‘If you say the word love again,’ she says, ‘I will kick you out and I’ll tell Maisie the whole truth, as soon as she’s back. And your parents. What you did was not love. Don’t you dare use that word.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Get on with it,’ she spits. ‘Tell me what you did.’

‘I came back. I came back to the party in Hampstead because I wanted to see you. I thought … I just … I won’t use the word, but I just wanted to be with you. And I thought – or at least I hoped – that you maybe liked me too. The way we talked to each other, I was in love with—’

Becky flings the nearest object – a mug left by the bedside – hard, at his head. It smashes on the wardrobe door less than a foot from his head. She wants him out, he is as repulsive to her as a murderer. She wants him damaged and impotent, like she has been for half her life.

‘I came back to the party to see you,’ he says, holding himself still, upright yet foetal, legs held to his chest. Glassy eyed. ‘And when I got there it was late. I think it was about two in the morning. I had to be back at home the next day for my dad’s family but I was really high and … I don’t know. I thought I’d come and see you and maybe we’d … Anyway. I looked for you and you weren’t downstairs where most people were, and Mary had apparently taken off with that guy she was seeing, so I checked around the house and then I found you.’

‘Like Sleeping Beauty.’ Her voice wavers as she tries in vain to sharpen her words so they will slice him, but she finds only a withering, disappointing sarcasm to express her sadness for the girl in the bed, asleep and unaware that she is about to be invaded. ‘Waiting for my prince.’

‘You weren’t asleep. You were in bed but you were awake.’

‘I don’t remember a single moment that I was awake with you.’ But even as she says it, she finds she cannot trust that she is right. Maybe he is right. Perhaps she woke briefly. ‘I was never awake,’ she says again, holding her own hands to stop them from shaking.

‘You were really out of it. Like … I’d done a pill and I’d had some beers and a joint as well downstairs. And you were in bed in the dark and I put a lamp on and sat down, and I swear it was just to ask if you were OK, and you said to get in and so I did.’

The world tilts. He is going to make it her fault.