He didn’t answer but I saw anger streak across his face and knew I was right, or close to it. And I knew what that would mean. A summer doing all the cooking and housework, a summer back in Tesco if I was lucky. I knew that, if I did go home, the town would suck me in, just as it had my mother. I would never leave.

‘I’m not coming.’ My voice was louder. I was on home turf. I did belong. He couldn’t hurt me here, in front of the college lodge.

His voice went dangerously quiet, like the noise of air rushing out before a hurricane strikes. As a child, that was the most terrifying sound I could imagine. ‘If you don’t get your arse into this car, Alison, you can forget about coming home. Ever again. Support yourself, if you’re such a big woman now.’

Fear gripped me. I was twenty-one, how could I support myself? I had nowhere to live and no job lined up, no way to even move my things out of Oxford. But I made myself raise my chin. ‘Fine by me. Guess you’ll be driving back alone.’

His slap took me by surprise, though it really shouldn’t have. He’d been hitting me since I was five years old, and my mother for as long as I could remember. A small mewling sound escaped my mouth. As the sting spread out across my face and my eye watered and blurred, I remembered the way my mother used to take her slaps and punches. Hunching her shoulders, closing her eyes, accepting it as her due. As if staying very still and quiet would make him stop. As if she somehow deserved it. And I resolved: I would not be like that. I set my shoulders and made myself look at him, though my eye was swelling already. How would I cover that, for the ball? ‘You’re an embarrassment. Just fuck off, Dad. I don’t need you any more.’

As I turned to go to my room, I saw Karen standing in the gateway to the lodge, watching the entire thing, her eyes wide with horror. And it was her I went to, and she pulled me into a fierce hug and whispered in my ear, ‘You don’t need him. He doesn’t define you.’ Then she shepherded me back to my room before anyone could see I was crying, helpless jagged sobs, and calmed me down with booze-spiked tea, held ice to my face and covered it with make-up, did my hair and helped me get dressed so that when she was finished, you couldn’t tell what he’d done to me. You couldn’t even see the cracks.