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He forced himself to look into Amy’s grief-stricken face.

‘Becky’s not here.’

I open my eyes and for a moment I have no idea where I am, even what my name is … My head is pulsating and there’s a white mist before my eyes, as if I’ve developed cataracts while I was asleep. Asleep? Was I sleeping? I try to raise my head but a sharp pain stabs my brain and I screw my eyes up against it. Slowly, I open them again.

I’m not in the garage any more. He moved me into the bedroom of some musty, poorly lit flat a day or two ago – or is it three? Time has melted like those Salvador Dalí clocks since I’ve been here. When I woke at first, I thought in my blurry, confused state that the man who had me was Daniel – or Lewis, to give him his real name. But then I remembered what had happened.

He says he’s going to have to kill me if I scream or make a fuss, but he won’t tell me why. He says it almost apologetically.

He talks to me when he comes in with food. It’s weird not to hear him finishing my sentences, but I don’t have any sentences to finish so he can’t. I am refusing to speak to him at all – not that I can, most of the time, because he keeps me tied up and gagged when he’s not with me.

When I was first in here, he used to sit by my bed and gaze at me, reminiscing about stuff I don’t remember and don’t understand. Then he would get himself worked up and the expression in his eyes would change. It’s an expression I recognize well, have seen on the faces of other men: that look of lust, of being so turned on that he can’t concentrate on anything else. That’s when he pulls off the knickers I’ve been wearing for days and strips off himself, so he’s naked, and he climbs on top of me, crushing me with his body. I try to fight, but my hands are cuffed to the bedposts. I squeeze my thighs together but he wrenches them apart, digs his nails into my flesh. So I lie there, as still as I can, my head turned away, eyes squeezed shut, thinking about other things. I replay lessons in my head, picture myself walking on a beach somewhere, imagine myself and Amy taking Boris to the park.

While he’s doing it to me, he talks, tells me he loves me, that I’m beautiful, that he knows I love him too. He tells me he’s never going to let me go.

Afterwards, he cleans me with a baby wipe and puts his clothes on with his back to me. His face twists with loathing – of me, of himself, I can’t tell. I don’t care.

I just want it to stop.

One day, he comes in and he’s furious, his face pink and sweaty. He screams at me, tells me he hates me, that he’s going to kill me. He approaches the bed and puts his hands on my throat and I try to scream through the gag.

He lets go, his eyes wild and unfocused. Then he tells me again that he loves me, that he wants me to forgive him.

‘You do this to me,’ he says, his voice strangled. ‘It’s your fault.’

He leaves the room and I try to ignore the hunger pains, the cramping in my belly, the soreness. I close my eyes and replay everything in my mind again – if I ever get out, it will be important that I remember how I got here.

I’m in a car. I can hear voices. A man, and another man.

‘I’ve recorded you,’ one of them says. ‘Videoed the whole thing. What did you use, chloroform?’

I recognize the voice, but can’t place it. I roll my eyes and see the car door is open. If I really concentrate, I can hear every word they say.

The other man says, ‘And what are you going to do? Take that to the police? I would just have to tell them about Amber.’ His voice is familiar too.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ the first man says. ‘You did. It was you who stuck the knife in her.’

‘And you held her while I did it.’

‘I didn’t know you were going to kill her.’

‘Yes, I fluffed that one – having someone else with me was a big mistake. But I got better – a lot better. You may not have wielded the knife but you did your bit – and helped me dispose of the body.’

I shudder. And at that moment, I remember. I was in the car with Daniel. We were supposed to be going away for the weekend. I had been so full of anticipation, thinking that finally I’d met a man worth getting excited about. Instead, he had lunged at me, holding something in his hand, something that smelled of chemicals.

I concentrate on what they are saying. The first man, the one who isn’t Daniel, says, ‘I don’t want to have this argument again. There’s no proof, no evidence linking me to Amber. But I’ve got proof that you abducted Becky. I’ve got it right here. So, what, have you been doing this for years? Got a taste for it after Amber, did you?’

