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Marie looked out of her small, ground-floor tenement window onto a broken patio with weeds growing out of the cracks. She watched as John Phillips, her large and forbearing landlord, walked heavily up the path towards her front door.

It had been a long and difficult winter for Marie. She spent her 20th birthday being beaten up by her crack-addled boyfriend and resolved to pack a bag that November night and escape. As her boyfriend came down on his stimulant high with a hefty dose of alcohol, she snuck out of the flat and into the siren-filled street with a blue plastic carrier bag of clothes and a black eye.

Sniffing quietly, she used the last of her cash to buy a Greyhound