‘Josh told us that when he was twelve, they’d gone on holiday to France, and his mum had made friends with this other English family at the campsite. They had kids the same age, they went down to the beach together, had barbecues. He said one night he’d got up to go to the toilet block and he saw the man, the husband, forcing himself on her.’

‘His mum? Hilary?’

‘He’d got his hand up her skirt, he said, he had her pressed up against a wall, she couldn’t get his weight off. He’d gone running, Josh, stopped it, but Hilary made him swear never to tell his dad. Or anyone. As if it was she who’d done something wrong.

‘The look in his mother’s eyes, he said, her terror – he’d never forgotten. The man had his hand over her mouth, he said, and there were just these silent tears streaming down her cheeks.’

‘Making her powerless. Violating her. My mother.’ She saw Josh on the end of Rin’s bed, sweating, white. That airless room, the smell of vomited alcohol. ‘And I was just a kid. Twelve. He was a man, he was strong – I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to beat his head in. I wanted to kill him. But he just walked away. Scot free.’

Samir’s eyes were locked on her face again. He was completely still.

‘When he saw the man with me, he said, his hand round my throat … He said he didn’t even remember hitting him.’

‘Was he telling you the truth?’

Robin pulled back. ‘What?’

‘Josh,’ said Samir. ‘Did you and Rin believe him?’

She remembered the look on his face as he saw the pipe in his hand, the man on the ground. Incomprehension. Then comprehension. Disbelief. Horror.

‘Yes. Of course we did.’

She and Corinna next to each other on the floor, curled as small as possible, arms gripping their knees. ‘I can’t describe it,’ she said. ‘It was like an actual nightmare. That night, weeks after. The fear – my heart was pounding constantly, I was nearly sick whenever the phone rang. It was in the paper, the Post – man attacked in Jewellery Quarter, left for dead. We kept waiting for a witness to come forward – the girl who told me Rin had left, one of the bouncers. We talked about going to the police ourselves, just to make it stop.’

‘So why didn’t you?’