Daniel replies: ‘Something like that. Looks like her, doesn’t she? Like Amber. That’s what attracted me to her when I saw her at that party. And, yes, of course I recognized you, you idiot. Becky is perfect; physically, temperamentally. She’s so much like her.’

‘Amber?’

‘Like my mother. So what do you want?’

The man who isn’t Daniel answers Daniel’s question: ‘Her,’ he says. ‘I want her.’

‘You want to save her? And let her go to the police the second she—’

‘No. That’s not the plan. I said, “I want her.”’

Daniel laughs. ‘For yourself?’

A moment of silence in which all I can hear is my heart thumping. Nausea clutches at my throat and I swallow it down.

‘I don’t know,’ Daniel says. ‘She’s perfect. She could be The One. The woman I’ve been searching for all these years. Do you know how many women I’ve had to eliminate in my quest to find the perfect one?’

‘I don’t want to know. I just want Becky. You might think she’s the one. But I do too. I love her.’

I try to raise my head again, this time managing to push myself up, my head howling in protest, so I can see them through the open door. Yes, Daniel, and the other man, with his back to me, standing a few feet apart, squaring up to one another.

‘She’s got a sister,’ says the man I can’t see, walking closer to Lewis. His voice is so familiar. ‘Her name’s Amy. She’s just as hot as Becky. A year or so older, but you wouldn’t guess it. She’s innocent, whereas Becky’s been around the block a few times; she’s tainted. You always told me you like girls who haven’t been with too many men.’ He takes out his phone and taps the screen a few times, before showing it to Daniel.

My phone. Where is it? I look for my bag, where I always keep it. I can’t see it anywhere.

Daniel says, ‘Hmmm. She looks … nice.’

‘I can help you get to her. If you give me Becky.’

‘Been around the block, eh, has Becky?’ Daniel says. ‘All right. It’s a deal. I’ll send a letter like last time, or rather, an email, so no one looks for her. I’ve got Becky’s phone – I took it off her when I knocked her out – so I’ll have access to her email.’

He’ll have access to everything on my phone, I think. My Facebook, my contacts. My whole life.

And then they shake hands, like it’s a business deal. My brain may feel as if it’s been wrapped in acid-soaked cotton wool but I still understand what has just happened. They have just agreed to trade me and Amy, as if we are football stickers.

Well, that’s not going to happen. Not if I have anything to do with it.

Bracing myself against the certain rush of pain in my head, I sit up, half fall out of the car, and try to run. I have no idea which direction to run in. I am stumbling towards a big house. Daniel shouts, ‘Hey!’ and then footsteps are pounding after me. I look over my shoulder and see them both, running towards me, their faces twisted, like two strangers – not the two nice guys I knew before. Because now I know who the other man is, and the shock of it makes me scream.

They catch me and push me to the ground. Gravel scrapes my knees and palms.

Daniel drags me back to the car and tells his friend to hold me while he gets something. I thrash and try to spit at them, at the man who I thought I knew but who, now, has a strange expression on his face, like a father looking at his newborn child. The last thing I see before Daniel puts the chemical-smelling pad on my face again is my next-door neighbour, gazing down at me with the expression I’ve sought all my life.

‘I love you,’ Gary says, and I black out.

‘You know what, Becks?’ Gary says when he comes back into the room where he’s been keeping me, the room in which he’s kept me prisoner; raped me, terrified me. ‘I used to watch you through the spyhole in my door. Your hips looked so slinky and sexy when you walked. It’s so unfair. I loved you so much, I thought you liked me – and you end up going out with a creep like Lewis? If you knew him like I know him, you wouldn’t want to go out with him. You’ve had a lucky escape.’

A lucky escape. That’s what he calls it. To be passed from one madman to another. From my memories of waking up in the car and from what Gary has told me since he brought me here, I’ve been able to piece together the awful truth about what’s happened to me.

Daniel, the man I thought I was in love with, was really a psychopath called Lewis. He and Gary knew each other from a long time ago. They murdered a girl called Amber, although Gary protests his innocence and says it was Lewis who wielded the knife.

According to Gary, Lewis was at the Orchid Blue sex party and spotted me there. I look just like Amber, he says, and both of us look like Lewis’s dead mother. Lewis developed an obsession with me which led to him setting up a CupidsWeb profile and contacting me to arrange a date. He knew I was on CupidsWeb from chatting with Kath at the party.

