The finger had moved on, to the cleft of my chin – I had a spot there, also thickly covered – I wanted him to avoid it. He sped up a little now, his finger travelling over the mound of my chin and down the plane of my neck. He was accelerating, searching for something new. He stopped his finger in the hollow above my sternum; I had a pulse in that silky notch I’d never noticed before. The finger moved on, pressing flat on T-shirt cotton, against my breastbone, then into the slightly sweaty ravine of fabric between my breasts. It was probably on the ‘O’ of Blondie; I didn’t dare look. Underneath, I was wearing a pretty bra, one my mother had left behind when she first left, which now fit me. I couldn’t think about her now. Her ‘Choose Life’ nonsense. Her endless running away. Panda Pops. Margarine. Sweden.

Shaun stopped above the band of bra beneath my breasts. I knew there was a little embroidered rosebud sewn to it, with a pink heart at its centre. His fag breath was in my face. My heart was pounding; my eyes still closed. I felt weightless but also that I was tethered, against that generator and on that dry grass. I wondered where Georgina was. The finger set off again, down towards my stomach, which I instinctively pulled in. Too many doughnuts, too many sweets, on the way home from school. That’s when I’d met Georgina, on the way home from school; she’d nicked a bag of sherbet off me then we’d got talking. She was different, like me. We got each other. Shaun’s finger was travelling lower, down my stomach, as though squelching through mud. Through my T-shirt it rested in the fleshy pool of my belly button for a few seconds. I didn’t like my belly button being touched but I let him touch it. I wanted this revolting, sexy man to touch me. His hand was now at the top of my jeans. He circled the edge of the brass jeans button, popping it free of the buttonhole, then he pulled down the zip below it; fast, abruptly. He was breathing in my right ear as his hand waited at the bottom of the zip, a claw.

‘What are you doing?’ My words were involuntary. My eyes were wide open.

He sneer-smiled. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘No?’ I answered, but it was also a question. I didn’t know.