There had been £10,000 in twenty-pound notes and it looked like it was still all there. I had told myself that I would no longer look at the second phone again but now I took it out, powered it up and read the one new message waiting for me.

R e f u n d e

I sighed and shook my head, thinking – there’s no bloody second e in refund, dummy. I took the phone and the envelope into the staff restroom and climbed onto the toilet. Then I pushed back a panel in the ceiling. The phone went up first and then the envelope. But the envelope had passed through too many greasy hands and the adhesive that had kept it closed was no longer quite sticky enough to do the job and, as I raised it to the ceiling, the money began to slide out of the envelope, slowly at first but then a sudden torrent, all those grubby previously owned twenties sliding past me and drifting down, coming in to land across the floor of the restroom. I was down on my knees, gathering them up when I saw Mary standing there.

She took it all in. The open ceiling panel, still pushed back and gaping black inside, and the twenties scattered across the floor and clutched in my fists, and the look of total panic on my face.

‘I can explain,’ I said.

She raised her hand for silence.

‘I don’t want to know,’ she said, turning away.

It was time to choose our man. Mary and I scrolled through the faces of the men, looking for the male Angel Eyes for next month. We had always had a good laugh doing the choosing, Mary and I, but my old friend was a long way from me now.

‘Not him,’ I said. ‘And not him … not him … how about him?’

He was a brooding male-model type with a beard so meticulously trimmed that the hair seemed almost pubic. He looked like nothing but trouble and in the past Mary would have told me exactly what was wrong with him, and we would have had a good laugh about that pubic beard, but not today. Now her hand moved lethargically on the Magic Mouse, the long sleeve of her NASA T-shirt slipping up her arm, and that was when I saw the bruises.

I took her wrist and she pulled away, surprisingly strong, but I held her with both my hands and I would not let go and finally she relaxed, and let me roll up the sleeves of her T-shirt. And there they were – brown, yellow and black bruises, round like coins, the bruises that are left by fingertips, running all the way up her right arm where the men had pulled her and held her down and tried to do whatever they were planning to do.

I felt it all rise up inside me – disbelief, and hurt, and anger, and the feeling of stupidity – the bitter cocktail of the betrayed.