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with fifty babies instead of five.
Leaving Dr Tranor’s room I felt relieved yet anxious. Relieved I had told someone else other than Sam, but extremely anxious that someone other than my husband knew. Now I had to wait again. I didn’t know how the session with Bess would go but inside I knew this was perhaps a huge turning point, the first day of the rest of a life without secrets. At last I was speaking out to someone else. I knew help was on its way, yet the words I had spoken to Dr Tranor that day felt as if they were inconsequential and without true meaning.
They were words that had no real importance attached to them until I saw Bess and spoke them again. Then, and only then, would my statements become real. The words would be given a chance, an opportunity, to escape from out of the box I had sealed them in. They would be out there in the open, ready, waiting patiently to haunt me some more.
As I walked home through the park from Dr Tranor’s surgery, the paths were slowly drying after the latest shower. The air felt warm and clean around me, which eased the pain of the headache that had started to take hold. I felt a little better about what lay in front of me. The next stepwould be talking to Bess, a stranger, about all of my past and I knew that wouldn’t be easy. I would have to recall the things, all the terrible details of everything Bill had done to me, and I wasn’t sure how well I would be able to cope with that. I had never met Bess. I knew nothing about her. The only things I knew were the things Keith (Dr Tranor) had told me about her. He had said she was a nice lady in her late forties, and she had twenty years’ experience of dealing with similar matters.
I began to feel apprehensive about our meeting, which was ridiculous, especially when I didn’t know how long it would actually be before I saw her. I told myself I was being silly. This woman was going to help me, she would give me solutions, help me find strategies and develop methods with me that I could use to combat my fears. For a few moments, I actually felt a little better and knew deep inside that once all this was truly out in the open, and with the right kind of help, I could begin the healing process. That was of course if there was anything out there that would heal what I had been through.
As I crossed the road and entered the estate, I noticed Maria was out in her garden. She waved when she saw me and invited me in for a cup of tea. We sat talking and drinking tea for the next half hour, gently letting those carefree thirty minutes slip away until it was time to pick up the children from the playgroup. I instantly felt my spirits lifted. Maria always made me feel better because she was just that kind of person: bubbly and with infectious good humour. I was glad to have her as my friend, but eventhough we had become close, I still couldn’t face telling her about my past and the things that had happened to me as a child. It was still a secret: my secret. I knew that if I had plucked up courage to talk to Maria about the past then it would have been all right. She would probably have been the best kind of counsellor I could ever have wished for. But inside I felt so embarrassed, and even though I had shared the shocking news of my abuse with Keith, my doctor, I still continued to feel dirty, ashamed and guilty. These feelings were something I really had problems talking about. I had always dreaded what people would think about me if they found out. What would their reactions be? After all I was Sarah, the woman they knew.
In their eyes I wasn’t the other Sarah, the Sarah who had been abused and used.
How would they all see me after I told them?

Chapter Six
AS THE WEEK continued to unfold, I tried not to think about the forthcoming meeting that would soon be arranged with Bess. I kept myself active and threw myself into a mad, house-cleaning frenzy, trying desperately to keep myself busy for every hour of the day. It was June now