Rachel Abbott

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

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

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

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

The quiet but inexorable breaking down of self-esteem is much more sinister - it__ violation of the soul.

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