But Lewis wasn’t the only one obsessed with me. Gary was watching me; my every move, and when I set out to go on the date with the man I knew as Daniel, Gary followed us. He watched as Lewis began to drag my unconscious body out of his car, then stepped forward – which was when they did their deal. Me for Amy. After that, Gary brought me here – first putting me in a garage then bringing me into this musty, mothball-stinking flat.

Thinking of Amy, I shake my head violently and Gary must be curious because he removes the gag.

‘Where is she? You have to tell me. If that bastard hurts her …’ I pull against the handcuffs but my muscles are weak and I slump back onto the bed. I try to lash out at him with my foot because my arms are still tied to the bedhead, and he feints neatly away to avoid me.

‘Calm down, Becky, or I’ll have to hurt you,’ he says, and the coldness in his voice makes me shudder.

A tear slides down the side of my cheek and I can’t wipe it away. Oh, God, Amy. I’m so scared – even more terrified for her than I am for myself. The thought of anything happening to her …

I shudder, and Gary sighs and stares towards the curtained window. The curtains are horrible, mauve and green stripes and fat flowers. I can taste my own bad breath in my mouth and it makes me feel sick. I haven’t cleaned my teeth since I’ve been here.

He looks pensive.

‘All I wanted – and it’s a simple thing; not too much to ask, surely? – was for you to love me the way I loved you. That night when we made love, you kissed me so passionately, remember?’

Gary strokes my bare leg and I try not to recoil.

‘I watched you afterwards when you fell asleep. Allowed myself to dream of a future with you. A time when we would be together, for ever, and you’d adore me, worship me, and everyone would be so sick with jealousy because the most beautiful, sexy, clever, funny, sweet, feisty, adorable, fragrant woman in the whole world belongs to me.

‘Do you remember the first time we met, when I moved in? I was carrying that box of DVDs up the stairs and you came running down – you almost sent me flying! I was about to yell at you, then I saw your eyes … oh, my God, I was smitten. You smiled at me. I got an instant hard-on!’

I try not to glance at his crotch in case the memory produces a similar response.

‘I used to watch out for you, learn when you came and went so I could accidentally on purpose bump into you … you were always friendly, but I could tell you weren’t interested. It did my head in, that you were seeing other men, you and your mate, Katherine.’

He pauses, staring at me with a twisted expression, almost curious.

‘She’s dead, you know. Katherine. Drugs overdose, apparently, a couple of days ago. But it was Lewis, I bet it was. Getting her out of the way so he could have you.’

A strangled sob slips out of my throat. Katherine,
dead
? I can’t believe it – and yet I can. At that moment, I wish I could swap places with her. I’d rather be dead, sailing away into oblivion on a cloud of cocaine, or whatever. Anything would be better than stuck here in this stinking room with Crazy Gary, whose only defence seems to be that he’s less insane than Daniel, or Lewis, or whatever his name actually is.

I can’t think about Katherine right now. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear it. It’s too much to take in.

‘I dreamed about you all the time,’ he says.

‘We could be together now, Gary,’ I plead. ‘I didn’t know you felt so strongly about me. It won’t come out, about Lewis. We could run away together, just you and me …’

He ignores me.

‘I couldn’t stand it when you brought a man back to your gaff. I wanted to break down your fucking door and punch his lights out. I could hear you, you know, through the wall. It
killed
me. That was when I decided I had to try harder to get you to like me. Do you remember that time I came over? I made up some story about some kids trying to break in, and you were scared so you invited me in. We talked for an hour – it was fantastic! I was so happy. You were telling me all about your job, the kids at school …’

Gary gets this faraway look on his face. ‘I wanted to ask you out, but it was too soon. I didn’t want to scare you off. At least we were mates by then, though. But then you started Internet dating.’

He almost spits out the words. ‘More men! What was wrong with you, Becky? You changed. You were so sweet and innocent – wholesome. Not any more … you turned slutty … It was sexy as hell, though – I wanted you so much …’