Alarmed, she forgot how strange and tingly it had made her feel for him to see her in skin-tight clothing and crossed the few strides separating them. Guiding him to a chair, she pulled up another to face him. With heavy movements, he dragged off his coat and dropped it on the floor. ‘Are you ill?’ she asked. ‘Or is someone in your family?’ She only realised she’d seized his hand when she noticed him staring fixedly at their intertwined fingers.

He cleared his throat. And then again. Finally, words wrenched from him, raw and painful. ‘Did Mac assault you?’

The words, so out of the blue, rocked her. The studio seemed to tilt, as if they were in the midst of a silent earthquake. A sheen of sweat broke out across her skin. A small sound escaped her throat, something between a gasp and a sob. ‘Oh,’ she said, weakly. Or it might have been, ‘Ow,’ because the suddenness of his questions felt brutal.

His unhappy eyes fixed on hers. ‘You should have told me.’

Her throat ached with tears. At last, she said, ‘I’ve only ever told Alex, my friend Fliss and a counsellor. There was fear of not being believed. Fear of the story getting around. Fear of people thinking I was a willing participant. Fear of being further exposed and having my privacy invaded. Fear of questions, not necessarily sympathetic. Worry that Rea would crack up if she had one more thing to cope with. And shame. Girls shouldn’t feel shame when stuff like that happens but, boy, they do, because people associate them with the offence against them.’ She gulped. ‘And you … To believe me, you would have had to accept the truth about Mac. You love Mac. It would have hurt you. I didn’t want that.’

His lips parted, but no words emerged.

She knew from his haunted eyes that he couldn’t contradict her. ‘I told Daisy she’d done the right thing in telling someone about her bully, all the time knowing I did the opposite.’ She slumped in her chair. ‘How did you find out?’

He heaved a sigh. ‘Ruben’s ex, Francesca, messaged me to spill the beans.’ His eyes filled with pain. ‘She seemed to think I ought to know.’ He scrubbed a hand over his face. ‘I suppose that, in a way, I agree. It went on under my nose, it affected me, yet I was excluded from the truth.’

A silence descended on them while Laurel mulled this over.

‘I’ve talked to Mac,’ he added gruffly.