I waited outside the great house in the Oval for what seemed like eternity. I used to love this side of my job – the inexorable journey to the centre of the story – but now it just felt depressing, sitting here in the car with a cup of cold coffee. A Filipina maid left and returned with a shopping trolley that she could barely get up the front stairs, just as a group of hooded black boys swaggered down the road. The handsome leader caught my eye, his eyes narrowed, his diamond studs flashing beneath the streetlight. I debated getting out to save her. Then he turned to the small puffing woman and carried the trolley up to the top stair for her in one hand.

There was hope here, somewhere, I felt it. These shores were wide enough for all of us, weren’t they?

A black Mercedes pulled up outside the big house on the end of the row. I got out of my own car now and moved into the shadows.

A slim woman, all long hennaed hair and high heels, got out – and then a man.

‘Ash,’ I stepped forward. ‘Do you remember me? I wonder if we could have a quick chat.’

‘I’m busy, Mrs Miller. I’ve got to get back to the Commons in an hour.’ His handsome face was set grimly – he didn’t look pleased to see me at all. Gently he pushed the woman towards the house. ‘I’ll see you inside, Laila.’

Out on the pavement in the humid street, we eyed each other carefully. I took a deep breath.

‘Please, Ash. I need to know what’s going on.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said diffidently. ‘Where?’

‘I know about Huriyyah,’ I said quietly.

A siren wailed in the distance. Ash stared at me.

‘What do you know?’ he snapped after a long minute. ‘Another scoop?’

‘That you and she—’

‘That your stupid society ruined her?’ He took an infinitesimal step towards me. ‘That she was drugged and raped and that she never was the same again? That she became a junkie afterwards, that she never regained her honour.’

‘It wasn’t my society,’ I said, but I felt my skin burning with shame. ‘And I only ever saw her once. She looked like—I didn’t think it was rape.’

‘Oh, didn’t you?’ he spat. ‘And what does rape look like exactly, Mrs Miller?’

‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled. ‘But at the time, she looked like she was … ‘ I couldn’t say enjoying it exactly, ‘ … complicit.’

Had she though? At the time, maybe, but I remembered my doubts afterwards. My hesitant enquiries into her welfare, enquiries that had come to nothing.

‘A little heroin can help a lot, can’t it, Mrs Miller?’ He glared at me.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘And then a little becomes a lot.’