She’d wanted to kiss him that night, she had. Only when he had pushed her backwards onto the bed and tugged at her dress, it was more abrupt and with greater force than seemed necessary. And never before had a man pressed his hand over her mouth as he reached greedily into her knickers. When he entered her, he had knelt hard with one knee onto her thigh, and kept her face pinned fast against the pillow, and even if she had wanted to scream out, she would have been unable. So she’d pretended that she had not wanted to scream, and that yes, she’d enjoyed it, and even allowed him to kiss her goodbye, then left herself the following day with her parents without telling anyone.

Veronica shook her head. She had barely thought about that night since, other than to laud her affair with an older man over her teenage schoolmates. Of course, with hindsight, it was easy to see why. If she had allowed herself to think about it, then she would have had to acknowledge that she had not actually intended to sleep with the older, influential friend of her father’s. And if she’d admitted how powerless she had in that moment been, then she would have had to acknowledge all the other areas in her life where she felt powerless too, and it was much better to feel strong and brazen, and to be in charge of herself and everything and everybody. Besides, she’d told herself then, and again now, she wasn’t underage, she hadn’t resisted, he hadn’t even been her first.

Yet the night was pushing its way back into her head, and there was a new thought too: had she been the first girl he’d taken that way? Had others followed after she said nothing?

Slowly, Veronica pulled a plastic bag from her blazer pocket and, in case of rain, tied it around the saddle of her bike. Then she spent a long time gathering her various bags and rummaging through them for her house key. At last, the boy crossed over.

Up close, his face didn’t look anything like his mother’s. Though hers had been pale and a little gaunt, the complexion disturbed by patches of red, her eyes had been strikingly large and blue, her lips full. The boy’s upper lip barely existed. His eyes were beady and too close together. His skin was darker than his mother’s, but instead of the luxurious olive or velvet tones she often admired, his had come out a dull fawn that gave a sense of poor health. He was the kind of child to whom, if he’d turned up in her class, she would probably have taken an early and irrational dislike. Though she would of course have tried not to.

“Hello,” she smiled genially as he reached his doorstep. “I’m your new neighbour, Veronica.”

The boy didn’t look at her. “Hi,” he muttered in a show of haste, but despite having key in hand, he waited a moment in front of his door.