Samantha and I, and all the other women, had been released with a caution at 2.00 a.m. I’d rung home from a payphone outside the police station, reversing the charges. Dad had answered, wearily, and hadn’t said a word while I apologised down the phone, suddenly mortified at my reckless behaviour. I saw myself from high above, a small, dirty bear in wellies, tear-stained and sobbing in a phone box.

Samantha waited outside, wandering a little way down the road when she heard my sobs. I was glad that she was still there, and more glad that she was being discreet. It was all so embarrassing, but a combination of delayed shock, tiredness and Dad’s familiar voice combined to set me off, and I cried so much that Dad had to keep telling me to take deep breaths as I ‘sorried’ until I almost puked. When I told him I’d been arrested and released with a caution for public-order offences, at first he assumed I had been arrested in Salisbury after a raucous birthday celebration with my friends.

‘Reading? Why did they bring you to Reading?’ I heard the alarm in his voice.

‘Because that’s the nearest police station to Greenham Common,’ I hiccupped.

‘Greenham Common?’

Mum, who’d obviously woken up and joined Dad at the phone at the bottom of the stairs, squawked in horror. I pictured her ear jostling for receiver space next to his.

‘Yes. I told you that’s where I was!’

‘No you didn’t!’ Mum shrieked. ‘What the hell were you doing there?’

‘I left you a note. In Pete’s room.’

‘Pete went straight out after dinner. We thought we heard you both come back about midnight, but it must just have been him.’

Oh shit. None of them had seen the note. They hadn’t even been aware I’d gone. This made me feel both better and worse.

‘So you thought I’d just ignored the birthday dinner?’

‘Yes,’ Dad said mildly down the phone. ‘For reasons we couldn’t quite fathom.’

I heard Mum snort at his restraint, and it made me cry harder. I’d have preferred her outraged censure to Dad’s understated disappointment.

‘Daddy,’ I said, even though I’d stopped calling him ‘Daddy’ when I was thirteen, ‘please could you come and pick me up?’