She looked at her feet. ‘I didn’t lie. I just . . . never told you. Jesus, Ali, what would I have said? I love you. You’re my best friend. But him and me – it’s like some drug you can’t quit. When I saw him on Saturday . . .’

‘I don’t believe you! You’re lying!’

‘Why would I lie?’

‘I don’t know!’ To hurt me, I was thinking. To take everything I had and crush it. ‘Why would he do – what you’re saying, if it was going on for years? It doesn’t make sense.’

She paused. ‘We’d ended it. That day.’

‘He said he ended it.’ Or rather, he’d said she’d come on to him, moment of weakness, never again etc. And how easily I’d believed him.

Karen stared at the ground. ‘Ali, I don’t know. Clearly, he lies sometimes. And anyway, just because we – I still didn’t want it later on. He still forced me. That’s still – Ali, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You know what rape is.’

I bit down hard on my lip. ‘How did you know it was him? You were drunk. All of you were so drunk. And it was dark out there.’

‘I . . . Ali, for God’s sake. Who else was there? No one got into the garden. The police already checked.’

‘There was Callum. There was . . . Bill . . .’ And there was the problem. If it had to be someone, then it had to be either my husband or these friends of ours.

‘Cal had passed out, you know that. He was hammered, and we’d smoked all that weed. And Bill had gone to bed ages before, and – I think I’d know the difference in six foot four and five foot nine, Al.’ Her usual tone had crept through, even in all this. Karen the wise and cool, showing me the ropes. Teaching me about real life. ‘Anyway, I know him. His jumper. His smell . . . I know him, Ali. Even if I was drunk. I’d have thought you, of all people, would know that shouldn’t matter.’

‘Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he thought you’d say yes – if you had so many times before.’ I was clutching at straws now and I knew it. I’d lost this fight, lost it comprehensively, and now I was throwing punches, trying to hurt her maybe. As if she hadn’t been hurt enough. I’d seen that, hadn’t I, the bruises? She hadn’t made it up? But he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have. I was looking for a way for this all to fit, for Mike not to be a rapist and Karen not a liar. Maybe that didn’t exist.