I turned round and walked back to the gallery area, shaking. A few seconds later my hair was yanked back, as if my ponytail had caught on something. I cried out in pain. It was her. She spun me round and pushed me against a wall, knocking me into a picture. It crashed to the floor and the glass broke, falling in pieces around my feet. She’s going to wreck the gallery, I thought—all our paintings, and it would be my fault. It’s always my fault. What would I tell Saul?

One of her hands was flat against my chest, the other behind her back. That was when I started to get frightened. What was she holding? She’d been in Saul’s workshop, where there were knives. Saws. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please, don’t hurt me.’

‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Nothing. I just . . . I’m sorry. Don’t hurt me. Let me go!’ A storm began to rage in my mind. The same words again, the ones I’d said over and over to Her when she yanked the tape off my mouth: don’t hurt me, please, let me go. I was no longer aware of the woman with the grey-black hair, or the gallery. The present dissolved into the past; there could never be anything but Him and Her; that one attack would last for ever, in one guise or another.

The wild-haired woman’s hand emerged from behind her back. I saw a canister: paint. Red. My body felt formless, as if it was breaking up. She held her weapon close to my face and sprayed. I screamed. It went in my mouth and eyes, and when I closed them, she carried on spraying. I felt a heavy wetness all over my face and neck, stinging, hardening. I tried to move, but I couldn’t.

‘What on earth . . .?’ Saul’s voice.

I heard a splash, then something rolling, a metallic sound. I tried to open my eyes, saw thin red ropes in front of them where my lashes had been glued together. Her hand released me. I mumbled, ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Saul and the woman were shouting over one another, saying things I didn’t want to hear. I had to get to the door. I had to get out of there. I didn’t pick up my handbag or my jacket. I was free to move, so I ran.