“No, actually, it’s harder.” Good. That came out steady as a rock.

“Why is that? Surely your own pain is the hardest to contemplate?”

“I can’t think about anyone else’s pain.” Less steady now. “It’s too much. I can’t make sense of it.” My voice is breaking on every second or third word. “Other women have been gang-raped. Other women have been through what I went through, only worse.” I’m sobbing uncontrollably now—gasping out words between sobs. L. Bascombe leans forward to hear better. “Some of them were stabbed and strangled as well. They had their bellies cut open and their guts spilled out and coated in dirt. The doctors had to wash that mess before piling it back in again.”

She nods to show she knows the case I am referring to. It was on the news a while ago. Astonishingly, the woman survived.

“It happens all the time to black women up and down the country. To impoverished women all over the world.” It comes out as impo-ho-ho-ho-vrisht. “None of them gets to see a shrink afterwards.When they’re patched up enough to walk, they’re sent home—often to the bastard who hurt them in the first place.” (Ba-ha-ha-ha-stid.) “And they have to get on with it—cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids, showing up for work. No fifty-minute hours for them. No sirree.”

Lydia Bascombe’s voice is soothing now that she is back in the driver’s seat. Her patience is infinite. “Your capacity for empathy in the midst of your own pain is laudable.”

I laugh. It comes out as a sob. “But that’s it. I’m not empathetic. Every time I think about those other women, my brain tells me they’re not really like me. They don’t feel as deeply as I do. I’m more sensitive than they are. They’re tougher, shallower. I mean, how can they possibly feel things as acutely as my precious white self? They’re just living the life they’re used to. Their trauma can’t compare to mine.”

L. Bascombe’s eyes are shifty, darting from side to side. I have made her uncomfortable. She swallows—a dry, clicking sound audible to both of us.

“How do you feel when it’s a white woman who has been attacked?”

“The same. I find reasons why it wasn’t as bad for her. She is probably not as bright as I am. Not as sensitive. She’s more of a coper. She’ll get over it.” I draw a breath that shakes so much it sounds like three separate breaths. “There can’t be that much pain in the world. It can’t all be equal to mine. I can’t stand it if it is.”

She lets out her own breath in a thin stream. Her world has righted itself. I’m not racist after all—just traumatised.