‘You did the right thing. He’ll never change. Next time he’ll kill you,’ Frankie had said, on repeat, while others pulled up sleeves to show scars, regaling the new girl with tales of the last beating they’d taken.

‘Nothing bad can happen now,’ Frankie had said, and Lizzie thought how wrong she was. Maybe it showed on her face, because Sarah had looked at Lizzie then. She was expecting her to share her own story.

They all were. Frankie, Stella, Tess. She knew, if she did confess, it would break down the walls between them. In this place, a human-rights lawyer could become best friends with a beautician because they both bore the same hidden scars. They had both married men who always avoided hitting their face.

Here, in Tess’s tarnished old house, full of tarnished women, it didn’t matter if your blood was red or blue. It didn’t matter if you worked in a shop or on the stage. All religions were accepted here. No one envied anybody. The bodies in this home came with abuse. No one would choose that. Here, no one bothered with fad diets, and the only beautifying done was when someone wanted to disguise themselves with hair dye, or swap glasses for contact lenses. Here, people knocked before they entered, trod quietly on the stairs, never shouted.

Lizzie was living in a sanctuary. These women had lost everything – their jobs, their independence, their friends and their dignity – and still they bled human kindness. With nothing left to give, they offered immunity.

If only Lizzie could be as brave. If only she could open her mouth. If only she didn’t have as much to lose.

Lizzie had avoided Sarah’s eye, and busied herself folding blankets and tidying books, but inside, the pressure was piling up.

Tess had marched in then, with her tinned chicken soup for the soul and bread with the crusts off. After plonking down the tray, she swept Sarah’s hair from her forehead without asking and turned her face to check the swelling eyelid. ‘Oh, that’s nasty. What a rat he is.’

Lizzie had wanted to tell them all to leave the girl alone. Even she could see Sarah was uncomfortable, and sick of people touching her. Instead she said, ‘Emotional tears are more watery than other types. That’s why your eyes swell so much when you cry.’

She’d known it was the wrong thing to say even before Frankie had looked at her with her standard what-the-fuck? expression. She’d done it again, been a scientist when they wanted a woman. Marie Curie, Lizzie’s idol, had been both, but it had killed her in the end. In exposing radium and polonium, she had also exposed herself.