She had read the stories of a multitude of actors, musicians, sportswomen and others who had, empowered by the courage of a few, stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight in order to share their dark and desperate stories. Had any of them approached what had happened to them in a similar way to Evelyn? If they had, then that wasn’t the message Pip had heard, but perhaps she hadn’t been listening carefully enough. Maybe some of them had also cut the men some slack, made allowances for behaviour that Pip could only see as unforgivable. Personally, she couldn’t understand that way of thinking, but if her training as a barrister had taught her anything it was that issues were rarely black or white.

All that said, Pip was sure that on this occasion she was right. There were no excuses. Of course, she couldn’t force Evelyn to make a complaint and she wouldn’t want to. It was a personal decision for each woman to make on their own. But she had always assumed they decided not to speak out for fear that some deeply buried emotional trauma would be reborn by doing so, that it would cause them a personal psychological pain they didn’t feel equipped to deal with, or that they didn’t want to be cast as a victim. It had never crossed her mind that anyone could possibly believe it might be unfair to the man.

She was still pondering it when she heard the tractor in the yard. It was Jez. He bounced down from the cab and started examining one of the tyre treads. Seeing him, her stomach lurched and fizzed, as if she were suddenly seventeen again, young and in love for the very first time. It had been so long since she had last felt it, that hormone-fuelled spike of adrenaline that leaves every nerve ending buzzing at the mere sight of another person. How had she thought she was too grown up to feel that buzz when the buzz was actually what life was all about? That was how you knew you were really alive.

Losing touch with lust hadn’t happened just as a result of the accident, she realised now. Whilst she had been proud when Dominic had asked her out, her legs hadn’t turned to jelly every time she saw him. Instead of butterflies in her stomach, there had been an objective appreciation of a handsome man and a warm, slightly smug feeling that she had mistaken for something else. But it wasn’t the same as what she felt now, not the same at all. What on earth had she been thinking back then?