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January 2004 The walls shift. A face looms from the pattern of mould in the corner. My mind weaves between shadows. I don't know where I am. My body is soaked in some one else's sweat. I am crushed by his weight, torn apart by the pain that thrusts through me. I don't know how I got here. Something turns in my stomach. I open my eyes. I'm not in that room. I got out. I left Sydney, left Australia. I touch the wall, feel the rough lumps of polyfilla that I know as well as I know my own scars. It's a year later and I'm back in England, in my childhood bedroom. Inside me the baby kicks. I put my hands on my stomach. Soon it will be over. A dim light illuminates the animal print curtains. Outside is a broken world of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and men. I can't keep this baby safe. I can't keep this baby. I don't know how I got here. Rape Crisis Chapter One

Chapter One

November 2002 It's a warm summer night. Above the white sails of the opera house the full moon is circled by a bright halo. Its reflection is hazy in the dark sea. We are here for my flatmate, James's Birthday. A group of backpackers in our best clothes, more suited to seedy nightclubs than an evening watching a classical orchestra. Inside we are uncertain how to act. James closes his eyes to appreciate the music. Henry falls asleep. I stare hard at the musicians, watching their individual movements come together to create this huge swell of music. I've been in Sydney for two months and it feels like home. I love the Botanic Gardens that curve around the bay and the trees hanging with sleeping bats. I love the way I can never find Darling Harbour when I'm looking for it but sometimes I'll turn a corner and there it is. I'm on my second job since I've arrived. After a month in a call centre I now work for a mail order company assembling cheap toys in a fact...

Chapter Four

January 2003 I'm on the Oz Experience bus waiting to leave Sydney. The Doors' People Are Strange is playing through the speakers. All these strangers on the bus, I seem to see them through a gauzy veil that I am trapped behind. I still smell of Nick. What I thought happened can't have happened. He was nice afterwards. He talked to me. He brought me water. He drove me home. I kissed him. It can't have happened. But I was unconcs- I push the thought out of my mind. It. Didn't. Happen. I was just the kind of slut who had sex with two men in one night. The bus takes us through rural areas. We watch a sheep being sheared. We learn to crack whips and throw boomerangs. I can't get the boomerang to come back. On Wednesday evening we arrive in Byron Bay. The bus driver announces the name of a pub for everyone to meet up in later. As I wait for my backpack to be unloaded an older couple from the...