Consciousness brought perspective. She began to watch Russ as he drove. She kept herself very, very still and tried to read his mind. She knew how she looked; not like herself, crumpled in the footwell with her clothes ripped, like an ultra-violent fantasy. But she was not that. She wasn’t his. Modesty was shame made palatable. She had a quick memory of how she’d covered her breasts when the boy spied on her at the river; she saw the sunlight on the ice-cold water and his strange eyes, and imagined instead that she had stood up and walked out, instead of hiding. She was her own. She was her secret mind that nobody saw, her work and the things she loved. She concentrated on the precious places inside herself, untouched, and only hers. She focused on her body’s future and pictured herself well and strong. She would be. She was the mother of babies yet conceived. But thinking that cut her open, not knowing where Dan was, and awful terror for him. She mustn’t cry or show what she felt. She had to keep herself secret. She concentrated on her pain, and then on forgetting the pain, and then the pain again. First things first, she thought. First things first.

She remembered seeing Russ in the hall, and being up in the roof space, but after that, her memory was faulty, like a film with pieces missing, jumping. She remembered Dufour’s voice, from behind the trees. The police had Russ’s registration. But they hadn’t seen his car. If they had, Dufour would have sounded urgent. She didn’t know how hidden the BMW had been, if the police could have just gone by it, as they turned into the hotel, and not seen it. There was a chance they were being followed. But he wasn’t driving as if they were. She didn’t know if she was clear enough in her mind to be aware of how long they had been driving. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. There was a chance nobody knew anything, and she was completely alone. First things first, she thought.

Through the tinted windows signs flashed by. She tried to read the place names but she couldn’t. They were driving south and east, the sun swung from the right of the car to behind, but never in front. The air conditioning was cool and the car was quiet, and muted, like a hospital room.

From her place on the floor, she examined him, driving fast but not recklessly. He seemed rational. He didn’t act in rage, even when he was violent. He seemed to operate within a narrow margin, from enthusiasm to irritation; the variations in his moods were small. From last night, until now, from punching her to rolling cigarettes, he seemed dissociated from the world. It was how he had seemed so harmless, he didn’t see the difference in himself, everything was normal.