‘Dan, no. Like I said, I’ve never spoken about it until today and I certainly haven’t been back for a magical mystery tour.’

Dan exhaled, a long, low breath. ‘That’s some serious poison you hung on to there.’

‘Least said, soonest mended – isn’t that what they say in Yorkshire?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘But you’re not mended.’

She was affronted by this, and she gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘What do you know? You know nothing about my life here.’

‘I’m not attacking you, Alison, and by the way I know plenty about your life – it looks gilded, from what I’ve seen online. I’m just saying there’s such a thing as—’

‘Oh God, please don’t say closure,’ she said, cutting into his unfinished sentence. ‘I can’t bear that word.’ She brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them, making herself small, and tight, and inviolable.

‘I wasn’t going to.’ He moved a fraction closer to her, although the language of her body made physical contact seem suddenly inappropriate and he knew he’d have to try to navigate her defences with words. ‘I was going to talk about justice, a kind of justice, for you, for that girl you were, and I was going to say how going back to Sheffield could be a positive move, if that’s what you decide it’s going to be.’

‘I don’t need justice.’ She was very pale, and she wouldn’t look at him.

‘Not justice as in dragging Baxter through the courts, although it’s not too late for that if you wanted to report the fucking lowlife weasel bastard. I mean justice in a looser sense, I mean justice as in taking back what’s yours, reclaiming the parts of the past you still need.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well – Peter. I suppose I mean Peter.’