Still I couldn’t answer, and I suddenly felt cold all over, as if I was going to be sick. The words went over and over in my head. It was Mike. He raped me. My mind rejected them, because it couldn’t be true. How could it be true? They were friends! We were all friends! But something had happened, I could see that from the marks on her neck, the way she shook and hugged her arms around herself. A mistake, then. She’d made a mistake. My mind would not take it in, the thing that Karen had said. For the first time in many years, I genuinely had no idea what I was supposed to do. Who should I go to? What was going on? It was Jodi who took charge again. She came to the door and put her arm around Cassie, who shrugged it off. ‘Auntie Karen’s not feeling very well, love. She says – well, she’s saying someone hurt her. You should pop up to bed. It won’t be very nice around here.’

‘She’s right.’ My voice sounded raw, as if I’d been talking all night. I swallowed. ‘Please Cass. Will you take Jake and go to your room?’ All I could think was to get them away from this, get the children out of here. Not that Jake was a child; he’d be eighteen soon. How could I even begin to tell Cassie what her father had been accused of? I couldn’t, because it wasn’t true. It would all be sorted out once the police came.

Although, of course, they’d never been much help to me and Mum, the times I’d called them back then.

Cassie’s head turned as if she’d only just noticed Jake, who was crouched down beside Karen in the kitchen, whispering to her. ‘Please Mum. Tell me what happened. Did he hurt you?’ Karen didn’t seem to see him. She was rocking, her hands clutching so hard at her elbows they were almost white.

There were feet on the stairs and I turned and – Oh, God, I’d forgotten Benji. In his Star Wars pyjamas, his rounded child’s tummy poking out, he looked so innocent and sweet. ‘What’s happening, Mum? You were all shouting and you woke me.’

I wanted to move, to explain, to shield him from this even though I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I heard a noise outside, on the drive. A car on the gravel. The police.

‘Come on, Benj,’ said Cassie, seeming finally to get it. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’