‘What?’ Julia didn’t understand anything. Her daughter might just as well have been whistling. ‘What are you talking about?’

Lisa flicked her hand dismissively, as if what she’d said wasn’t important any more. ‘I told Querky that you forced me to go on the game,’ she laughed grubbily.

Boom!

Another hand grenade of madness lobbed in her direction by her daughter. And her aim was getting better.

‘What? For Christ’s sake, why?’ Julia asked.

‘Because she wouldn’t have helped me otherwise. She only looks after children who’ve been raped and abused. So I fibbed to Querky. To prove I was being forced to have sex with strange men against my will I sent her the video.’

Julia blinked. In the split second that her eyes were closed, scraps of memories flashed in her mind, in which she saw the back of her daughter’s head in the lap of a groaning man who now had a name: Tom!

‘The video in which I did him the favour of playing you.’

‘Me?’

‘A whore.’

In her mind’s eye Julia saw Lisa take the money.

Okay. Stop. Enough. It couldn’t go on like this.

She took a step towards Lisa. Now there were only a couple of arm lengths between Julia and her daughter. ‘Look at me, Lisa. I know I’ve made mistakes. I wasn’t there for you when your father left us. I didn’t look after you enough when you hit puberty. And, yes, I had a relationship with your teacher. But I ended it.’

‘You’re lying.’ Lisa gave her the finger.

‘No, it’s the truth, darling. Without me knowing what was going on between the two of you…’

‘Is. What is going on between the two of us!’

‘Fine, fine, fine!’ Julia raised both hands to calm her down. ‘Without knowing what is going on between the two of you I noticed that Tom…’

‘Don’t you dare speak his name again!’

‘… wasn’t the right man for me.’

‘Ha!’ Lisa sneered at her. The sweat was now dripping from her eyebrows too. ‘So you think you’re better, do you? Was he just a disposable item for you?’

Julia closed her eyes. This wasn’t getting anywhere. She might as well have begged the sea to stop swooshing. She turned angry. Not at Lisa, who was manifestly no longer in control of her senses and in urgent need of professional help. But at Tom, who’d abused his position of authority as a teacher, destroyed the sensitive heart of an adolescent teenager and also deceived her. Her unbridled anger surfaced so quickly that she could no longer control what she was saying. ‘Okay, fine. I’m the guilty one!’ she barked at Lisa. ‘I pinched Tom off you. I deserved being given the biggest fright of my life. But none of that is going to bring that filthy bastard back, who only used you…’

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaa…’