Bex looked up and caught her sister’s eye. ‘I suppose so. Thank you.’

‘Life is random and shit,’ Kirsty said. ‘Get used to it.’

‘Kirsty, I …’ She looked at her sister’s porcelain face.

‘What?’

‘There’s another thing. I know it’s nothing compared to losing Lucas …’ Was that true? It felt like the right thing to say, when Kirsty was suffering so much, collapsed on her bed like she’d been shot. Bex hated to make it worse but she had to do it. Because she couldn’t let him get away with it. ‘Kirsty, I wish I didn’t have to tell you this now, but I …’

Kirsty looked blankly at her. ‘What?’

‘I was raped. Last night I was raped.’

Kirsty frowned and shook her head. ‘No you weren’t. You can’t have been.’

‘But I was.’

‘Jesus, Bex, I can’t cope with this now! What is it with your attention-seeking behaviour all the fucking time? I’ve just lost Lucas. Can’t you give me that?’

Bex felt the tears slipping down her cheeks. ‘I’m not attention-seeking.’ She stood slowly, and stumbled towards the doorway, but her dad had appeared in it. ‘Are you girls okay?’ he said.

Kirsty’s voice was loud. ‘She says she’s been raped, Dad. It’s not true.’

Her dad looked so out of his depth, she almost felt sorry for him. He touched her on the arm. ‘What, Bex? What happened?’

‘She’s making it up,’ Kirsty said. ‘She can’t stand that the attention’s not on her for once.’

Bex tried to push past her dad, but he grabbed her arm. ‘What happened, Bex?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She snatched her arm away and ran along the landing to her room, the gossamer-thin family connections she’d made tearing apart as she slammed the door behind her.

She threw herself onto the bed and sobbed, listening to the soft voices of her dad and Kirsty drifting through the wall. She couldn’t hear what they were saying.

The door opened, then closed gently. The bed shifted with someone’s weight. ‘Please, Bex, tell me what happened.’

She gulped and twisted round to look at her dad. He handed her a tissue and she dragged it across her face. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. Who raped you, Bex? Tell me. Kirsty’s just terribly upset about Lucas. Forgive her. She doesn’t mean what she’s saying.’

If he’d been her real dad, a proper dad, he’d have hugged her and she’d have sobbed into his shoulder. But he sat awkwardly as if desperate to get this over with, like the stranger that he was.

‘I don’t know who it was,’ she said, as clearly as she could. ‘I passed out. I had too much to drink. I know that’s bad.’

‘Oh heavens. Yes, that is bad. That’s very bad.’