This isn’t the book it was supposed to be, written in a year that was definitely not supposed to be. When my editor and I discussed my plan for this novel, over afternoon tea in a packed restaurant in early 2020, it was the last time we’d see each other for almost two years. Like the rest of the world, we were enjoying our last weeks of life before a deadly worldwide pandemic, blissfully unaware about how everything was about to change.

Before 2020, I’d spent most of my career fighting against another, less-newsworthy, pandemic—the pandemic of violence against women and girls. And yet, in the years leading up to COVID, those of us in this field had witnessed what can only be described as a global awakening. This devastating issue was finally being taken seriously. Women were starting to speak out, and, even more encouragingly, they were being believed. There was a giant wave of energy and mobilization—a sense that the time had finally come for things to change, and I watched in awe as women and allies marched across the world, shared their trauma using the MeToo hashtag, and, most surprisingly of all, saw perpetrators being held accountable.

One of my last memories before the world closed down was of the seemingly impossible conviction of Harvey Weinstein. I remember watching the news and feeling this jubilant sense of justice and triumph, before the headlines switched to news of the coronavirus traveling to Europe, of impending lockdowns, stories of whole cities in China and Italy being locked in their houses. And then COVID hit England, and for those of us lucky enough to not be key workers, we were all shut inside. Shut inside with all the time in the world to think and reflect.

Something strange happened to many women during that time, something that I found wasn’t discussed publicly but confessed in WhatsApp conversations while we all checked in on each other. As we learned how to Zoom or make banana bread, to fill the endless time we now had on our hands, I found that lockdown was also a time where past experiences women had been avoiding, or normalizing, or outrunning, eventually caught up with them. It was a time where memories resurfaced, where they realized that “The Thing” that happened to them when they were younger maybe wasn’t OK. That maybe it was even a crime. A trauma.