Maybe after Caxton I was even more passive. I’d stopped struggling completely. There was no point. They were too strong. I was frightened they’d hurt me if I fought back. I just lay there and closed my eyes trying to imagine being in another place but failing. I didn’t fight. I’ve always felt guilty about that. Like it was my fault for not fighting.

Maybe I blacked out with the pain and fear. All I knew was the weight was suddenly gone from me and I could move freely, if painfully. I had a bag with me, I remember, a shoulder bag I always carried, where I kept keys and money and Lorna Doone and my autograph book and for some reason it was in my mind. I had to have my bag. I was leaving and I had to have my bag. It was on a little polished wooden table with bowed legs by the door and I must have picked it up as I stumbled out. Nobody tried to stop me. I heard Caxton say behind me that I wasn’t to tell anyone. Something like that. Nobody would believe me. People would just think I was a lying little whore. He said I ought to be grateful that he’d had sex with me. That I’d lost my virginity to the great Danny Caxton. They were talking again as I went out but I don’t know what they were saying. I was in a daze and god knows what I looked like but I walked down the corridor, found a lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. I don’t know if anybody noticed me in the lobby but I felt as if everyone was looking at me and they knew I’d done a bad thing.

I must have walked around Blackpool for hours, but all I remember is being sick in the street, people skirting around me, looking at me, thinking I’m just a drunken whore. I wanted to scream out and tell them what had happened to me, but the shame was too great. Was it my fault for singing that song? Did he think it was some sort of an invitation?