‘How the hell do you know the name Lee?’ she asked again. Her eyes bored into her son’s and she remembered the picture of the naked girl on his phone, their exchanges.

‘Mum! Please – you have to believe me – I didn’t do anything to that girl.’

‘Joshua, I’m asking you one more time – how do you know that name?’ She wanted to shake him, make him understand how serious this was. He started crying then, and Claire felt her leg muscles contract to keep her upright. She scrabbled for the chair, righted it, and sat down.

‘Mum, I promise you,’ cried Joshua, ‘I didn’t do anything to Rose.’

‘But you know Lee?’

Joshua wiped his eyes and nodded. ‘Sort of. He’s older than us but he was a friend of Jinty’s and he just sort of… started hanging out with us.’

Jinty. She knew he was one of the Colston lads that Joshua and Mark had been hanging out with the year before.

‘How long was he hanging out with you?’ asked Claire.

‘I dunno – maybe six months? Maybe longer?’

Claire forced herself to let the silence settle between them, waiting for Joshua to continue.

‘He was a bit weird to be honest, but he was… useful,’ he continued after a few moments. Claire looked at him quizzically. She thought he wasn’t going to answer at first, but her patience won out.

‘He could get served in the off-licence,’ he explained, reluctantly. ‘He would bring us booze and we’d drink and listen to music. I didn’t really talk to him that much. And then he started talking about these girls he’d met and how he would introduce them to us.’

‘And then what?’ asked Claire, hardly able to breathe.

‘And then, nothing.’ Joshua shrugged. ‘Lee occasionally came around to Jinty’s and that was it.’

‘And was one of these girls Rose?’ asked Claire.

The silence was unbearable.

‘Joshua?’ But Claire already knew the answer.

Joshua sat, his shoulders hunched over in despair. He looked up at his mother, his eyes filled with tears; for the first time looking frightened as he answered.

‘Yes. What will happen now?’

Claire looked at her son and knew that the only thing she could do now was what she did best. Her job.

‘Well, I’m sure that Rose will realise that she got confused and made a mistake,’ she reassured him. ‘Julia is working on that now. Like you said, Rose was high and drunk and there were loads of people at that party.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’ asked Joshua.

‘Well, we’ll deal with that if it happens, okay?’ Claire pulled Joshua into her arms and although she wasn’t religious, she said a swift prayer that it would all be sorted before Joshua got arrested.

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