‘I know your type,’ he said, ‘you’re all the same, you lead a guy on and then say you’ve changed your mind. But like I just told you, it doesn’t work that way. Not with me at any rate.’ He pressed his mouth hard against hers and shoved her onto the bed.

‘Please don’t,’ she said as she struggled to push him off. But she was no match for his strength, or his intent as he ripped at her clothes. She tried calling for help, but that only made him clamp one of his large hands over her mouth. Barely able to breathe, and with the volume of music downstairs turned up even louder, as though to disguise the awful grunting sound he was making as he rammed against her, she had no choice but to let him get on with it. All the while in her head she was screaming for him to stop.

Thankfully it didn’t take him long and afterwards, when he was buttoning his jeans, he said, ‘Try telling anyone that was against your wishes and nobody will believe you. Everyone saw you come up with me quite willingly. You knew exactly what you were doing.’

She left the party straight away and back at the empty house, she ran herself a bath and cried and cried. But no matter how thoroughly she scrubbed herself, she could not wash away the stain of her stupidity. Why had she drunk so much? Why had she been so easily flattered by somebody who had proved himself to be no better than a savage thug?

In the days and weeks that followed, she withdrew from student life and rarely left her room other than to go to the nearby shop for food. Her housemates worried about her, but she wouldn’t tell them what was wrong. Who would believe her anyway? She had gone up those stairs with John quite willingly. People would remember her dancing with him and kissing him beforehand. They would say she had wanted him as much as he had wanted her. That’s how it would appear to anyone who had seen them together. So no, she kept quiet rather than be called a liar out to cause trouble.

But trouble lay in store for her when she realised she had missed her period. She wanted to believe it was caused by anxiety and not eating properly, but a trip to the chemist followed by a pregnancy test soon put paid to that hope.

She didn’t hesitate. Not for a moment. She would not let guilt stop her from doing what she had to do. No one was going to persuade her to give birth to the child of a man who was no better than a rapist. So she found the information she needed – there was plenty of it about on the university campus – and two weeks later she swallowed the first of the two tablets she had to take. The next day she took a couple of painkillers as advised, and then the second tablet the clinic had given her. She then waited for the medication to rid her body of the unwanted thing inside her.