After the session, Zoe walked outside into the cold tangy air. Her face felt all blotchy. But as she stood in the street, and the wind pummelled her face and whipped her hair around her head as if it were alive and trying to tell her something, she found that she didn’t need any help understanding. She no longer cared about her father’s neglect. She no longer cared about her stupid uncles. She no longer cared about Pauline and Kath and how mean they could be. She would be happy regardless of whether Ravi was just a friend. She felt all these thoughts flowing out of her with the blood itself. She watched the boats in the harbour, then she took out her phone and walked to the porch of the Islands of Women Study Centre to be out of the wind. She rang her mum, who wouldn’t be able to pick up, because she was at work. But Nina answered immediately. ‘I love you, Mum,’ Zoe said. ‘Of course you do,’ said Nina. They talked about Mariam, who was still on Papa Astrid. The nuns were in communication with her husband, who hadn’t been charged with trespass, but was still hoping not to divorce her. Mariam really wanted her quilt back from him. But Sister Geraldine said that the people she needed to talk to were immigration lawyers. ‘Meanwhile, I’m thinking of a change of career,’ Nina said. Now that Zoe was almost grown-up, she wanted to do something really meaningful, to her personally, and what she had really really loved, she missed it so much, was the baby-toddler stage, the warmth and the cuddles. So, she was thinking of setting up as a childminder. She could do it from home, and childminders were in short supply in the islands. You’d be brilliant at that, Zoe said. They were still speaking, when a call came in from Sebastian.

‘It’s Sebastian calling,’ Zoe said.

This never happened.

‘Is it?’ said Nina. ‘Well hang up, then, see what he wants.’

Zoe heard heaving noises, as if Sebastian was practising breath meditation, or yoga, or was having sex. Zoe had heard two of her classmates having sex in Tommy Marsden’s parents’ bedroom while locked in their toilet. Her father sounded like one of them. Then Zoe realised he was crying.

JUDGE: In what spirit did you release the video of Sebastian Vane in the orchard?

TARA: In the spirit of anger and disappointment and frustration. Of course, I was wrong to do that. I see that now. In doing so, I behaved like them. But we had tried the political angle first – the insider dealing, we published copies of the application George Harcourt-Vane had submitted to the Islands’ Council – but somehow, although it gained traction, it didn’t stick. He hung on. It was the sex angle, finally, that did it.

CAMILLE: I was at work when it happened.