It is easy when they are young, gullible and in love with the world. All that is needed is some measure of attention, a kind word, and a bit of a smile, and they will trust you. I even made her go ask her mother to create some illusion of legitimacy. Some things you can't fake, but for everything else there is a mastermind. She ran to her mother and said I want to go to the park with Auntie Nessa please Mum please please please. Her Mum looked at me and knew that I had put her up to it, and in a split second I saw flashing behind her eyes all that she knew about me. I am better, I protested, even though I knew she didn't trust me, not after what happened. Frankly I wanted her to say no, I would probably fuck it up, but I was the one with nothing to lose, while she would have had to deny her daughter the ties of the womb and introduce her ever so prematurely to the taste of bitter disappointment. She stooped to her daughter's height and said be good and listen to your aunt, then wrapped around her small frame layers of clothing, as if the wool, the felt, the ribbons and the zip would have protected her. She wound her scarf three times around her neck in a way that was not tight enough. I will take care of her, was all I said.

I put my hand on her bony shoulder and took her on a drab concrete path towards the purple park. My patience gave way to anxiety when her short legs did not carry her fast enough. There are wolves to the left monsters to the right and meaningless voids in front and behind, I said, stay close to me. I could see she was exhausted, yet too shy to ask me to stop, and I had forgotten how to be kind. I took a turn hoping to escape, but we ended up in a lift, four walls of hurt in a little box going nowhere but down. I knew this was the last moment in which I had a choice, but one flicker of hesitation and we were both falling our way through the depths.

Give me your hand, I said, but she refused to open her hand. I will try to protect you I promise, but sounding hollow, my words hung in the air just long enough to hit the incandescent bulb on our way down. I kneeled to pry open her hands, but she had curled her thumb under her other fingers and I knew then. Her mother had painted her fingernails a slutty red, as our mother had done to me many years ago, after which a strange man took my hands and told me how pretty I looked. Do you like Mummy, I said. Do you like Daddy, I said, and she didn't move. I held her tight against my chest in the warmth of my lap and felt her tiny breaths in my hair.

It's okay you can tell me I said, tell me now, before you forget. But her body shook and I didn't know how else to ask. I stroked her hair gently and said well don't forget, don't forget then, whatever it is, I will wait, I can wait forever. In time when you find the right words you will tell me, whisper it to me in a dark lift just like this, write it down, paint it in the sky, or tell me in symbols and code, and I will know. I will understand. I will understand when you want to scratch off your face, I will understand when a headache is enough excuse for you to whittle away, hide behind the wallpaper or deflect everything with a self-deprecating humour -- to everyone else it's sharp wit but to you it is simply the truth. I will get it when there is only torture, no logic, or when you start to question whether it was even real, was it your imagination, or someone else's projection. I will know when you are addicted beyond belief, addicted to the one thing you deny yourself, when you won't stop needing no matter how much you try, or don't want to try, too weak to try, too tired to try. You think it will pass, you think it will pass, you think it will pass. But it doesn't. It hangs around like an uninvited ghost, lingering around your ceiling just outside your grasp. I will be there when everywhere you turn will reside all things dangerous, but you won't know how to defend against it, and nothing lasts, except the dependence on the thing you can’t have. I will be the only one to understand your base need to cry when you see flowers in full bloom. I will even get it that you will burst into tears for no obvious reason, or even a reasonable need, at a pub, in a meeting, or in bed at night when no one hears. But someone will hear. I promise you that. And promise me you will listen, listen intently, because the only time you stop crying is when you hear those sounds you make, your whimpers, your choking, your sharp intake of inconsequential breaths, those self-same sounds of your crying coming from someone else. He will sound just like you. You will stop then, dead in your tracks, and hold your breath so you can hear him. I will tell you all this, when they never put anything on your nails again, when you remember to tell me, when you confess to all that happened before.