‘She sat down in a chair next to the bath. It felt a bit strange because it had been years since anyone – Eva, my parents – had been there with me when I was bathing. But she started talking about how she used to give me and Eva baths when we were little. Then she picked up a facecloth and dipped it in the water and began washing me.’

All the while, Melissa talked, using calm, soothing tones. She talked of how much Beth had changed but how she would always be Melissa’s ‘special little girl’. The flannel running over her scar: ‘a sign of beauty, Beth. Your special mark.’

‘She was the person I trusted more than anyone in the world. A sacred bond between us. And it felt so weird, but it would have been worse to say no, to make her feel like I was uncomfortable about what she was suggesting, that I was scared.’

Easier just to lie back, to steel her body to her aunt’s touch which was still gentle, still caressing. Beth had fixed her eyes on the light fitting hanging from the ceiling so that she wouldn’t have to confront the softness of Melissa’s gaze travelling down her body. The faltering smile. Those fingers touching, probing, the flannel floating to the surface of the water, drifting away.

Words spoken. Painful, like peeling back layers of skin. Turning herself inside out – vulnerable, exposed.

Her father’s voice: ‘It’s all right, Beth. I know.’

His arms tight about her, squeezing the life from her.

‘Corinne told me,’ he’d said, and she’d stumbled away from him, reeling.

She was still stumbling, still reeling, falling out of the hall and into the daylight, pulled along by the current, the tide of girls streaming away from her. It felt like being underwater, everything indistinct, reality refracted and distorted so even the daylight seemed bent, crooked, the grass and sky, the pavement beneath her feet watery, her movements slow. Wading through it, she looked up and saw them there – two girls standing together – and the blood rushed thickly through her veins, everything clarified. The hurt. The betrayal. She had been tossed aside, discarded.

It was like a synapse snapping suddenly to life – so real she almost heard it inside her own head. For such a long time she had been unable to form judgements, to make decisions, as if that part of her brain had atrophied, grown slack and useless. It was Corinne’s guidance she had craved and without it she was helpless and adrift.

But now, she saw them together, trapped in a doomed light, and everything became clear. She heard herself speaking the words: ‘You didn’t wait for me.’