‘You were with Jodi.’ I tried to sound light but my voice sounded scared and strangled. I hated that.

‘No. You never wanted me.’ I could feel his boozy breath on my face, and his rubbery wet mouth coming at me. A shot of pure panic went through me. He wouldn’t. It was madness! After everything? But my body didn’t understand it was impossible, and I whimpered in fear.

‘Don’t hurt me, Callum, stop it. Stop it!’

I was fixated on his face, his body against mine, one hand in my hair and one trapping my waist, but then I was aware of movement in the room, and the sudden crack of something like pottery. A look of confusion crossed his face, and I saw red blood trickle down over his eye.

Then I saw Karen standing there, the remains of a pot plant in her hand, trailing soil and blood all over the floor, and on her face the grimmest expression I’d ever seen.

‘How did you know to come?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. When you told me that – that he can’t finish – I just – it was like something went off in my head. He said it that night. The man who – hurt me. He said, Sorry, I can’t. I was just so – I didn’t understand, couldn’t take it in. But when you told me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was in the cab to the hospital and I sent it to their house instead.’

‘Thank God you did.’

She nodded, unreadable. Despite the context, I was glad we were having this conversation in the police station. It felt neutral, bright lights blasting everything and laying it bare. Neither of us would make a scene here. She sat opposite me in the waiting room, the lights of cars passing outside in the road. They’d left us there, I think unsure what to do with two nice middle-aged women, covered in a man’s blood, who’d rung them so calmly and told them what had happened. I remembered Karen’s tight voice as she spoke to them. A man was attacking my friend, so I hit him with a plant pot. He’s bleeding.

She’d called me her friend.

Callum was in hospital with a head injury. The same hospital as Jodi, and what did that mean? I didn’t know. The facts seemed to elude me, like flies buzzing round my head. How would we tell Jodi what we knew now about her husband? Her son was only hours old and his father was a killer and rapist. What would it be like to find that out, when you’d just brought a child into the world?

Karen said, ‘Tell me again what he said.’