“I should imagine so. I felt as if everyone could see what I’d just been doing. I was so ashamed. They had to know, just from the way I was walking, though I probably didn’t seem odd at all, just a bit disheveled. I know it’s ridiculous, but it just felt that way, like ‘whore’ was emblazoned on my forehead. I suppose it’s because that was how I felt inside. I thought everyone could see it. I can’t say I saw them, though. I was in a daze. I didn’t really notice anything.”

“What did you do?”

“I don’t know. I must have just walked around. I don’t know where or for how long. Maybe the Pleasure Beach. The sands. I remember I missed dinner and everyone was angry with me. I just told them I’d been walking around and lost track of the time. I said I didn’t feel very well and went to bed early.”

“Now think carefully,” said Banks. “You say you’d never seen this other man before, but did you ever see him again?”

“That’s where it gets unclear,” said Linda, a tone of regret and desperation in her voice. “I honestly can’t remember. I think I did, but I was a zombie for weeks, months after. I put on a good-enough show. But inside. I don’t have much recall of the aftermath.”

“OK,” said Banks. “Calm down, Linda. There’s no hurry, no pressure.”

“I just have this memory of seeing a picture of him sometime after he raped me, but it’s not clear where, or even if I really did. It might have been in a newspaper or something. It might even have been an image in a dream. Or a nightmare. I had plenty of those.”

“A magazine, perhaps? Or a billboard? Was he also famous?”

“No. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. At least, I’d have known if I’d seen him on TV or anything. No, if it really happened, it was just a fleeting glimpse, half forgotten. Most likely a newspaper. Half created, half perceived, perhaps.”

“Wordsworth,” said Banks.

Linda’s eyes widened. “You know poetry?”

“No, but we did ‘Tintern Abbey’ at school. Even went on a school trip there. It was one of the few I liked, a big favorite of our English teacher’s—he was very big on the Romantic imagination—and I’ve never forgotten those lines, or at least the paraphrase. It’s something that comes up a lot in my job.”

“‘Of all the mighty world / Of eye and ear,—both what they half create, / And what perceive.’ Yes, that’s what it’s like, really, trying to think back to that . . . that day. I don’t know how much I perceived or how much I’m making up, filling in, when I try to remember it.”