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tent, the sort of exercises I did when I was pregnant. If I didn’t move I could develop an intestinal blockage, which would be fatal.
    ‘The zip. It sounded different now, through my seashell ears, a low, swishing whirr like fabric running through a sewing machine, but I still heard it. Just in time I remembered to pretend I couldn’t. I didn’t know who it was. Someone grabbed my foot through the sleeping bag and shook it. I sat up. My hand was grabbed and I was yanked forward so that I lost my balance and fell forward on the side of my outstretched arm. I imagined I was to come towards the opening and so I scrambled out of the sleeping bag as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast because of the chain on my ankle, which I had to pull out with me. I felt my way forward on my knees and someone slapped my hand away, then forced it to touch the tent pole and slapped it away again. Did they think I was as stupid as they were? I knew enough not to grab the tent pole. When I reached the opening I was pushed into a sitting position and my legs were stretched out in front of me. It was freezing outside. I thought of my fur boots but didn’t dare ask for them.
    ‘A cold tin tray was placed on my legs and my right hand guided to the food on it. The little claw-like hand of Fox. I understood that now I was blind and deaf I could sit half out of the tent to eat and not dirty it inside again. This was a great relief to me. I felt a bread roll, smooth and hard, a chunk of Parmesan cheese. How could I get this down without appetite and even without water to soften it? My hand was taken again and the neck of a wine flask put in it. Terrified of spilling it, I lowered my head towards it rather than lifting it. The wine was acidic and strong. I didn’t like it but, rough as it was, I could tell it was home-bottled because the tattered straw smelled of old wine, vinegary, reminding me of our cottage in Chianti. We take our flask round to our neighbours, who fill it and pop the old cork back in. Healthy country wine would do me no harm and would help break down the dry food. The bread roll was impossible to manage. I couldn’t bite into it because to open my jaw much increased the violent pain in my ears. I tried to break it in my fingers but it was too stale. Something cold and sharp slid over the back of my right hand. I stopped moving. The bread roll was taken from me and returned in two pieces. The knife blade slid along my throat. Fox. I could smell him. I understood that he was teasing me, playing with me, and I refused to react, otherwise he would amuse himself constantly like that. I sat dead still and, when the knife didn’t touch me again, I began to eat. Tiny bits at a time, each with a sip of the sour wine to help with the painful chewing.
    ‘When I couldn’t manage any more I touched the ground beside me and felt a flattish carpet of twigs and dead leaves. There was no snow there and I was sure that this space had been hacked clear in the undergrowth of a wood. The chain on my ankle, tight and heavy, would still be tied to the tree trunk and there must be at least one other tent or a shelter of some sort for my captors. All that activity and their complaints about there being so much to do must have been related to their covering everything with the hacked-out brush so that we wouldn’t be visible from above. I slid the tray sideways onto the ground and waited, not daring to move until somebody told me to. My legs and feet were frozen but I breathed deeply the good fresh air and then listened. Nothing penetrated the roaring inside my head and I was glad enough to crawl back into the tent when someone pushed me and to seek the warmth of the sleeping bag for my cold feet.
    ‘I supposed, since I’d just been fed, that it was now afternoon, an afternoon that stretched in front of me, an aching, empty distance, without sight or sound. I had to learn to live inside my head and to call on a lifetime of sounds and images