Winning doesn’t matter. Not any more. Charlotte would rather not play at all, but it’s in the contract. In the large as well as the small print it says that you can’t just leave the game, you have to lose it. You have to be a loser.

Sounds so easy

She steps into the escape room amid excited murmurs from the other contestants, the air charred with a touch of oil, though the machinery is almost silent. In a moment spotlights will snap on, illuminating whatever horrific scenario they have created. Escape. You just have to escape. Ignore the puzzle, even if it’s simple and easy to solve – don’t solve it. Fingers cold, pressed against your temples. You can do this.

Water starts swirling across the linoleum floor, and at once Charlotte knows what is going on. She knows instantly, as though a cloud has passed overhead and cut off the sun. Liquid gushes in, soaking her canvas shoes, and her companions make worried and disgusted sounds, sharing this primal aversion to a rising water-level. At first it is a lukewarm ocean broth, but then there is the tang of sewage, so subtle you would hardly notice – unless you were expecting it.

Charlotte covers her mouth and nose. She squeezes her eyes shut and, involuntarily, her brain strings together images of all the people she loves, like fairy lights, lingering on her friend Tamsin’s amused smile, the hug as they parted, the cool press of her rain-ruddy cheeks. If you don’t share it, it never happened. They’d enjoyed arguing about this, a psychometric survey question for this very show. She handed Tamsin the umbrella, and that was the last time they saw each other.

Now her skirt is plastered to her legs again, and home is far away. She takes a deep, juddery breath, then a tiny step, finding it slippery underfoot. People are calling her name. The filthy liquid consumes her knees, then chills her thighs, and she holds her arms aloft and keeps moving, hollow and heart-heavy as she comes to a decision. This time, she’ll have to play the game.