‘No. No, she didn’t. She deleted it all. She said that as soon as he sent her a message it freaked her out so much she got rid of it, that she didn’t want to give him headspace.’

‘Well … she could have been lying,’ Clara said desperately. ‘She could have made it up.’

‘Yeah, she could have.’

‘OK, so …’

Jade shrugged. ‘Why would she lie about it? She was so certain, so sincere. You can usually tell, can’t you, when another woman’s lying to you. In the end the uni let him off with a warning. Typically, he got no comeback, apart from me dumping him of course, and a reputation for being a pest, but the general feeling was “naughty old Luke, boys will be boys” sort of thing. He continued to swear blind that the girl was lying, and he certainly had no trouble getting another girlfriend. Let’s be honest, it’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, just the sort of shit women are expected to put up with, be flattered by, even.’

Clara thought about it. About a time at a party when she was a teenager, a lad she’d fancied buying her shot after shot after shot, then, later, things going too far, too quickly, him not taking no for an answer until she finally managed to push him off. She’d told no one, worried it had been her fault for leading him on. Jade was right that it happened all the time, in different forms. A friend who often slept with her boyfriend when she didn’t feel like it because she couldn’t stand his endless moods if she didn’t, the time Zoe had been hit on by her flirty boss, who’d then made her life miserable when she’d turned him down. They were ordinary men, not monsters leaping out of bushes: friends, boyfriends, colleagues, getting drunk, getting carried away. A bit selfish. A bit entitled.

She remembered the emails Luke had been sent: Women are nothing to you, are we, Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable. Think again.

‘Did you tell the police about this?’ she asked.

Jade shifted in her seat, looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘No, it’s not something I like to dwell on. And there’s no way it would have anything to do with Luke going missing now, so I didn’t think it was relevant.’

‘Can you remember the girl’s name?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Her name was Ellen. Ellen Michaels. We have a few Facebook friends in common from our uni days and I saw that she’d got married recently, in fact. She’s living in Hong Kong now.’ Jade was silent for a bit. ‘I wonder if she thinks about it ever, about what happened with Luke.’