He smelled really horrible now. Bad breath, booze, ciggies – I didn’t want him to kiss me any more. His hand moved up from the bottom of the zip and that same grubby forefinger nudged inside the elastic at the top of my knickers; dirty against my pale virgin flesh, my chub of chunky flesh. I was wearing knickers with a pink and green flower on the front. He pinged the elastic; he was grinning right in my face, his mouth moments from mine, his eyes black like he couldn’t really see me. His finger began to push slowly downwards, puckering the eighty per cent cotton, twenty per cent polyester.

I gasped. ‘Chicken,’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ he murmured and he removed his finger from burrowing through pale pink cotton blend and in one swift movement cupped me; his whole hand a clutching dirty bear’s paw, his thumb bent and pressed into the skin at my pubic bone, his fingers curling under me and clutching me underneath. He had me in a grubby vice; his forefinger and the one next to it squeezed down hard where they found themselves. I froze.

‘Chicken,’ I said. Louder. I wanted him to stop. This was not what I wanted. I tried to shift my body backwards, away from him, but there was nowhere to go.

‘Sorry? Can’t hear anything.’ His other hand was pinning me against the rust, by my right shoulder. It hurt my neck. He pressed his fingers down harder. And his horrible thumb.

‘Chicken!’ I shouted. ‘Chicken! Stop, please! Chicken!’

I sounded ridiculous and he laughed at me. He didn’t stop. He left his pressing hand where it was, the vice, and I was reminded of hideous woodwork lessons, where I had been humiliated in so many other ways, but he took his shoulder-pinning hand and raised it to my face. With a closed-mouth smile, he dragged two rough fingers down my left cheek and when he held them away from me I could see a smear of Hide the Blemish, shade 1.

‘What we got under here, then?’ he asked, his breath hot and fetid, and I was terrified for a second he meant under my knickers. ‘Hiding a little secret, are we? Let me see.’ His other hand still cupping me tight, he spat on his forefinger and scrubbed hard at my face, scouring the Maybelline off my birthmark until a half-moon of beige foundation was wedged under his already filthy nail. ‘Oh, that’s a beauty,’ he said, staring at my birthmark and tipping his head from side to side as though admiring it. ‘A pretty little thing, ain’t ya? You should be grateful,’ he spat in my ear. ‘No one else will want to do anything to you, with that face.’