‘I know. You’ve paid a lot of utility bills. Never child maintenance. Never because you brought her into this world, without my consent. Only because you were the guy who made all the sacrifices. So fucking selfless.’

‘How could I have done it any other way without telling you?’

‘Listen to yourself! Can’t you hear what you’re saying?’

‘I’ve told you the truth now and you hate me.’

‘I needed the truth then. I needed it the next morning, Adam, when I woke up alone and there was semen inside my underwear and part of me had been fucking stolen.’

‘Oh God.’ Adam rests his head in his hands. Then he seems to shrink before her as his limbs fold in on themselves and he sobs loudly into his lap. ‘I was always looking for a moment to tell you. When you weren’t suicidal. When it wouldn’t risk pushing you over the edge. And then you gave birth to Maisie and you fell in love with her. And so did I. It was our daughter, Becks, lying in your arms. And I wanted … It was never a sacrifice. And if I let you believe it was a sacrifice, or at least something I didn’t need to do, then I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to be with the two of you, looking after you both for the rest of my life. Only … you didn’t love me. And so I tried to see other people.’

‘I hate you,’ she whispers under her breath.

‘It was always you. I always held out hope because you never got that involved with anyone … and it was hard, because I know that on some level you found the whole dating thing difficult because of your history …’

‘Because of the fact you raped me.’ Her teeth grind together, her fists bunch again.

‘Stop saying that! Let it be what it was, which was two really wasted teenagers …’

And then she roars. She roars at him, in deep, thick, solid, ravaged breaths. She roars at him, wanting to singe his hair and burn his skin with the size and volume of her voice. She roars until his eyes are wide with panic and fear, so that spittle showers him and his neck retracts like a lizard.

‘Stop it!’ he shouts.

‘Did you, at any point, ask me if you could have sex with me?’

‘Stop it.’ He is crying now.

And still she roars, intoxicated by the look of terror on his face, as if for a split second she had made him feel her pain.

‘Did you ask me? Yes or no?’

‘No,’ he screams. ‘I did not ask you.’

The silence is so thick, so clogged she can hear both their struggling breaths.