Evelyn twisted her mouth as she composed an answer. ‘Well, I hadn’t intended to. It wasn’t what I was expecting when I walked into that room.’

‘So he forced you?’

Evelyn shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t force me. But I didn’t really have a choice. If I wanted the part – and I did, I really did – then that was the price I needed to pay. I knew that and so did he. That’s how it was back then. It was just the way it worked.’

Pip sat back in her chair and shook her head slowly. ‘Evelyn. Have you ever talked to anyone about this, about what happened to you?’ she asked.

Her voice was quiet now, and Evelyn had the impression she had missed something that seemed obvious to Pip. She shook her head.

‘And you don’t keep up with current affairs? Have you seen what’s been going on recently?’

Again, Evelyn shook her head. She found the news depressing and so she just watched old videos and DVDs of programmes that she enjoyed: cosy Agatha Christie mysteries and the like. And she had given up reading newspapers when they began piling up around the house. Her world was very contained, and she had seen no reason to contaminate it with things from the outside.

‘Treating you like that was an abuse of power,’ Pip continued. ‘Plain and simple. It might have been just the way things were back then, but it’s not any more. Hundreds of women have spoken out against their abusers, thousands maybe, and in all walks of life. Men have gone to prison. Famous men, high-profile ones, household names even, for things they did to women in the seventies and eighties.’

‘But that can’t be right,’ objected Evelyn. ‘It was just how things were back then. Some men were just like that. Touching your bottom when you walked past, stroking your breast in a crowded lift, having sex with women young enough to be their daughters. We all knew what was going on, of course we did, and we didn’t like it, but there wasn’t anything you could do about it. It was simply a fact of life for women, so we learned to avoid the worst offenders and keep our mouths shut.’

‘But those men, men who behaved like that, were committing an offence,’ Pip said. ‘They can be prosecuted, punished.’

‘Well, that hardly seems fair,’ said Evelyn. ‘They were just doing what everyone else did. I’m not sure many of them thought it was wrong. They imagined we’d be flattered by being wolf-whistled. Well, to be honest, we were. Who doesn’t like to be appreciated?’

Pip shook her head. ‘How can you defend them, Evelyn?’ she said, exasperation clear in her tone.