Ed went back to his life, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in the cabinet.

He had left her plugged in; he felt it was the least he could do. He’d tried to find out himself about the previous tenants, but it turned out all the details that they had left were fake, even though they had passed an extensive credit check. Even the solicitors were embarrassed; Ed had contacted them on a pretext he’d made up, and his solicitor had had to admit that the people had ‘gone away’ as if they never existed. Dead end.

He was sitting in his room, by the cabinet, playing a game of chess, when he heard a small knocking coming from it. Intrigued, he worked out again how to open it.

“Can I play?”, came the small voice…

“I can’t keep saying hey, you!”, said Ed. “I’m going to call you Jane, short for Jane Doe. It’s what the unknown woman is called in the detective movies…”

‘Jane’ giggled. “Ok, Jane will do for now, anyway. Pawn to King 4”

Ed and Jane had a fun game of chess. It was only when they had finished playing that Jane realised how long she had been out of her cabinet for…

This time, however, instead of being scared, she was delighted.

“Can you stay with me longer?”, she asked. “I really feel better with you around.”

“Ok, but what are we going to do about food?”, Ed asked. “I’ve got to go and cook dinner some time.”

“I’ll come with you”, Jane said.

Gritting her teeth, she nervously followed Ed into the kitchen.

“Nice little flat”, she said.

Ed started cooking dinner. To his amazement, Jane joined in, getting all the vegetables ready and getting them on to boil, like she’d always been doing it.

“You seem to be good at that”, Ed said to her.

“I should be”, Jane retorted, arrogant for a second. “I’ve been doing this for long enough…” Her voice trailed off. She put the knife down and thumped the tabletop.

“Damn! I almost had it! I saw work for a second, as clear as day. Now it’s all gone again…”

Ed held her as she cried…

Despite setbacks, Jane was definitely getting better.

She now knew she was a chef, or at least a cook of some kind; she had been preparing vegetables as if she was working in a restaurant, and a high end one at that. She was also very good at chess; she was soon thrashing the daylights out of Ed at it. The only thing that scared him sometimes was the arrogant side of her personality that occasionally came out.

Then came the day that the article appeared on the news website…

“Famous Chef’s disappearance; one year on”

The article had Jane’s picture in it. Her name was Cordelia Grey…

There were interviews with her work colleagues. To Ed’s amazement, they were all being very restrained and obviously trying to find something nice to say about her. Then they interviewed her husband, Peter.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve just been told a load of tosh”, he said. “Everyone is tiptoeing round this; we’re all glad Cordelia is gone. She was being a real bitch to the staff; we were in the middle of a messy divorce. I was even accused of murdering her, at one point. Still; wherever she is now, if she’s still alive, I hope she’s happy.”

Jane jerked as if she’d been shot. Crying hysterically, she wrapped herself around Ed’s arm and just howled…

Hearing her real name, as well as Peter’s voice, had brought it all back…

They had been arguing that night, at the restaurant. Arguing over who was going to own it after the divorce. Before she had had chance to do anything, Peter had hit her. Hard. Everything had gone black.

She’d woken up in the cabinet, gagged, helmeted and mutilated (so she thought at the time). Peter couldn’t bring himself to kill her; he was also very afraid of being caught. He felt it would have been better if she just ‘disappeared’…

He’d used a shell company to purchase the flat as an investment, and left Cordelia there, sealed in her cabinet. She’d been alone for almost a year. The drugs in the liquid food that the cabinet gave her, which it made from the 12 month’s supply of powder built into the cabinet, had caused her amnesia, as well as her agoraphobia. Ironically, if Ed had been a couple of weeks later in moving in, Cordelia would have starved to death…

As it was, she had been out of the cabinet and eating real food long enough for the drugs to start wearing off, and the shock of seeing Peter and hearing her name had flushed everything out of her system.

Trouble was, now, Jane didn’t want to be Cordelia anymore. She told Ed this, saying the time she had spent with him was the best she had ever had in her life.

She didn’t know what she was going to do…