She reached for the radio and turned it on, and if she hadn’t done that, she might have heard the door as Martin let himself into the house. Donna Summer filled the room, ‘Bad Girls’, toot toot, beep beep, not quite what Alison was in the mood for, but you took your chances on Radio 1 on a Saturday night. She was on her bed, eyes closed, dropping like a stone into sleep, when he entered her bedroom, and even then she didn’t hear him immediately because he was sober and had taken the precaution of removing his boots at the bottom of the stairs. Then she sensed a presence, a malevolence in the room, and she opened her eyes, but it was too late and everything that happened next did so in a fearful, uncontrollable rush, a worst nightmare, a horror story. He was at her and on her, monstrous and full of hatred, dragging her off the bed by the hair, gagging her with a scarf he’d brought for the purpose, ripping at her dress, her pants, her bra, tearing into her with silent determination. He said nothing at all but she screamed fit to fetch all the street in until the gag silenced her fury, then she fought like a lynx, scratched and kicked, but she was slight and he was a heavy brute, and he pinned her body to the floor, crushed her into submission, one hand round her throat, the other clutching her hair, and like this he was able to thrust into her, over and over, calling her bitch, cunt, bitch, cunt, to the steady rhythm of his violence. He took his time, so she could fully understand the depths of his loathing, the extent of her helplessness. When it was over, he laughed. Then he stood, zipped himself up, and prodded one foot experimentally into her side and then again into her abdomen, as if she’d just been washed up on a beach and he wasn’t certain what she was. He stared for a few moments at her nakedness, and the marks he’d made on her skin. Then he hawked and spat in her face, to remind her of her own sin, and then he left. All of this took less than ten minutes, and Peter came back home, as he’d said he would, an hour after leaving, thirty minutes after Martin Baxter had let himself out of the house.