Her bones ache and her head feels brittle. She tries to move, but it hurts too much and she thinks she might have broken something. She opens her eyes and it is too bright. She blinks, squints at an oval light which has a cage around it; and she can smell excrement and bleach. Josie raises a hand to her face and feels her chin and cheeks and eyes. She puts her other hand to the floor. Is it the floor? She pushes herself up and grimaces through the pain as she swivels, looking around the room. She is on a bench with a mattress no thicker than a pack of cigarettes; a steel toilet in the corner and a steel basin; a thin window, high up, and a big steel door with a spyhole in it. ‘Shit,’ says Josie, realising where she is – that she is on the other side. She tries to remember how she came here. She was up at the Archibalds’ house and she was waiting for Pulford. Wasn’t she? Josie looks down, sees her legs swing from the bench. Her bare legs. She looks again and feels for her clothes but all she has on is a short, tight minidress that has ridden up and which is ripped across the midriff.
