I did exercises. I pulled my knees up and let them down again. Fifty times. I lay down and tried to sit up. I couldn't do it. Not even once.
People in solitary confinement often went mad. I had read about that. I must have imagined briefly what it would be like, to be locked up and all alone. Sometimes they recited poetry to themselves, but I didn't know any poetry, or if I did I could remember none of it. I knew nursery rhymes. Mary had a little lamb. Hickory dickory dock. The cheery, insistent rhythm felt obscene and mad, like someone inside my sore head, tapping away. I could make up a poem. What rhymed with dark? Stark, hark, lark, park, bark. I couldn't make up poems. I'd never been able to.
I tried once more to reach back into my memory not my long memory, the memory of my life and my friends and my family, not the things that made me into who I am, the passage of time like rings in a tree trunk, not all of that, don't think of that. My recent memory, the memory that would tell me how I came to be here, now. There was nothing. A thick wall lay between me here and me there.
I recited tables inside my head. I could do the two times table, and the three, but after that I got muddled. Everything became jumbled up. I started to cry again. Silently.
I shuffled forward until I found the drop. I struggled into a sitting position. It couldn't be that high. He had stood beneath me and lifted me down. Four feet, maybe five. Not more, surely. I wriggled my feet in their bindings. I took a deep breath and shuffled forward a few inches more, so I was teetering on the edge. I would count to five, then I'd jump. One, two, three, four .. .
I heard a sound. A sound at the other end of the room. Wheezing laughter. He was watching me. Squatting in the dark like a toad, watching me writhing around pathetically on the platform. A sob rose in my chest.
'Go on, then. Jump.'
I wriggled backwards.
'See what happens when you fall.'
Back a bit more. Legs on the ledge now. I shifted myself back against the wall and lay slumped there. Tears rolled down my cheeks, under my hood.
'Sometimes I like watching you,' he said. 'You dunno, do you? When I'm here and when I'm not. I'm quiet, like.'
Eyes in the darkness, watching me.
'What time is it?' 'Drink your water.'
'Please. Is it still morning? Or afternoon?' 'That doesn't matter any more.' 'Can I .. . ?' 'What?'
What? I didn't know. What should I ask for? 'I'm just an ordinary person,' I said. 'I'm not good but I'm not bad either.'
'Everyone has a breaking point,' he said. 'That's the thing.'
Nobody knows what they would do, if it came to it. Nobody knows. I thought of the lake, and the river, and the yellow butterfly on the green leaf. I made myself a picture of a tree with silver bark and light green leaves. A silver birch. I put it on the top of a smooth green hill. I made a breeze to rustle through its leaves, turning them so that they glinted and shone as if there were lights among the branches. I put a small white cloud just above it. Had I ever seen a tree just like that? I couldn't remember.
'I'm very cold.'
'Yes.'
'Could I have a blanket? Something to cover me.'
'Please.'
'What?'
'You have to say please.'
'Please. Please give me a blanket.'
'No.'
Once again I was filled with wild anger. It felt strong enough to suffocate me. I swallowed hard. Beneath the hood, I stared, blinked. I imagined him looking at me, sitting with my arms behind my back and my neck in a noose and my head in a hood. I was like one of those people you see in newspaper pictures, being led out into a square to be shot by a line of men with guns. But he couldn't see my expression beneath the hood. He didn't know what I was thinking. I made my voice expressionless.
'All right,' I said.
When the time came, would he hurt me? Or was he just going to let me die bit by bit? I was no good with pain. If I was tortured, I would crack and give up any secret, I was sure of that. But this was much worse. He would be torturing me and there would be nothing I could do to stop him, no information to give. Or perhaps he would want sex. Lying on top of me in the dark, forcing me. Pull my hood off, naked face, the rag from my mouth, push in his tongue. Push in his ... I shook my head violently, and the pain in my head was almost a relief.
I had once read or heard or been told how soldiers who wanted to join the SAS were ordered to run a long distance with a heavy pack on their back. They ran and ran, and at last they arrived at the end, near to collapsing. And then they were ordered to turn round and run the distance back again. You think you can't bear any more, but you can.
There is always more in you than you think. Hidden depths. That's what I told myself. For what was my breaking point?
I was woken by slaps on my face. I didn't want to wake. What was the point? What was there to wake for? Just curl up and sleep. More slaps. Hood pulled up, the gag pulled out of my mouth.
'You awake?'
'Yes. Stop.'
'I've got food. Open your mouth.'
'What food?'
'What the fuck does that matter?'
'Drink first. Mouth dry.'
There was muttering in the dark. Steps going away and down. That was good. A tiny victory. A minuscule bit of control. Steps came back up. The straw in my mouth. I was desperately thirsty but I also needed to rinse away the lint and fluff of the awful old rag I'd been choking on for so long.
'Open your mouth.'
A metal spoon was pushed into my mouth with something soft on it. Suddenly the idea of eating something I couldn't see, pushed into my mouth by this man who was going to kill me, was so disgusting that I imagined chewing on raw human flesh. I started to retch and spit. More swearing.
'Fucking eat or I'll cut the water off for a day.'
A day. That was good. He wasn't planning to kill me today.
'Wait,' I said, and took several deep breaths. 'All right.'
The spoon scraped in a bowl. I felt it in my mouth. I licked the food and swallowed it. It was something porridgy, but blander and smoother and slightly sweet. It tasted like one of those powdery bland mushes for babies. Or it might have been one of those concoctions that is given to convalescents, the sort you buy in a chemist's. I thought of gibbering glassy-eyed people sitting in hospital beds being spoon-fed by bored nurses. I swallowed and more food was pushed into my mouth. Four spoonfuls altogether. I wasn't being fattened, just kept alive. When I was finished I sucked more water through a straw.
'Pudding?' I said.
'No.'
I had an idea. An important idea.
'When did we meet?'
'What do you mean?'
'Since I woke up here, I've had the most terrible headache. Was it you? Did you hit me?'
'What are you on about? Are you fucking me around? Don't you fuck me around. I could do anything to you.'
'I'm not. I don't mean anything like that. The last thing I remember .. . I'm not even sure. It's all so blurred. I can remember being at work, I can remember .. .' I was going to say 'my boyfriend' but I thought that making him jealous, if that's what it would do, might not be a good idea. 'I remember my flat. Doing something in my flat. I woke up here and I've no idea how I got here or how we met. I wanted you to tell me.'
