‘I did what I had to do. You wanted to hurt him, and I could not let you. He was the most beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing. You should have seen him … Wait, I’ll show you,’ her mother said. She stood up and left the room. Saskia sat, paralysed. Her mother returned shortly, carrying painted portraits of a young Emil Coetzee, which she now proudly arranged on her mantelpiece. ‘Your father is gone now, so I need no longer hide these,’ she said as she examined her handiwork with satisfaction. ‘He was the only man I was truly able to capture as an artist. There was a way he would look at me, you see. That was what nobody understood … the very deep connection we had.’

Saskia felt sick. ‘Emil Coetzee was just a boy, Mother. You took from him something that you had no right to,’ she managed to say before she got up and rushed out of her mother’s cottage. Once outside, she vomited and vomited and vomited the vodka and scrambled eggs that had been her only sustenance that day. She knew she would only feel better once she was pain-free … when all of her was blissfully numb and everything was a blur.

Saskia had no idea how she had come to be lying under the full weight of yet another man she did not like, but here she was. She had expected Rutherford to be a disappointment: most men were, but he had exceeded her expectations.

‘That has never happened to me before,’ Rutherford said, not really apologising as he made another impotent grope at a part of her body she no longer felt connected to.

‘I am sure it hasn’t, Clement,’ Saskia said as she pushed him off her.

‘I swear. It is the first time.’

‘I swear. I believe you,’ Saskia said as she swung her legs off the bed. She reached for her lacy panties and felt disappointed in herself because she had evidently gone the extra mile to seduce him. Rutherford pulled her back onto the bed a little roughly and slovenly slavered over her left breast. ‘I am done, Clement,’ she said, pushing him away – knowing that men like him did not take rejection well.

‘What?’ You don’t want me any more? You’ve been practically begging for it since you set eyes on me. You’ve been gasping for it,’ Rutherford spat at her.

Saskia laughed in his face, knowing full well that what a man like Clement Rutherford feared most was being laughed at by a woman. So when he backhanded her across the face, she was ready for it and welcomed the pain. She found that she wanted the fight. She slapped him back.