"It was just one," I answered and I hated this part of the story, because it reminded me all over again that my mother was dead. That Peter had killed her, someone who had loved me very much, and then tried to act as if I would be taken away to jail for the crime. I had believed him at the time, but of course I had, because Peter was my friend and I had been very young.

"Peter could be very persuasive," I told her. "I went with him willingly."

And I had stayed with him willingly for a very long time. It had taken many, many years before I even started to realize what he was and all the ways in which he was so very cruel. Bit by bit, I had grown up as I had grown more disenchanted with his behaviour, until I found myself as I was now.