“He threw me on the bed and then he was on top of me, forcing my dress up, ripping my knickers. I managed to get a grip of myself and I screamed that I’d tell everyone what he’d done to me. Can you believe it, he just laughed and said no one would believe a black whore who’d just been made redundant. I guess I just snapped then and I used the muscles I spent all that fucking time building up. I pushed him off me and he staggered back. I jumped off the bed and followed him, pushing him and telling him what I thought of him. I wasn’t shouting or anything, just letting him have it.

“He was staggering away from me, and he tripped over the chair and crashed into the window. It just gave way behind him, and he tipped right out.” Pauline paused, her eyes on the middle distance, seeing yet again that slo-mo topple that had sent Union Jack into oblivion.

Lindsay reached out for Pauline’s hand. Her friend gripped it tightly and took a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to go on forever. “I’m so sorry,” Lindsay said uselessly. “I had no idea.”

“It was an accident,” Pauline said bleakly. “It was an accident. I keep telling myself it was an accident. But it won’t go away.”

For a long time, the three women were silent, each reflecting on the chain of circumstance that had brought them all to this point of decision. Typically, it was Lindsay who broke the silence. “So, having started Conference Chronicle for revenge, you continued it for self-defense?”

“That’s right. I never really cast any serious suspicion at you, you know. I wouldn’t have stood by and let them arrest you. But Laura was different. After the way she betrayed all of us over the years, she deserved all she got.”

“Not to mention what she did to Ian. Incidentally, how did you find out about Laura being a Special Branch plant?” Lindsay asked.

Pauline giggled. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”