After a couple of hundred yards he parked the car at the entrance to a field. It wasn't entirely hidden from view but it wasn't completely in the open either.

'Right,' he said to Reggie. 'You -and the dog -both stay here. I mean it, OK? I know that you are exactly the kind ofperson who will get out of this car the minute I'm out ofsight, but I'm asking you to solemnly promise to stay here. Promise?'

'Promise,' she said meekly.

He had found a hefty Maglite in Joanna Hunter's glove-box. In an emergency it was an excellent weapon and he could have done with it himself but he gave it to Reggie and said, 'If anyone comes near you, hit them with this.'

He got out of the Prius and listened. He heard the Nissan's engine up ahead and then the engine stopped. He set off on foot.

The Nissan was parked in front of a house, next to a nondescript Toyota, and the guys were climbing out, stiilly as if they'd had a long night. Jackson watched as one of them knocked on the front door of the house before both of them went inside without waiting for an answer. After a few seconds he heard them yelling excitedly at each other as ifthey'd found something that they hadn't been expecting or hadn't found something that they had been expecting (or indeed both) and then they came racing out of the house and back into the Nissan, one of them on the phone to someone as he ran, and Jackson had only just enough time to throw himself into a dry ditch at the side of the road before they were haring back up the track towards the road. To his relief they drove straight past the Prius.

He set off in the direction of the house, wondering what it was that had alarmed them so much. Not death he hoped. There'd been enough of that for one week.

A movement in the overgrown bushes that surrounded the house startled him. He thought it might be a fox or a badger but a person, not an animal, stepped on to the path. There were enough lights on in the house to make out that it was a woman and then she was suddenly illuminated, held like a moth in the beam of the Maglite, in the unsteady hand of (a typically disobedient) Reggie and Jackson could see that it was not just a woman but a woman with a child in her arms. She was veiled in blood from top to toe and had a knife clutched in her hand. Not so much a Madonna as a great, dangerous avenging angel.

The dog barked with joy and ran towards her.

'Dr Hunter?' Jackson said, approaching cautiously.

'Can you help me?' she said to him. More of a command than a request, as if a goddess had unexpectedly found herself on earth and was in sudden need of an acolyte. And Jackson had never been one to say no, either to goddesses or to requests for help.

La Regie du Jeu MARGARET, ARE YOU GRIEVING OVER GOLDENGROVE UNLEAVING, sumer is i-cumin in, loude sing cuckoo, there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, Adam lay ybounden bounden in a bond and miles to go before I sleep, five little bluebirds hopping by the door. Run, run Joanna run. But she couldn't run because she was tethered by the rope, like an animal. She thought ofanimals gnawing offa leg to escape from a trap and she had tried tearing at the rope with her teeth but it was made from polypropylene and she couldn't make any inroad on it.

She knew that this was the dark place she had always been destined to find again. Just because a terrible thing happened to you once didn't mean it couldn't happen again.

The men only spoke to her when it was necessary but they didn't seem bothered that she could see their faces. There was something military about them and she wondered if they were special forces. Mercenaries. She thought it best to talk to them even if they didn't talk back. One was slightly shorter than the other and she called him 'Peter' (I'm sorry I don't knoUl your name, do you mind ifI call you Peter?). The slightly taller one she called 'John' (HoUl aboutJohn -that's agood name?). She said, 'Thank you, John' when they gave her water or 'That's very kind of you, Peter' when they took away the pot to empty it.

She guessed they were going to kill her eventually, when she'd served her purpose, whatever that was, but she was going to make it difficult for them because they would have to remember that she had been friendly to them, she had called them by their names, even if they weren't their real ones, she had made them see that she was a person. And that they were people too.

As well as water they gave her food, microwaved ready-meals that she would never have considered eating normally but which she looked forward to because she was very hungry. They gave her jars of baby food and cow's milk in a cup which she didn't give to the baby but drank herself and breast-fed the baby instead. They gave her a pack of disposable nappies as well, the wrong size, and a bin-bag to put the soiled ones in although they never emptied the bin-bag.

The baby was very subdued and she supposed it was because they'd given her an injection of something that made her head feel like wool for the first day, some kind of liquid benzodiazepine or maybe intravenous Valium. She had prepared the vein for them herself after they put a knife to the baby's throat.

They brought in some toys -a ball and a plastic box with different-shaped holes in the side. Lights came on and a bell rang if you posted the correct shape in the holes. They were both secondhand and still had little hand-written price stickers on as if they'd come from a charity shop. They were both soon bored with the toys.

Mostly she played pat-a-cake with the baby and peek-a-boo and she sang and recited rhymes and jiggled the baby around to keep him amused, to keep him warm as well because there was no heating in the house. Hypothermia was a more immediate problem than boredom. They had given her a couple of blankets, old things, but it wasn't enough. She wished she had her inhaler with her (she had to work hard to stay calm), she wished she had the baby's comforter and that they were both wearing warmer clothes.

They had walked into the bedroom as she was getting changed. She had heard Sadie barking dementedly downstairs and a banging noise that she didn't understand until she realized the dog was trying to break down a door to get to her. She had gathered up the baby and rushed out on to the upstairs landi. Ng and that was when she saw them.

*

The rope was too short to reach the window but she could stand on the bed and from there she could see out. Fields, nothing but brown fields, winter barren, lit by a bright, cold moon. No sign of another house.

On the second day, Peter gave her a pad of paper and a pen and told her to write a note to 'your husband'. What should she say? That they would die if he didn't do as he was told, Peter said. She wondered what Neil had done to bring this about and what he was doing to end it.

She became a doctor because she wanted to help people. It was a terrible cliche but it was true (but not true of all doctors). She wanted to help all the people who were sick and in pain, from measles to cancer, from heartsickness to depression. If she couldn't heal herself then she could at least heal someone else. That was why she had been attracted to Neil -he hadn't needed healing, he was whole in himself, he didn't suffer the pain and sadness of the world, he just got on with his life. She was a bowl, holding everything inside, he was Mars throwing his spear into the world. She didn't have to tend to him, didn't have to worry about him. Necessarily, that meant there were drawbacks to living with him, but who was perfect? Only the baby.

She had spent the thirty years since the murders creating a life. It wasn't a real life, it was the simulacrum of one, but it worked. Her real life had been left behind in that other, golden, field. And then she had the baby and her love for him breathed life into the simulacrum and it became genuine. Her love for the baby was immense, bigger than the entire universe. Fierce.