You always were an idiot. Always scraping by. Your father was a massively successful man. But you’re a mediocre secondary school teacher.

Scott was thinking of an argument they’d had once, when Natalie was drunk. She’d slapped him across the face twice; Scott had backed up, his hands raised, refusing to hit her. She’d apologised after, and that was that.

He needed to wake up, to stop letting his mind wander. “Casey, leave her alone.”

“She’s an idiot. She thought I cared about a silly cat video. But you don’t care, do you?” She sat on the bed, stroking her hand over Scott’s forehead, making him shiver and cringe at the cold clamminess. “You’re not going to hate me over a silly old cat?”

“No,” Scott said.

“That’s good.”

Gary was still hammering against the door. But Scott doubted he’d break through without an axe. He remembered hiding behind these doors; Gary was stronger than Nat had ever been, of course, but still.

“Life has never been very good for me, I’m afraid.” She was speaking in a bizarre sing-song way. “My dear dead daddy did some bad things to me. But I fought back. Do you want to know what I did? Forget it. It doesn’t matter what you think anyway. You did it, didn’t you? You hurt Natalie.”

“No,” Scott whispered.

Casey smoothed her thumb down across Scott’s forehead. He closed his eye, just as she began to press down, driving her thumbnail against his eyelid.

“Did you abuse Natalie, Scott?”

“I didn’t, I– Ah, ah.”

“Did you abuse your wife?”

“Yes, I did. I hurt her. I abused her.”

“What did you do?” Casey screamed.

Her nail was driving harder; he felt like it would pierce his eyelid. “I slapped her. I punched her. I humiliated her.”

Casey slowly removed the pressure. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m glad we finally have that out in the open.”

Scott was dribbling and crying all over himself. He nodded pathetically. “Me too. Yes, Casey. Yes.”

“I’m going to finish off this bitch. If she isn’t dead already. Then we’ll see what Mr Tough Guy outside wants. Sound good?”

Scott yelled at her, telling her no; he thought he did, at least. But there was so much pain and his head was rushing, as though trying to make him pass out.

He tugged at his handcuffs; he hadn’t applied his three as tightly as hers, the one on his left wrist. He thought he might be able to slip out of them, but it would hurt.

“Oh, fuck,” Casey said, and Gary’s roaring and hammering kept going. Like a soundtrack, over and over. His friend sounded so desperate to help. “She’s alive.”

Scott twisted, looked. Casey was perched on top of Lauren, a big bunch of hair in her hand; the bright hair dye was showing the blood, ugly petals of it.

“What’s that, sweetheart?” Casey leaned down, laughing. “No, you’re not my type. But what about this?”