Wozza stood from his squatting position and winced when one of his knees clicked. He looked over at me. ‘What do we do?’ he mouthed.

I bent over the sobbing man. ‘Mr Christopoulos, do you want to tell us what happened?’

The sobbing stopped and the man, whose eyes had been shut tight, opened them and peered at me through red rims. ‘She kneed my balls,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I think she broke them.’

I looked up at Wozza. ‘Is that a thing?’ I whispered.

He looked uncomfortable and shrugged.

I leaned over again. ‘Mr Christopoulos, Marina has been assaulted. Did you hit her?’

‘I want her charged!’ he shrieked, just as she came back into the kitchen with two paramedics.

I’d seen them at a couple of other jobs. We all nodded at each other.

Marina fell to her knees in front of her husband and gave his shoulder a rough shove. ‘Oh yes, big man! Have me charged,’ she said gleefully, ‘and I will stand up in court and tell the world how I fought back and kicked you in the lemons!’

Dimitri looked horrified.

Marina left him on the floor and returned to the bench to make tea. The ambos unpacked their equipment and tended to Dimitri, who had quietened considerably after the threat that his ‘lemons’ might be the subject of a court case.

I turned my attention away from the paramedics as they began removing Dimitri’s shorts to inspect the damage. Marina ripped open a packet of Tim Tams and offered me one. Wozza joined me, no keener to see Dimitri’s lemons than I was. He also wanted a Tim Tam.

We ignored the occasional theatrical moaning coming from the kitchen floor, and soon the ambos were loading Dimitri onto a stretcher.

Marina didn’t follow them out. She took a sip of tea and put her cup down. She looked at me. ‘I want to thank you for the self-defence class. You gave me the courage to stand up for myself and it felt so’—she stopped to search for a word—‘so liberating.’

‘So, what started it?’ asked Wozza, taking another Tim Tam.

Marina shrugged. ‘Nothing started it.’ She was still looking at me. ‘You know what I’ve realised since you did the talk at the CWA?’

I shook my head.

‘I’ve realised that nothing has to happen for this to happen.’ She pointed to the swelling beneath her eye. ‘It’s not me doing something wrong. It’s him deciding to fly off the handle. I could just be standing here breathing and that would be enough. When you spoke, I realised the life I’d grown accustomed to was wrong. You made me see the problem was his behaviour, not mine.’

I felt a little overcome with emotion as I saw her courage and understood the power in her words. ‘Where to from here?’ I asked.