These days, now that everything is over, I often find myself thinking of the moment it all changed. The small slice of time when my life went from perfect, or, OK, not perfect but pretty good at least, to utterly ruined. Most of all I think about how my mind tried to pull away from it – please, not now – how I did my best, for a few seconds at least, to pretend it wasn’t real. It was something I didn’t know about myself, this capacity to stop up my ears, close my eyes. I thought I’d be the kind of person who sprang to help, called the police, made hot sweet tea for the shock.

But instead, when Karen came into my kitchen that night – staggering, trembling, her black jersey dress ruched up about her thighs, the bruises on her neck standing out like ink smudges from the newspaper – I wasn’t ready. I stood frozen in horror, wishing we could scroll back time and keep that moment right before this, clean and unshattered.

Karen gave a gulping sob, as if even her voice had been scared out of her. And before my treacherous mind even had time to think, please, don’t tell us – she said it.

‘He raped me. He raped me.’

Jodi was there too, standing with the cafetière in her hand, kettle boiling, and it was her, not me, who had the courage to say: ‘Who, Karen? What do you mean?’

And Karen said the name, and then she fell to her knees, dramatically, as if her legs were giving way. Her hair was bunched up, clumped as if someone had been grabbing it. A trickle of blood ran down her thigh, coming to rest on the slate tiles of my kitchen floor. Later, when the police were done, I would scrub it, but it would never truly shift.

I said before I was not ready to hear what Karen had to say, bursting into my kitchen and collapsing in front of me. But really, how could you ever be ready for a thing like that?

Earlier that day

‘Do I have to, Mum?’

‘Of course you do. What else would you do?’ My to-do list was revolving in my head. Beds, towels, after-dinner chocolates, Benji’s room.

Benji barely looked up from his iPad. Ten years old and he owned an iPad. I marvelled at that, sometimes, as I did with many things in my life. ‘It’ll be so boring. No one’s my age.’