Sabrina Cantrell

Sabrina Cantrell is Libby Munro’s workmate and oldest friend. Her visit to Libby’s home after the birth of Libby’s baby begins as an act of practical friendship, but becomes the occasion for Bunny Munro to violate that trust. Sabrina’s subsequent call to Libby ensures that the incident enters the couple’s shared history rather than remaining Bunny’s secret.

Friendship with Libby

Sabrina visits while Libby is nursing the baby in the living room. In the kitchenette, she makes tea for her exhausted friend. The ordinary care of the scene establishes her closeness to Libby and the domestic trust that Bunny’s conduct will betray.

The incident and its disclosure

Bunny, having offered to help Sabrina, suddenly gropes her. The narrative presents the act as an impulsive violation, not as a mutual encounter; Bunny himself wonders what he is doing, but that awareness does not prevent him from acting. Sabrina later telephones Libby and tells her that Bunny groped her, describing him as probably a sexual pervert. She does not see Bunny again. Her disclosure brings the incident directly into the marriage: Libby confronts Bunny with the question of whether it is true, and he does not answer, lowering his head instead. The revelation’s effects reverberate through the Munro household for weeks.

Memory and narrative significance

Years later, Sabrina remains among the people Bunny recalls as he faces the consequences of his past. At the Empress Ballroom at Butlins Holiday Camp, she appears in the remembered procession of women associated with his shame. Her reappearance links the private harm done in Libby’s home to the wider reckoning unfolding in Bunny’s memory: what he once treated as an isolated impulse has become one of the injuries by which his life is measured.