The samples scraped later from her body confirmed his semen. His urine too. Only the scratch to her leg had come after, they thought, in the scuffle when the roofer from the downstairs flat next door had charged in and pulled Terry away.

She had recollections: Terry’s face looming over her; a rank smell; hot liquid on her skin; rough grunts. But she wasn’t sure if these were real visions, or imagined, or spliced together with teenage rememberings and the sounds she’d heard through walls. Her body didn’t hurt, but it felt tired, used up. They said it was the roofer who had saved her. Another witness had confirmed this, a woman, a neighbour. But when she closed her eyes she was sure she could see Dominic – the boy she’d wanted to help, the helpless one – creeping up behind Terry, lifting a steel saucepan to his head. Terry had been standing over her then, she was sure of it – over her, but not on top of her, not actually inside her. And before the roofer she was sure there had been somebody else, too, a woman, a blur of orange and red, smelling of something sweet, pulling Dominic away, lifting him up, allowing him to crumple small into her arms. After that, her ears had filled with soothing melody, church music, or lullaby, and somehow it had swept them all away. She said this once or twice, to the police, to George – the boy, the woman, Terry being by her but not in her. But it didn’t make sense, it didn’t fit, and in the end she let these visions slacken and slide past her with the rest. In some ways it was reassuring to think of the unthinkable as simply a blurred and distant part of patchwork.

George would not stop apologising. For being late. For being naïve. For not fixing the door. But how had she got like that, he asked, on elderflower? He wanted to call Sarah, but Veronica found that she didn’t want Sarah to know. Besides, it was possible, she suggested, that she had simply picked up the wrong glass and not noticed the taste of wine. It was possible. She told herself this too, tried to convince herself of it, but every time she thought of Sarah, something grew just slightly inside her – a sensation of either empathy, or anger, or perhaps both, suppressed for now, for now.

Meanwhile, she held herself together. Humiliation and shame nipped at her heels, but she filled out the necessary forms, and succumbed to the necessary tests, and spoke up. And spoke up. She did not cry. With tears, it seemed to her, the last drops of her power would seep away, and she would not allow Terry, or anybody else, to take this too. So she held herself together, just as her parents would have proscribed, just as her colleagues would have expected. Only George knew different. With George, she held herself together by allowing herself to fall apart, a patchwork unravelling, piecemeal, one square at a time. George collected the cotton gratefully, this something he could do, and he took her lead as much as he was able. It was still difficult for him, trapped not only by his family but the bonds of masculinity – be a man, be a man, how damaging those three words – but he bared as much as he could, allowing her to know how angry and devastated and helpless he felt too. Their weaknesses holding them up.