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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.”