plastic sheeting. Oh Jesus, oh God, I knew what that was for; it was so my guts wouldn’t stain his van.

He heaved himself in, the engine juddering into life with the turn of the ignition key. The radio came on at the same time – some sort of hideous techno – quiet at first, then he turned it up, presumably once we were out of my street. It seemed to represent my panic. I tried to force myself to breathe deeply, to listen to the music and subsume myself into it, use it like mental blotting paper to soak up the terror.

He drove for some time – twenty minutes, half an hour? I couldn’t tell, and couldn’t see my watch. I was freezing cold in my PJs, with a soaked crotch and piss-stained legs. I could smell my own urine, further soured with fear, and my shivers had turned into shudders that convulsed me as I lay on the slippery van floor in a foetal position, convinced I had just minutes to live.