‘Can we … move around?’ Her eyes darted as if she were afraid someone had followed her in.

Robin wandered after her into the gloomier covered area back towards the entrance. The girl kept her eyes lowered, the cap shading the top of her face.

‘Taz told you how I got into this?’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to think … If someone had told me a year ago that I’d …’

‘What happened to you is criminal. The man who did it should be in jail.’

They’d come to a lingering stop outside a shop selling bags and aprons and crockery in twee retro floral prints, the 1940s redux. They faced the plate glass as if they were window-shopping, side by side.

‘Shannon Harris,’ Robin said, keeping her own head bowed.

A mute nod.

‘She was his girlfriend?’

Another nod. Robin saw the girl’s eyes move in the shop window. She was using it as a mirror, she realized, watching the passage behind them.

‘Did he kill her?’

Her body did a sort of hard shiver. She nodded infinitesimally. ‘I think so.’

‘What happened? Can you tell me?’ Robin moved along a bit, closer to the window, as if she were examining a pair of printed blue teacups.

‘When I started, she looked after me. He has sex with all the new girls – training,’ she swallowed, ‘but then they work for him. Shannon was his actual girlfriend. When I met her.’

‘Where did you work? Were you on the street?’

‘No. He’s got a couple of flats, somewhere out. And a house, where we lived.’ Another darting look, this one seeming to linger on someone before she lowered her head again. Robin saw her chest fall – relief.

‘We left,’ she said, mouth barely moving. ‘After Christmas. Shannon had to get away – she split up with him but he wasn’t having it. She’d been looking for ways to get out and she said she’d heard of a better place and she wanted me to go with her. It was better – a lot – but it didn’t matter in the end because he found us.’

‘What happened?’

‘He came there. He forced his way in, like he does. He went … crazy. It was …’ She shook her head. ‘Everyone was screaming. He kicked the cloakroom door in, glass everywhere. He hit the woman who ran it in the face. Then he picked up this bit of broken glass.’

She was back there, Robin could tell, seeing it again.

‘He said he’d kill them for what they’d done. Taking his girls. Her and Shannon – he’d kill them both. He got hold of Shannon and started dragging her but they had security – Greg, one of the bouncers, managed to get her away. He kicked him out.’

‘Why didn’t you leave?’ Robin said. ‘I mean, when you got away from his place – why did you go to another one?’