Jack Laurence

Nigel Brennan and Amanda Lindhout just had their world ended in an instant.

A car stopped, guns raised, and just like that, two journalists who had gone to Somalia to tell other people's stories became one.

What Nigel and Amanda were now facing is something most of us will never experience, but something that is actually far more common across the world than most people realise.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 kidnapped for ransom incidents are reported worldwide every year.

And experts believe those figures are merely the tip of the iceberg because one of the first instructions kidnappers usually give is do not tell the authorities.

Nobody knows how many cases never actually get reported at all.

Some kidnap experts estimate that only 11% of kidnapped victims are freed without a ransom being paid.

And when a ransom is paid, only around 40% of those taken will return home.

Of everyone taken hostage for ransom around the world, in war zones, conflict regions, in countries where life is cheap and foreign nationals are seen as a walking paycheck, only a fraction will make it home in one piece.

And the ones who do are often changed so profoundly by what had happened to them that the person who comes back is not quite the same person who was taken.

Nigel and Amanda were now part of those statistics.

Bundled into a vehicle, disappearing into one of the most lawless countries on earth, with no guarantee that anyone would ever find them, or that finding them would even be enough.

Their 15-month nightmare had only just begun.

Did any ounce of you believe that whatsoever?

When they arrive, the pair are bundled into where they would be being kept.

For now, anyway.

Because over the course of the next 15 months, they would be moved time and time again.

In fact, over 11 times to different houses and makeshift cells.

But for now, this was where they'd stay.

There were three rooms inside the building, side by side, with an outside toilet.