A radio was playing quietly. Nobody was listening. It was there to drown out the silence.

She searched her mind for a single day when it had felt good to be alive. There must have been one, surely?

It was as if she would never be whole until the secrets of the past were exposed.

The quiet but inexorable breaking down of self-esteem is much more sinister – it’s violation of the soul.

Each time he came he would twist my defenceless body into a different pose, as if I were his very own doll

Today is the day after my wedding. And nothing is the way I expected it to be.