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I had already seen it and was trying hard not to look at it. The blade was dark and clotted. Hoisting my skirts, I whipped out my own knife. I had wrapped a cloth around it as a makeshift scabbard.

A look of apprehension replaced John’s scowl as I wobbled towards him. ‘Do please watch what you’re doing. There are several essential arteries running down the extremities and your knowledge of anatomy – ’

‘I don’t suppose it’s as expert as hers.’ I had no doubt who had used that knife. His shirt was open and I could see some of the cuts, arranged in patterns as neat as cross-stitch.

I managed to free his ankles without slashing an artery and then crawled around behind the chair. When the knife touched his bare arm he made a profane remark and I snapped, ‘I’m trying to slide it down between your wrists. The rope is pretty tight.’

‘Oh, is it really?’

‘If you don’t stop twitching and complaining it will be your own damned fault if you end up with a spouting artery.’

After the last of the ropes had fallen away John rose briskly to his feet and immediately dropped to his knees. Instinctively I reached for him. He flinched away from my touch.

‘No. Just . . . give me a minute.’

I stood looking helplessly down at him as he fought to control his ragged breathing. Sweat had darkened his hair and his wrists were ringed with ridged flesh.

‘John,’ I whispered. ‘I, uh . . . I . . .’

‘Well?’ He didn’t look up, but his shoulders straightened as if in expectation.

‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry,’ John repeated.

‘Well, uh . . . It was very nice of you to lock me up in the wardrobe and . . . and all the rest. Of course if you had taken the trouble to mention at an earlier point in time that Mary was one of the gang and a closet sadist, none of this would have happened.’

‘Oh, well done,’ John said. ‘For a moment there, I feared that the Vicky I know and love had gone soft.’ He fumbled in his pant pocket. His hands were still numb; he managed to extract a small tin, but it slipped through his fingers when he tried to open it.

‘Let me.’ I picked it up. ‘Though I think you need something a little stronger than aspirin.’

‘That is something a little stronger than aspirin. One of the white and two of the yellow, please.’

I didn’t like the look of those pills. If they weren’t illegal they were dangerous. Maybe both. This didn’t seem an appropriate time for a lecture on drugs, however. ‘Can you swallow them without water?’

‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’

After he had forced them down I said, ‘Maybe we’d better get moving.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps we ought first to discuss the method of escape you have in mind. I trust you do have a method in mind?’

‘I hadn’t gotten that far,’ I admitted.

‘Hadn’t you?’

We were both kneeling. When he turned his head his eyes were on a level with mine.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then he said, ‘Unless you were planning to tuck me under one arm and make a break for it, you’ll have to contain yourself for . . . say, ten minutes. It will take that long for those pills to kick in. Until they do I might manage a slow crawl.’

‘Did they say when they’d be back?’

‘No, they were not so considerate as that. Have you been here all this time? Not in the wardrobe, surely.’

‘No, I left. Thanks to Max. He knew I was in the wardrobe.’

That shocked him into relative alertness. ‘What? How do you know?’

‘We had a long talk. He sent Hans and Rudi out of the room before he spoke to me, and he obviously meant to let me get away, but he refused to tell me where they were taking you even after I . . . I . . . uh.’

‘You seem to be suffering from a speech disability,’ John remarked. ‘You, uh, what?’

‘Are you ready to – ’

‘No. What did you do or say to poor old Maxie? Burst into tears? Tell him you . . . Oh, Christ,’ John said, reading my face as only he could. ‘You didn’t! You didn’t really give Max – Max, of all people! – the old Romeo and Juliet routine? Did you threaten to perch on my tombstone and drink poison? Did