Caroline O'Donoghue: 'It’s not our gender or our genitals that unites us. It’s our fear'

The space between International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day has been occupied by one of the most terrifying crimes against a woman who had taken the exact level of risk that any of us would be comfortable taking.

'Sarah Everard’s name has been passed between me and my friends so much that a random text saying ‘I can’t stop thinking about Sarah’ has only one possible meaning.'

Last week, I took my dog out for an after-dinner stroll: it had been raining all day, so she hadn’t had much of a stretch. It was half eight, and I took her around a park near my house where people often jog and walk their own dogs. I was out for half an hour, on the phone to a friend for most of the time. I stood at the edge of the park, under a streetlamp, and noticed a man across the road. He seemed to be waiting for someone. He made eye contact with me.

It lingered. I broke away, chatted louder into the phone, told my friend exactly what I was doing and how I would be “home in ten minutes”. Then the man crossed the road so that he was behind me, and he was walking fast. I spoke louder: “No idea where the dog has got to!