‘No.’

‘My dad was so vexed when that woman came round, he gave me a proper bollocking.’ He looked at me quickly. ‘I mean – sorry, I didn’t mean to swear—’

‘No, I’m sorry, Rocky.’ I patted his arm. ‘And I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

‘S’OK.’ He looked pained, but he tried to meet my eye properly. ‘I’m not like that though – and nor is my guy in there.’

In the sitting room, Zach was drinking hot milk with his sister. She had dashed rum into hers, just like her Trini granddad would have, and offered me the bottle.

But I didn’t want alcohol; I just wanted to watch them banter, teasing each other, exactly as they always had, though with less fisticuffs now. And they actually laughed, the first time I’d seen Zach so much as smile in days. I could breathe again; I could believe everything was normal again.

But when Zach went to bed, less morose than the past few nights at least, accepting a cuddle from his sister and a quick hug and kiss from me, my mood shifted again.

I shut the blinds tight so I didn’t have to watch the Westway lights, wrapped the old blanket around me in Jonny’s favourite chair and looked over at my daughter’s bright face.

‘I’m really scared, Al.’

‘It’ll be OK, Mum.’ She sat on the sofa, knees tucked up; supple and sinewy, as her father had been. ‘He’s such a good boy really.’

‘I know.’ But the fears that pervaded my nights now were present here; the idea of the darkness in Zach that, perhaps, I didn’t know; I couldn’t know. After all, we all had some darkness, didn’t we? Our shadow sides…

‘But—’ I paused again. Pulled it out of me like treachery. ‘What if—’

‘Mum! You can’t believe Zach would do something like that? He’s not that type of boy.’ She was outraged, and I was touched at her loyalty to her little brother. ‘I don’t think for one minute he’d force Cecilia to have sex if she wasn’t up for it.’

‘It wasn’t full sex though, was it? It was – they said it was – inappropriate touching.’

‘And you believe that?’ Ali looked furious. ‘C’mon, Mum!’

‘It’s— I don’t know, Al,’ I admitted. ‘I’m scared to say I don’t when both girls have now given actual statements to the police. When he’s been charged, Ali!’ The enormity of the situation suddenly hit me again. ‘It’s like living on borrowed time. We’re just waiting for a knock at the door.’

‘So why did he end up in bed with the other one then?’ Ali looked at me, defiant. ‘It doesn’t make sense, does it? If she thought he was an attacker, why the hell would she get in bed with him?’

‘No,’ I agreed slowly. ‘It doesn’t really.’ Though my deep fear was she was going to say he’d forced that too. ‘Nor does the thing about him throwing up, that the little lad Beau told me. The magic pill, as he called it. What was all that about? Someone’s lying.’