She sniffed and dragged the back of her hand under her nose, concentrating on getting her breathing back to normal. She hoped – always hoped – that she was as precious to Pete as he was to her. She knew she must be fairly precious. Pete had moved from Salisbury to live near her ten years ago.

By the time she had hauled herself off the bench, across the vegetable patch and in through her front gate, she had made a decision: when Pete arrived, she would call the police.

6

Graeme

‘You stink,’ Catherine says, wrinkling her nose as he walks into the visitors’ lounge.

She’s in a bad mood – again. That’s the fourth day in a row now, Graeme notes. Maybe she’s going through the change. Although to be fair she’d always been moody. Just his luck, to have spent most of his miserable life in love with a moody cow.

He didn’t usually think like this, but he was tired and stressed, and worried by the way she constantly badgered him.

‘Been working on the van,’ Graeme says. ‘It broke down yesterday, and I couldn’t afford to take it to the garage. Had to mend it, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to come in today.’

He pauses, waiting for Catherine to ask, but she doesn’t.

‘I fixed it! Myself. Just with a YouTube video. You can look up how to do anything on there, it’s wicked.’

‘It’s wicked,’ mimics Catherine. ‘What are you, twelve?’

Graeme drops his head. Sometimes Catherine’s so mean that he wonders why he bothers. He could just walk out of here and never come back, but the thought of that fills him with such panic that he feels his legs begin to jiggle and his hands tremble.

Catherine is all he has. Catherine is family, friends, partner, wife (maybe, one day, when they’re both free). Catherine is his world, and there is just no point to anything without her.

Graeme remembers the first incredible months when fate shoved them onto the same path, when they both arrived at Rampton around the same time. Decades ago, back when they were both young and Catherine had been beautiful. Before the weight had piled on them both, the gradual build-up of excess institutional carbs and the refined sugar that were one of the few pleasures in that place. At least Graeme had managed to convert his into muscle now he was out. But he had never managed to convert his love for her into anything else, a fact about which he often felt depressed.