Well, it was done now, set in motion, and things would be what they would be. Her life would never be the same, whatever the outcome. She wondered about the other women—she couldn’t bring herself to think of them as victims, though no doubt they were—and what they had gone through, what they remembered, what they were like now, how their lives had turned out. Perhaps it would have to be enough simply to know that they existed out there somewhere. There would be no collusion, of course. There would be no girly sessions in the pub. So what did he do to you, then, love? Nasty. You know he did exactly the same thing to me, and it hurt like hell. Was it your first time, too? The media would keep identities strictly secret, though how they could do that in these days of phone hacking and a self-righteously obtrusive press she had no idea.

She didn’t even think she would mind all that much if people did know what she had been through, that she was one of the complainants against Danny Caxton. What if they did find out? What was the worst that could happen? The whole country would know that she, Linda Palmer, award-winning poet, was a victim of rape. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. At least she had a certain standing in the community, a respected voice, unlike those poor girls who were groomed in the inner-city areas and used as sex objects. Nobody listened to them; they were simply written off as drugged-up slags and sluts who deserved what they got.

Linda closed her eyes, listened to the water and felt the shadows of the leaves dancing on her eyelids. The river was a constant presence in her life, it seemed. She drew in a lungful of smoke and leaned back in her chair, which wobbled as she did so, stretching out her legs and opening her eyes again. Persy lay where she had settled, sleeping in the sun. Soon she would have to move, as her patch would fall into shadow. The kingfisher had appeared on his branch, still and watchful. As usual, when she saw him fly in the late sun, she thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem: “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”

As Linda exhaled the smoke, she saw it in her mind as if the smoke were coming from the funnel of a steam train. She could almost hear the train’s rhythm, wheels clacking over the joins in the track, feel the gentle swaying of the carriage and creaking of old woodwork, the rattling of the doors. It was the summer of 1967, and they were going on their annual holiday. Two glorious weeks in Blackpool. Linda, her mum and dad, and for the first time her best friend Melanie, along with her mum and dad, too.