‘No, no,’ I said quickly. ‘Just a feeling.’ In truth, I had no feeling at all, and could barely picture the baby as a person, but I had calculated that Nick would prefer a boy. I was scared to imagine him with a little girl. The way he’d treat her dates. Smothering her in a curtain of pink.

Nick was thinking about it. ‘If you promise to be good, you can have a wash. I mean it, Suzi. There’s nothing to stop me keeping you down here till the birth. If anyone asks, I can say you’re at your mother’s. You really think the cash-strapped NHS will bother to come all the way out here? Plus, we’re virtually snowed in at the minute.’ He said the last words with some relish. ‘You’d need a jeep to get down here.’

So no one was coming.

‘Nora,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’ What a hole I was in, when the only person who might rescue me was the woman who hated me.

He shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen any lights in her place. I think she’s away.’ He was lying; I saw his eyes flicker. Why would he lie about that? Because he knew Nora might help me? Did that mean she was around? A crazy surge of hope punched into my chest. But why on earth would Nora do anything for me?

‘Well, if no one’s about, you don’t need to worry about me making a scene,’ I pointed out. ‘No one would hear.’ All he’d have to do would be to hide the phones, and the house itself would become an extension of my prison.

Nick was nodding. ‘Alright. You are starting to stink a bit. Smells like a pet shop down here.’

That hurt my feelings, absurdly, but I said nothing. This was my only chance.

Eleanor

Eleanor

I wasn’t sure what to do. I was pacing my living room, rubbing my cold hands until they were cracked and red. What would the police say if I called them? I think my neighbour’s being held prisoner. Who by? Her husband. Head of local council IT. Where? Oh, in her own music room. It was ridiculous. Suzi could well have gone away, if not to her mother’s then a friend’s. It was possible she’d even lied to Nick, that he didn’t know about the cruise. That she’d made her escape as I’d urged her to do, just in a different way. But somehow, I felt that wasn’t true. Nick had been hiding something. He hadn’t wanted me there.