‘The next day I thought maybe I should call you, but then I was really worried you’d say you’d regretted it. So I thought I’d see you at school and in my head, if you were happy about it, then I’d know we were maybe going out together. And if you avoided me then you’d be letting me down gently. That kind of thing. And I tried to come up to you. Don’t you remember that?’

She does remember. A half-wave from Adam in the hallway while she went lesson to lesson, living a waking nightmare of having been a nameless somebody’s black-hole fuck. A piece of meat built for someone to ejaculate into. Yes, he had waved.

‘So I thought, OK, she doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I was heartbroken, to be honest.’ Adam tries to look her in the eye. ‘I just assumed for ages that you were being weird around me because you hated that we’d had sex together and you were trying to forget about it. I felt … It doesn’t matter what I felt. But I thought I’d made you hate me.’

‘You have.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t like what? Not like fucking what? Say it.’

He is flustered. ‘Not like … I mean, until you told me you thought you’d been raped I had no idea that you didn’t even remember any of it. I remembered it even though I was really high. For me it was the biggest thing that’d ever happened to me. It was the best thing and then—’

‘The earth moved for you, did it?’

‘And then after you blanked me it hurt. Becky, it was like the biggest thing in my life.’

‘Me. Fucking. Too.’

‘I didn’t think it was that, I really didn’t. I’m telling you the truth.’

‘You didn’t tell me the truth though, did you?’ she shouts, spittle exploding into the air, sticking to her chin.

‘I was sixteen.’

‘You didn’t tell the truth.’

Adam takes a long breath. Staring at her, like he has suffered some great injustice and is doing very, very well to remain so patient with her as he explains. Or is he frightened? Or is he telling the truth, now, at last? Becky’s head swims.

‘The girl I was in love with slept with me and then ignored me. That was bad enough. And suddenly I was going to be her rapist? I was never that. That’s not who I am. And that’s what you were going to think of me if I said—’

‘No, Adam. That’s not enough. When you knew I couldn’t remember, you chose not to tell me. Fucking say it.’