She nodded again, sliding over a piece of paper. Vix used to work in PR, so she was good at this type of thing. I thought, sometimes, privately, she wasn’t so good at the empathy side of it all. She had a tendency to stick to rules, never allowing for the grey areas. The fact that the women usually loved the men they were fleeing from. I understood that, so I tried to make up for her.

The statement hit all the right notes. Always risky running a women’s refuge, isolated incident, police response praised, restraining order filed. ‘So what do you think?’

‘I think it’s a one-off. The police say they’ll request a tag for him this time.’

So it was decided: we wouldn’t be moving the refuge. It was a big decision, and costly as hell, but I felt uneasy all the same. If Paul Dean had found it, maybe other men would too. The other men the women there were hiding from. It was my call, ultimately, my responsibility. I nodded. ‘Let’s table a discussion for the next board meeting. Can I see Julie?’

‘Don’t you have that big reunion thing this weekend?’ We were standing up, Vix straightening her grey shift dress. I felt bloated and mumsy in my florals. Unprofessional. I should have changed.

‘Just two minutes? Please.’

Julie was in another room, a nicer one with a sofa and a toy-box. Her two kids played on the floor with the resignation of children who have learned to wait around in official spaces. The older one was pretending to read a picture book to the baby. ‘Julie. I’m Ali, the Chair of the charity. I’m so sorry for what happened.’ I saw Vix flash me a look – perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, perhaps that suggested we’d done something wrong.

Julie had been crying, her make-up clumped round her eyes. ‘I can’t go back there. It’s not safe.’

‘I know. We’ll see about getting you to a refuge in another town.’

‘I swear to God I never told him. Maybe he asked Kaylee or something, worked it out.’

I could see from Vix’s carefully blank look that she highly doubted a three-year-old would let an address slip, but I just nodded. ‘We’ll get this sorted, Julie. God, you poor thing.’ On impulse, and feeling Vix’s disapproval, I gave Julie a hug, feeling the bones of her spine under her hoody, smelling her – stale fags and fear. She flinched, and I saw the ring of bruises on her throat, a necklace of hurt. There were memories surfacing in my head – wearing a polo neck on the hottest day of summer, rubbing panstick on to tender skin – but I pushed them away.