I head up the stairs, each step a gargantuan effort. The light in the bathroom seems too bright and makes my pupils contract. It’s not a pretty sight that greets me in the mirror. There’s someone looking vaguely vampiric staring back at me. I’ve got the bloom of a big, blue bruise on my cheek and a piece of gauze taped to my forehead covering a gritty graze. There’s blood in my hair and no colour in my cheeks. I turn on the bath taps, desperate for the soothing relief of hot water. Everything aches as I ease off my clothes. I’m going to burn them, burn them all. I’m going to take them into the garden and put them on a bonfire. This is awful, I feel violated and I have to keep reminding myself to keep this all in proportion. I’ve been mugged by some scabby teenagers out to make a few bob—this sort of thing happens every day to all kinds of people. It’s not the end of the world. But it feels pretty close to it at the moment.

I lower myself into the bath and let the water work its healing powers on my injuries. And as I lie back and the water flows over my shoulders, there’s a timid knock at the door and Jake pops his head round. It seems strange for a man who was my lover, my friend, for so many years, to be so formal with me now. ‘I’ve brought your tea.’

‘Thanks.’ He puts the cup on the side of the bath and then hovers.

‘You look pretty rough,’ he says.

‘I’ll be all right after a good night’s sleep.’

‘You should tell the police.’ He sits down on the loo seat next to me.

‘Why?’ I cross my hands over my chest and I see Jake avert his eyes. ‘And add my name to the growing statistics? They won’t do anything about it,’ I say with a touch of resignation in my voice. ‘They were kids. Young kids. Thirteen or fourteen at the most. The sort of boys Kelly goes out with.’ The sort of kids we once hoped to have, I want to say. ‘Even if the police managed to catch them, they’d get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. You know what it’s like. What would be the point?’

‘I wish I could get my hands on them,’ Jake says.

I sigh. ‘I wish I could.’ I wish I could have done something at the time. I wish I hadn’t been so bloody helpless.

‘I don’t know what this country’s coming to,’ Jake says miserably.

‘Me neither.’ I want to be back in the fields and foothills with nothing more to worry about than whether I’d managed to catch a good snap of a flitting kingfisher on my camera.