Laurel realising too late her arms are trapped. Struggling. Shouting. Furious. Frightened. Sweating.

Amie crowing, ‘You hold her, Mac.’

Mac, wearing the uncertain grin of the drink-befuddled, taking over restraining Laurel, bigger, stronger and harder to fight.

Amie dancing around in front of Laurel, taunting, shoving and … ‘Let’s see those ugly great hooters, then!’ Amie yanking up Laurel’s top, the glittery blue one she’d worn with a new skirt.

Laurel screaming, ‘No! Stop!’

Amie reaching out and pulling up Laurel’s bra. The frozen night air and four pairs of eyes on Laurel’s breasts. Terrifying. Humiliating.

‘Stop it!’ Laurel’s throat hurting with her screams.

Silence, while stupid drunken young men stare at her breasts. Laurel crying, struggling.

No one coming.

Then she’s free and running …

Laurel awoke, a hoarse sob dying in her throat as she fought her way free of the duvet.

She jerked upright, her breath easing and the tendrils of the dream slinking away to leave only a pounding heart and an overwhelming sense of shame. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered. To anchor herself to the present she switched on the lamp. The light made her screw up her eyes but she could see she was in her childhood room in The Nookery, its beams painted black. Rea and Daisy slept nearby. It was Friday – or 4.40 a.m. on Saturday morning, as her clock showed her – and she’d been back in Middledip for a week.

It was a couple of years since she’d last had that dream. This time there was no Alex to cuddle her, whispering that it was in the past, she was fine, those shits were no longer in her life.

One of those shits, unfortunately, was back. Mac Cassidy.

Shaken by the violence of the nightmare she got up, pulling on her fleecy dressing gown and big slippers against the winter night chill, and padded downstairs, switching on lights as she went. In the kitchen, she made a mug of comforting mint tea and drifted into the sitting room where the curtains were drawn shut over the French doors. Embers still glowed in the wood stove and she added screwed up newspaper to reawaken the fire, then huddled on the sofa to pass the rest of the night watching TV.

A few hours later, when it was daylight and she could hear Rea’s shower running, she went up to dress before stealing from the house and, not wanting to be interrupted or disturbed, drove a mile from the village. Rain lashed her big car as she pulled over in the gateway to a farm field. She switched off the engine, the wipers halted and the only sound was rain drumming on the car roof.