After I’d packed the last of the things I wanted – including those face creams that cost a bomb – I went through the gate to the flats next door and rang Fin’s bell.

There was no answer.

I rang it again.

‘He’s gone, love.’ A bald man appeared in the stairwell, clutching a silly fold-up bike. ‘Moved out last night. Saw him packing up that old jeep.’

‘Oh, right.’ I felt surprisingly calm. ‘I just wanted to thank him for a favour he did me. And to return something.’ The hoodie he’d lent me that one night I’d stayed. ‘S’pose I’ll keep it then.’

When I left Rex, so did Cecilia. She moved into her mother’s permanently, which made going much easier for me.

It turned out there was little I could do about my husband’s abusive behaviour officially. That nice policewoman told me my best bet would have been to contact them while an incident was actually occurring.

‘You should keep a diary of everything he does from now,’ PC Okoye said, but I knew it would be too late for me if I stayed to do that.

Our justice system is not set up to defend women against violence.

And I understand all too well why women stay with men who abuse them.

Because they don’t feel good enough to go anywhere else.

Because too often they hate themselves, or believe that they do: they are steeped in shame, or else they’ve grown up in homes where violence was normal; the back of a hand or a swift kick being only a reminder to work a bit harder to avoid it.

I realised, just in time, that I’d confused the adrenaline of hands around my neck with the buzz of being alive.

I’d confused it with a fight for survival.

It didn’t mean I was alive, the buzz or slap or push; it just meant I might not be soon. Or that I might waste my own life in prison, after I’d fought back, too hard.

But it took me time to see this clearly.

I had to get some distance. And once I’d left, it was obvious: now there was not just me to fight for.

There was the other one.

I did still have Fin’s number, of course.

He’d texted me that video clip the day after I’d – after we’d—

After I’d stayed that one night with him. After I’d opened up my heart: just a little.

This might help your pal, it said. Now you need to help yourself.

Where did you get this? I’d asked.

And I’d got that single symbol in response – the shrugging man.

I saved his number though. I couldn’t quite let it go.

RUBY

As winter came, our stories had not completed. They were still small commas begun and, as yet, unfinished: the future still unknown.

Since we’d met, as such a disparate group, we’d been held in half time; in the half-light; in an interval between before and after.