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The shed was his refuge within the fortress she’d made of their home. His escape from reality. With only himself and his plants for company.

He loved to pot seeds and watch them sprout and grow. Potatoes were his favourite. He had two shelves of seed potatoes. Once he was sure there’d be no more frost, usually in March, he would bring them out to the field that backed onto their property and sow them. If she allowed him.

The flowerpot beneath him was eating into his skinny arse. He eyed the fold-up chair in the corner. It was covered in cobwebs, so he wasn’t going to sit on that. He’d sprayed the shed to get rid of the little buggers, but they seemed to materialise like ghosts to taunt him.

‘That’s what I’ll do,’ he said aloud. ‘You won’t get away from me again.’

He rooted through a wooden cupboard searching for the bug spray. It pained him to have his work consigned to the shed. He’d have loved his own greenhouse. She’d said he wasn’t good enough to have one. Another of her methods of humiliating him, just like she humiliated anyone she didn’t like who came in contact with her. He wasn’t innocent in all this, but it gave him comfort to know none of it was his fault.

She lay on the hard, narrow bed. She no longer had any concept of how long she’d been held here. Weeks? Months? She had no idea, but it seemed like a year. She’d fallen into their routine, which meant waiting to be summoned downstairs to work.

Straining her ears, she listened. The house was quiet. That was good, wasn’t it? But she’d heard the argument that morning and heard him slamming the door of his shed, where he went to nurse his wounds. Pathetic man.

There was no chance of escaping, of opening the front door and running away. The house was surrounded by high stone walls and trees. She assumed it was located out in the countryside, somewhere no one except the householders ventured. His shed was wooden, with a long corner window. He could see her if she attempted to go out the back door. Not that she’d tried. All the windows in the house were bolted shut and seemed to be triple-glazed. As for the front door! It had multiple locks and huge steel bolts.

What she couldn’t figure out was why they wanted her, why they kept her. Okay, so she did some housework for them, but that was used as a humiliation tool, as was taping her mouth. What was their ulterior motive? Because she knew in the depths of her soul that she hadn’t been brought here just to wash dishes.

If she hadn’t been so nosy, if she’d left the past where it belonged, this never would have happened.

She’d learned over the time she’d been held here that it was unwise to ask questions. A beating would ensue. Her meagre food would be withheld. Her bony body bore testament to that. So she remained silent. The will to fight had been knocked out of her. That defeat made her more despondent than all the punishments she’d endured.