She paused, and ran her finger round the rim of her glass. ‘I had this thing with my therapist,’ she said. ‘It’s the most dangerous thing to do, the most stupid, but when it comes down to sex I seem to get into a bit of mess. She manipulated me, Desmond, she was a very powerful person. She didn’t just have my body. She had it all.’ She tapped her shorn head. ‘All this, in here. All my life I’ve tried to be independent but she had access to the lot, and Christ didn’t she use it.’ She paused. ‘Why am I telling you all this? You won’t understand.’

‘I do, honest,’ I said. ‘I’ve been married.’ I paused. ‘Trouble was, my wife didn’t want anything inside my head at all.’

‘I was incredibly vulnerable,’ she said. ‘The depressing thing was, she was into all those old power games, the jealousy thing, everything. Just using a different vocabulary. You don’t believe it at the beginning, when you’re sort of blinded.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Not then.’

‘She lived with this other woman and she played us off against each other. I’d trusted her, I’d even taken her to see my parents, like she was my bloody fiancée or something.’

‘For Christmas?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Hilda hadn’t a clue. She’s really straight, she would’ve been so shocked, you know. She couldn’t have handled it.’ She inspected a non-existent nail, and chewed it. ‘Anyway, this woman, she was going to Green-ham Common so I just packed up and went too. Took the kids and everything. And I realized, I was sitting in the bender and it hit me, I realized, Lesley, it’s the same old story. I’d come here because of someone else. I think I’m in charge, I’m handling my own life, and it all comes down to bloody sex.’

I nodded. ‘It’s got a lot to answer for, hasn’t it. Sex.’

‘I’d meant to go to Greenham for years but I hadn’t, had I, I had to wait till I fell in love, like some female in some brainless bloody romance, the sort Hilda reads, the sort I’d sneered at. Some brainless female being swept off her feet. There’s nothing left, I thought, nothing left of me, me.’ She tapped her head again. ‘I’d lived with this bloke before, and it was just the same, I’d been sort of emptied, I’d become his property, he’d taken me over, except this time it wasn’t stock car racing and listening to stupid jokes, it was different. But exactly the same.’ She paused, and chewed on her thumb. ‘All these years I’d been aggressive just because, inside, I was weak. I was fighting because I was still incomplete. I knew I could be taken over by anybody.’