How long had she been there in the dark? Hours? Days? Weeks? Longer? Lucy had no idea, no way to measure the passage of time. Once or twice she tried by counting. ‘One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand.’ Each time, she’d get up to five- or six-hundred-one-thousand and forget why she was counting.
Her throat was parched. Her stomach hurt from hunger. She remembered reading that a human being could last for weeks without food but only three or four days without water. She was desperately thirsty. Her tongue felt like a big dry furry thing stuck in the middle of her mouth, although she didn’t think she could be totally dehydrated. Even now she could still make tears. More than once she’d felt the wetness sliding out from under her lids and rolling down her cheeks. She tried catching the drops with her tongue to moisten her mouth, but it never worked.