The sound of familiar voices in the road outside hauls Becky, drained and disoriented, back into the present. Time has gone quickly. Adam hears them, too.

‘What about us?’ says Adam. ‘What happens now?’

The doorbell goes and Becky, now dazed, leaves the room to answer it.

Maisie’s face creases with worry. ‘Mum! What’s wrong?’

‘Something happened to someone we used to know,’ says Adam, from up the hall behind Becky. ‘Someone from a long time ago. It’s nothing you need to worry about.’

‘From how long ago?’

‘School days,’ says Adam. Becky can’t speak. She can only hold Maisie and try not to break into pieces.

The next day, Becky goes to the local police station.

The woman behind the counter is hunched, pressing a pen onto a pad, midway through writing a sentence, when Becky leans in and says, ‘I want to report a crime.’

‘I’ll be with you in just a minute,’ says the woman, glancing up. Blue shirt, black pullover. Practical blue. Police black. Black and blue covering every part of her.

But Becky does not move until the woman looks up again and this time she speaks clearly and slowly and too loud for the size the room. She speaks the words that will change everything for her.

‘I want to report a rape.’

Chapter 28

Hackney and Islington

One year later

At two in the morning Becky wakes with butterflies in her stomach thinking, No, I can’t go through with it. But then, by daylight, in her little kitchen up on the third floor of this ex-council block overlooking the park, after coffee has been drunk and fingernails picked at, she thinks, all right then. It is another deep breath, in a year that has been full of them.

It is a warm, bright day. In the park, the leaves on high branches catch the light and sway softly. Morning dog walkers make conversation with each other as their dogs sniff and wag. Nobody is in T-shirt and shorts quite yet. She’ll dress for a light breeze, she thinks. This flat is half the size of their old place, but has twice the view. Is that a kind of parity? Might she really have lost nothing after all? Enough time has passed that she can half-smile at the thought.