Deadline

Twenty-seven

Emma dug away in the gloom with the rusty nail, trying to shut the constant fear out of her mind, forcing herself to concentrate totally on what she was doing. It had been dark for over an hour now but still she kept going, even though every part of her body seemed to ache with the effort. It was a slow, painful job, but she was getting somewhere. She'd created a gap of almost a quarter of an inch between the wall and the plate on the left-hand side, enough almost to get a finger underneath, and when she tugged at the chain it definitely felt looser. If she could just keep at it, eventually it was going to come free. She was sure of it. But God, it was hard.

She heard a noise upstairs – footsteps. She froze. If they saw what she was doing, they'd punish her. The cruel one might even decide that keeping her alive was now too risky, that it was time to get rid of her altogether.

She jumped up, lifted the bed, straining with the effort, and pushed it back against the wall, trying to be as quiet as possible but unable to stop it from scraping loudly on the stone floor.

Please don't let them hear it.

Gritting her teeth, she lay back on the bed, put the nail under her pillow, and reached for the hood.

The footsteps stopped. Was one of them outside the door?

She put on the hood and closed her eyes, hardly daring to breathe, terrified that this might be it. The last few seconds of her life. Had all her efforts of the last few hours been wasted?

But the door didn't open.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

She lay there in the darkness, her heart going faster and faster, cold beads of sweat running down her forehead as she listened as hard as she could for any sound in the room, knowing that the cruel one always liked to creep up on her.

But she could hear nothing. Only silence. And eventually she plucked up the courage to remove the hood and look around. But the room was empty.

So, he wasn't coming for her tonight.

But she couldn't help thinking it was just a stay of execution.