‘I didn’t know,’ she stammered and spoke to her mother’s feet. ‘I didn’t know!’

‘You didn’t know what? That there was a recording? Or that he was using you for money?’

‘What?’

She blinked away the tears and met her mother’s glare. Her father spoke behind her. She didn’t dare turn and meet his eye.

‘The video was sent to us with a message,’ he said. ‘Either we pay the sum of fifty thousand pounds, or the person responsible will send the tape to everyone we know.’

‘Now do you see what you’ve done?’ her mother asked. ‘Your father has worked his whole life to earn that money for his retirement, and now we must give it away to protect the family from more of your mistakes.’

‘There is nowhere in the country we can move to avoid this,’ her uncle said. ‘This will follow us wherever we go.’

‘And who knows what will happen once we hand over the money,’ her father said. ‘He could very well ask for more.’

‘He?’

‘The man in the video,’ her mother said. ‘Who else?’

‘Do you know it’s him?’

‘Who else would it be? Who else would set up the camera?’

She remembered Richard looking right down the lens. He had been a part of this. He had lied to her all along. A sharp pain stabbed in her chest.

‘Maybe it was her,’ her uncle said.

‘I had nothing to do with this!’

‘You have everything to do with this!’ her mother yelled. ‘You were not forced against your will to conceive and birth that child, nor were you forced to have sexual relations with this man.’

‘Richard didn’t do this. He couldn’t have. He’s going to look after us. As soon as he leaves his wife he will—’

‘Wife?’

The room fell silent. Every pair of eyes shot towards her. She covered her face with her hands.

‘Give it to her,’ her uncle said.

Kirin approached with an envelope. Neena took it in her hand and stared at it through the tears. She noticed the gold glint of a wedding ring on her sister’s finger.

‘You will take this money and leave,’ her father said. He continued to speak behind her, as though he couldn’t bear to meet her eye. ‘You will not move to a place with family connections. You will move so far away that your betrayals will never reach us. And you will never come to us again.’