I saw it all and was powerless. It was a shattering feeling. I felt like I wanted to leave my body, to disappear, to pause myself until it was over – to take myself elsewhere. It was all I could think of, my fear was so deep and so great.

I hadn’t even known violence like this existed. And now, in front of me, my eyes saw it, but the rest of me had no idea what to do with it.

And then, out of the shadows, a man appeared at the door.

He was large and strong and he strode across the room and grabbed Hessel’s shoulders and pulled him back and threw him easily onto the floor.

Mum slid down the wall gasping, holding her neck, breath rasping in and out. And immediately I came back to myself.

I stood, felt power coursing through me and, without looking at what was happening to Hessel in the other corner of the room, I grabbed my gasping mother and dragged her across the floor and into the bedroom. Bette was screaming now but I didn’t hesitate. I dragged Mum into the room and shouldered the door as shut as it would go, slamming my body into it until it hurt. Sounds came from the other side of the door – Bette had set up a thin continuous wail and there came a dull thud, thud, thud of boot against body. I reached up and tipped the whole monolithic cupboard of junk over with an apocalyptic crash, dropping it between the bed and the door, jamming the door almost shut and I dragged Mum, coughing and wheezing, up onto the bed, pushing her into the corner. She crouched there, shaking uncontrollably, and I climbed up after her and curled my body right around her.

This had been inside her, inside my mother, all along. I knew it – her eyes had been so full of terror but also so full of history. I knew it now. I saw it. I saw her. The history and the horror. How, inside her, it echoed and echoed and echoed.

I kept Mum’s head down while the thudding sound continued on the other side of the door: it seemed endless, a monotonous, purposeful sound, as steady as a heartbeat. It seemed to go on so long that even Bette’s wail dulled down to a whimper while we all listened – thud, thud, thud.

Until, finally, after what seemed an age, it grew quieter and quieter, replaced by the heavy breathing of someone who had exerted themselves as much as they could, and when even that subsided, not even Bette’s quiet whimpering could be heard from the other room.

I didn’t move. Mum was balled up next to me, still shaking.

And then there was a disembodied voice – Basil’s. It just appeared in the air. At first a simple question: ‘Dad?’ And then, a shuffle, his physical presence in the next room, a cry. ‘Oh no, Dad. Dad!’