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Mum and Dad that I’d be safe, and I could look after myself and all of that, all of the telling of my plans to people at school and watching their astonished faces when I said I was going on my own . . .
    I’ve only been away six days, and look what’s happened.
    I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back and face all the questions and the told you so’s.
    No. Going back now would be admitting defeat on every level.
    I’M NOT GOING TO LET HIM WIN.
    In fact, now I’m on the move I feel I can almost actually breathe again.
    So yah boo sucks, attacker.
    Perhaps I can even use it all later? When I’m a proper writer.
    Spun out the sickness story at the Marseille youth hostel. I hardly moved – partly because every part of me hurt, partly because not a bit of me wanted to. The German boys brought me some bread and soup, but I couldn’t face eating.
    Some Dutch girls arrived yesterday and took over my dormitory. They talked too loudly around me, asking me questions, laughing.
    I could see them making faces at each other about me. I don’t blame them. All they got from me were grunts and monosyllables. I only wanted to sleep, but they were making it impossible. So, this morning, I packed my rucksack, drew my strength around myself and set off for the train station.
    I stuck to main roads, and kept my wits about me. Kept on thinking I saw him, of course. Twice I had to cross the road because I thought a man was following me. I could feel eyes slide over me, read their minds, smell their thoughts.
    I felt naked, even in my jeans and T-shirt. And my blondeness marked me out. Along with the fact that I’m small and only eighteen, it made me an easy target.
    So as I walked I got an idea. When poor Tess of the D’Urbervilles is cast out by Angel Clare and wandering the countryside looking for work, she gets round the problem of creepy men by putting on an old dress, tying a handkerchief round her face and snipping her eyebrows off. So, instead of attacking her, the next passing slimeball jeers and calls her a ‘mommet of a maid’.
    Like Tess, I could deal with that.
    It was a plan.
    Dipped into a supermarket and bought some dark brown hair dye. A little further along the road to the station, I stopped at a clothes shop with shirts and cotton skirts pegged up outside, slapping in the wind. There, in among all the glitter and purple and leopard print was the perfect garment: an oversized black T-shirt dress that would come halfway down my calves.
    Twenty francs, it cost. A whole day’s budget, but it was worth it.
    Had a couple of hours to kill at the railway station before my train to Milan. Let’s Go says there’s a shower in the ladies’ toilets. So, for two further francs, I was able to put my new look together.
    I’m in there a long time – the dye takes forty minutes to set. At one point the suspicious, beady-eyed old lady on duty bangs loudly on the door and asks if tout va bien avec Mademoiselle .
    ‘ Oui, oui ,’ I say, trying to sound as carefree as possible.
    It’s the first time I’ve showered since the night it happened, and there’s a full-length mirror in the cubicle. I’m shocked by my bruises – an odd, blue stain starts around my navel and blooms up to my ribs and down to my hip bones. That’s where he kicked me.
    Then, turning round, I see the scratches, grazes and more bruises where I’d been shoved up against the flinty wall. I’m particularly raw where my pelvis meets the skin of my back. That’s what makes it so uncomfortable to sit, or lie down.
    It’ll get better, though.
    I’ll get better.
    So, finally, I rinse the dye off and look at a new, dark brown-haired me. Then, without really thinking what I’m doing, I get my nail scissors and start chopping at my hair, sticking my fingers into it, pulling it away and cutting it all about two inches away from my scalp.
    The old lady bang-bangs on the door again.
    ‘ Mademoiselle? ’
    ‘ Presque fini, madame ,’ I say. ‘ Juste dix