‘Can I tell you something?’ Hard not to adopt a little-girl voice. Karen would never do that. She’d just march in there and take what she wanted.

‘Sure.’

‘I’m ready. For – you know.’

‘What?’

‘You know. For . . . that. What we haven’t done.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I want it to be you. The first time.’

He paused. ‘Ali, are you sure? I mean, it’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it, the first time.’

‘I know it is. That’s why I want you.’ I fixed my eyes on the picture of his mother. Would she like me? Would we become friends? I couldn’t imagine her meeting my own mother, what they would ever talk about.

Mike took this in for a few moments that seemed to last years. What I was really saying. How I was laying myself before him, to be taken, to be hurt as he chose. And he made a decision.

The next day we were in Hall together for brunch, holding hands in public, wearing matching college hoodies as the sun came in the window, and I can honestly say I’ve never before or since felt happiness like that, so pure and shining. So full of hope.

‘I suppose you heard what happened.’

Mum read the papers every day, she knew everything that went on. Almost a week now since it happened. It was hard to believe.

My mother’s voice was hard. ‘I saw it in the paper.’ A long silence stretched between us, so many things to say that saying anything at all felt insurmountable. I hadn’t spoken to her in – oh, it was almost five years.

‘He’s been suspended from work. Until the trial. But that won’t be until he recovers.’ And he wouldn’t recover without a transplant, and that meant sending Cassie under the knife. I felt trapped by choices, all of them bad. ‘What I’m saying is – I need the money. The money Dad left.’

She was silent. I remembered how I’d screamed at her, after the funeral. That I didn’t need his money – not even that much, a few grand – that I didn’t want anything more to do with her. That she should have walked years ago, the moment he first hit her. The moment he first hit me. And here I was crawling back.

Then she said, ‘It’s your money, Alison. I always said you could have it. I’ll have them draw up a transfer.’

‘Thanks. I – I’ll send the account details.’

Another long silence. ‘It must be hard,’ she said, and I heard a crack of sympathy in her voice down the line, from her dingy little semi in Hull, and my heart threatened to crack open the same, and I could not bear to let it in, so I hung up, and found myself with tears scorching my throat.

‘Ali?’