I can push out the tail lights. Wave to an oncoming car.

Or I could, if I had use of my hands.

I can’t even reach for the jack near the spare tyre beneath me.

My breath gets faster and faster and my lungs burn.

And it’s hot. It’s so fucking hot. So much hotter than I thought it might be. Did those YouTube videos I watched ever talk about how fucking hot it is in a car boot?

Panic rushes through me like a volt of electricity. Realisation hits.

He’s taking me to the second location.

My stomach turns to oil and my ears roar like the ocean.

Because everybody knows the second location is where everything bad happens.

I clench my eyes shut. How can this be happening?

I’m never going to get to go to Japan and see the maple trees. I’ll never see Camilla again, or have sex with another beautiful stranger in the rain on a rooftop. I’ll never have my heart broken in that way that only sounds like a good idea when you know it’s already happened for the last time.

Who will tell Mum?

What will they think happened to me?

I struggle for air.

In. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Out. Two. Three. Four. Five.

In. Two. Three. Four. Five.

And then I go limp. Denial, shock, something pulsing through me. Like it’s not really me in this car boot. It’s somebody else.

This can’t be real.

Think, Harper, think.

I wrote a column once on how to get out of duct tape – hands over your head, pull down hard to your hips and back. I even tried it out with Camilla. It wasn’t that hard.

But I can’t do any of that lying in a car boot. I can barely move and hope is slipping from my grasp.

But Camilla. Find My Friends. Maybe she will check it when I don’t reply, see I’m… where the fuck am I? I do some mental calculations. He knocked me out. How long have I been unconscious? It could have been two minutes or two hours. How far are we from Paris now?

How close to the second location?

And I realise: this is it, this is how normal women like Matilde, like Sabine, like me, end up on the front page of a newspaper. How we end up just another dead girl in a murder podcast.

My breath gets faster and I’m sweating. I don’t want to die I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. My eyes burn with tears and I’m going to pass out from the heat.

Uh-oh. We’re slowing down.

I swallow hard, shake my head to cover my face with my hair in case I blink and force my limbs to go limp.

And then I lie and wait for the boot to pop open.