‘You should never attempt to run away from me,’ he says. I can hear the boards creak as he stalks around the room. He lights candles and paces, and lights more candles. There is a difference in his voice; it is hoarser. He sounds as if he has not slept. ‘It has cost me a small fortune to have you brought back here. And that was money I could have spent on something nice for Mrs Rose.’

He is a madman.

I open my eyes and watch him. He paces and his eyes dart everywhere. His mouth moves from snarl to grimace.

‘I only want one thing of you. I have tried to approach Mrs Rose myself, and she simply will not accept my offers. And now you have made everything worse by showing me you are not to be trusted. What am I to do with you?’

He sits on the bed now, resting his weight on the thick bedspread, leaning over me. He puts his hand to my throat. ‘A thick neck,’ he murmurs, ‘so unattractive on a woman. And you smell of fish bait too. What man would ever want you, Mistress Dickson. You are disgusting.’

I weep, for fear and for the fact that I think he speaks the truth.

‘I would not even enjoy fucking you,’ he says, ‘but perhaps I will do it anyway.’ He pulls the chains down from the wall and secures them to the cuffs on my wrists. ‘You are tied now,’ he keeps saying. ‘I bet no man has done this to you before. Some women enjoy it. Mrs Rose will enjoy it, I am sure of it.’

‘Do not touch me, please,’ I beg him. ‘I will do as you ask. I will do whatever you need.’

But Dr McTavish ignores all of that and runs his hands from my throat to my breasts, and then down further. I cannot say what he does next, for I close my eyes, but I know that he satisfies himself looking at me like this.

He does not fuck me. Instead he pleasures himself whilst watching me whimper.

‘I would not fuck you. I would dirty myself,’ he whispers.

He leaves me for a while afterwards. It must be all the afternoon, for I grow hungrier and more distraught, and my wrists ache from the cuffs. I have no sense of time, for the windows are boarded. I hear him creak the floorboards in the next room and I smell a fire start in a grate, and I wonder if he will just leave me here to rot.

Eventually he opens the door again. He comes in with a silver tray piled with food. Bread and eggs and cheese and fruit, and a crystal glass of wine.

He takes off the cuffs and watches as I rub my wrists.