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“It’s me!” comes a frantic voice as soon as Nicole accepts the reverse-charge call from the operator.

“Cassie?” Nicole gasps, her sisterly instinct immediately telling her that something’s wrong.

“Where are you? What’s happened?”

“I-I’m in town,” sobs Cassie. “But I haven’t got any way of getting back home.”

“What? Why?”

“I-I just need you to come and get me,” pleads Cassie. “Right now.”

“Where are you?” asks Nicole, her impatient tone more a sign of frustration that she isn’t already with her than anything else.

“I’m on Tower Bridge.”

“OK, stay in the phone box,” says Nicole.

“Pl-please hurry,” cries Cassie.

“I’ll be with you as quickly as I can,” she says, slamming down the handset and running out of the door.

In the twenty minutes it takes to get there, Nicole runs through every possible scenario that would result in her normally streetwise sister being stranded in town and sounding terrified. But when she pulls up outside the phone box, with the lights of the bridge’s grand piers shining onto the filthy windows, nothing could have prepared her for what she sees.

“Jesus!” she cries, as Cassie falls into her arms, bloodied and bruised. “What the hell’s happened?”

“I-I…” starts Cassie, before her chest convulses and her shoulders wrack with vicious sobs. “He… he…”

Nicole’s blood feels like it’s stopped pumping. “He what ?”

“Everything… everything was fine,” cries Cassie. “He was bringing me home; he was looking after me, but then…”

It’s taking all of Nicole’s restraint not to shake it out of her.

“But then he took me somewhere I didn’t want to go and made me do things I didn’t want to do.”

Hot bile rushes to the back of Nicole’s throat as she can’t help but picture the horrific events unfolding.

She takes the blanket from the car’s parcel shelf and wraps Cassie’s shivering body in it before gently lowering her onto the back seat of the car. She slides in beside her and takes Cassie in her arms as the turmoil of what she’s been through seeps out of her.

“I kept saying no, over and over, but he wouldn’t listen, he was like a man possessed.” She manically rubs at the bloodied skin on her arms. “I can still smell him on me. Can you smell him?”

Tears spring to Nicole’s eyes as she pulls her sister in even tighter. She knows what she’s about to say will have little bearing on the here and now, but she also knows that time is of the essence.

“Cass, we need to go to the police,” she says quietly.

“No,” says Cassie, pushing herself away from Nicole as if she’s reliving it all over again. “No, I don’t want the police involved. You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone. Not the police, not Dad, not anyone.”

Nicole closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She knew this would be Cassie’s first reaction, but she has to make her see the importance of telling the police and telling them now . “I know it feels too raw to go over it again straightaway, but it’ll be too late in a day or two’s time. They need to get the evidence now, so they can lock the bastard in a cell and throw away the key.”

“They’ll say I deserved it,” says Cassie.

“This isn’t your fault,” says Nicole, hating whoever did this to her for making her think it is. “There’s nothing you could ever do to make it your fault.”

“You don’t know what I did,” says Cassie, bowing her head as she sobs.

“I don’t care what you did,” says Nicole. “A man has taken advantage of you, and you have to make him accountable for his actions.”

Cassie shakes her head vehemently. “I’m not going to report him.”

“I’ll be with you every step of the way,” says Nicole. “We’ll do it together.”

“I can’t,” says Cassie, sounding terrified. “My life will never be the same again.”

“He can’t hurt you anymore, Cassie. I promise you that.”

“You don’t know who he is,” she says, making Nicole pull up short. She holds Cassie away from her and looks at her in the half-light.

“Who is he, Cassie?” she asks, careful not to sound accusatory.

“Do you swear not to tell anyone?”

Nicole swallows her indignation at having to make a promise she doesn’t want to keep. And if she’d known the name Cassie was going to drop, she would never have agreed to it.