And then my throat burns with bile because I know the answer.

He didn’t kill me because he couldn’t.

I’m thinking back to that night in bed with him, when I told him I’d sent a photograph of him to my mother. No wonder he tensed up. He knew what he was planning, but now my mother knew what he looked like…

He needed to reassess. Take a beat. Create some distance between us first. Take me from somewhere that couldn’t be linked to him.

I’m biting back tears; there’s heat on my cheeks and I can taste salt.

And then, as quickly as it came on, his face relaxes and goes back to a normal colour.

He moves over towards me, a small kind smile on his face. ‘I’m going to have to go out,’ he says. ‘But you should get some sleep.’ And then he pulls back the daisy duvet cover for me to get in.

And the sheet is white, but there’s a stain. A streak of brownish red.

Blood. Is that blood?

My skin burns hot.

And even though nobody can help me, I do the one thing I wasn’t going to do: I open my mouth and scream.

Chapitre Trente-neuf

Chapitre trente-neuf

I wake up with a mouth that tastes like the barrel of a gun: metal. No, not metal, blood. My head throbs and my face is sore and swollen. My eyes crack open: there’s a trickle of red on the pillowcase.

A flash of memory: his hand coming down hard to silence me.

I lie still, controlling my breath as I listen. But there’s nothing, just the hum of the bar fridge. I slowly, cautiously, glance around the room.

He’s not here.

My wrists aren’t taped together anymore, which on the surface sounds like good news, but it’s not, because I knew how to get out of duct tape. But now one hand is free and the other is attached to the bedframe above my head with a handcuff. I sit up, inspect it. It’s your stock-standard-buy-it-off-eBay type and I could get out of it easily, if only I had a paperclip, a bobby pin, anything.

But I don’t.

I glance across at the wooden table. He’s taken my bag and everything that was in it, bobby pins included. Not that I could reach it from here anyway.

My glance flickers around the room, searching for a means of escape. There’s a thin crack of grey light coming in through the space under the door, and the insects outside have been replaced by chirping birds. It’s morning.

And I don’t know when he’s coming back.

There has to be a way.