Elspeth Dunwoody was doing her best not to gag. The food he was feeding her was stale and rank. Her body was still in the process of attempting to oust whatever chemicals he’d forced into her on her friend’s driveway. Since then, she’d been going through phases, all of them extremes, each passing through her with the speed and force of an express train. Currently she was numb and sick. For some reason she was finding impossible to fathom, there was a stranger on one knee in front of her, presenting a ring in a box. She turned her head to one side and gagged, almost losing the flat square of cheese and the few dry crackers that had been her lunch. He didn’t even seem to notice.

‘Marry me,’ he repeated.

Elspeth peered at the ring. The gold band had tarnished and worn thin, and the single stone had no lustre, sitting forlorn and grey in spindly golden claws. She lifted her own left hand and waggled her fingers, knuckle-side to his face, showing off the ring that was already lodged there.

‘I can fix that,’ he said, a bottle of liquid soap appearing from the floor at his side.

He squirted a generous amount onto his own palm then rubbed it onto her ring finger. Her wedding and engagement rings, those 24-carat traitors, slipped off without a moment’s hesitation. A quick towelling dry, and he pushed on his ring of choice. She wished she still had enough bile in her stomach to be sick over her new accessory, but her body wasn’t performing to command.

‘Ceremony,’ he mumbled.

She gazed at him through the soreness of dehydrated, tear-blanched eyes. Scrawny, with sallow skin that would reject sunlight and sunken eyes sat atop the twin brown half moons of insomnia and malnutrition, his hands shook as he wandered around, picking up one object and setting down another, murmuring to himself constantly.

‘Didn’t get shoes,’ he said, slapping his own face hard.

The sound echoed against the windowless walls.