Sensing her softening perhaps, and warming to his chosen theme, he couldn’t stop himself from embellishing. ‘We always talked about it when they brought us back. We told each other everything. That way we were all with you, not just one at a time.’

Despite her best efforts, she could imagine that scene, listen to what they might have said about her.

Sugarboy would never have done that, another voice told her. Sugarboy never touched you, even when they beat him to make him.

When she didn’t respond, and unable to see her expression to read it, he now took a bigger step.

‘Sugarboy was the favourite though, wasn’t he? And yet you killed him. Remember? That night in the woods. The knife through the eye and into his brain. Why would you do that?’

As he spoke the words, she relived the scene. She couldn’t stop herself, which was of course why he’d said it. The air fled her lungs and they filled with blood, Sugarboy’s blood.

She coughed, choking on it.

He waited, sensing he was winding his way into her psyche again, reclaiming it as his own, then after waiting for a response, which didn’t materialize, he came back with the next reminder.

‘But we took care of that, didn’t we, Seven, because the ones left alive, we’re a team, and we’ll do anything to help one another. Anything,’ he emphasized.

The darkness swallowed his carefully considered words, while she imagined them buried forever, and not in her mind.

Having played what he felt were the required cards, he was awaiting her response, just as he always had.

She decided not to give him one, but thought again how this place reminded her of the stone-walled prison cell when he’d been in there with her. Only back then, she had been the powerless one.

She smiled a little to herself, although a small shiver of fear had entered her brain.

The deep hole she’d dug just inside the entrance had caught him unawares, but that alone wouldn’t have stopped him. It was the netting that had neutralized his initial attempts to climb out.

He was immobilized for the moment, but how long that would last she had no idea. He would have his knife with him, and at this very moment might be cutting himself free.

‘I thought it was you in the woods,’ she said to stall for time. ‘It was you I was trying to kill.’

‘Where would you be now if it had been me? Trussed up somewhere in Glasgow with the fuckers all taking a shot at you. Sugarboy couldn’t save you in Afghanistan, and he couldn’t save you here.’

He laughed then, and that sound drowned her in unbearable memories.

She had heard enough.