SEVEN: Details.

The almost four-year-old insists on sleeping beside my bed. So we make up a little nest for him and when it’s time he tells everyone that his sleeping place is downstairs, and he is now going there to be with his Giddy.

I read him bedtime stories. He says: Giddy, I’m choking, I am going to choke, but if you rub my tummy I will be all right. Then he shows me how to read his book to him and rub his tummy at the same time. After a bit he says, Giddy, I think my arm is breaking too. Can you kiss it? So I kiss his arm and rub his tummy and read his story. Then he says, there’s something wrong with my foot, Giddy.

And immediately falls asleep.

I lift him gently from my bed into his own. I have to climb over him to get to the bathroom, where I brush my teeth. The electric toothbrush has taken to nipping the inside of my lower lip. I can’t work out how this is happening. I should ask someone, but I can’t be bothered.

It’s early, but I’m tired. I don’t go back upstairs to the others. I look at my book and pretend I’m reading.

I think about how people who do harm depend on the silence of those they’ve harmed. I think how there is a battle going on between those who need the cover of silence in order to perpetrate their harms, and those who know that if they are to survive, they must speak.

I think that too often the greater disgrace is attributed to those who break the silence, rather than to those who need it as cover for their crimes.

The counsellor tells me I’m still not ready to make my statement to police about the sexual assault. It’s all right, she says, there is no statute of limitations. Part of me wants to get it over with. Another part tells me to listen to her, she knows what she’s talking about.

They will want every detail, she tells me. Ok, I say. They will have what they want.

He depended on my silence. What is it in a man that makes him believe he can do whatever he wants, and still depend on a woman’s silence?

The details don’t matter, he told me impatiently. With arrogance. As if it were beneath him to consider, let alone discuss, the details of what took place. Silencing me with his male authority, his intellectual prowess, his assumed entitlement to decide what matters, and what does not.

And I was silent.

As long as I’m silent he’s right, the details don’t matter. But when I speak, the details become everything. I will bring the details down upon his head. I will parade the details in all their complex shades before his eyes, and he will be unable to look away. I will pour the details into his mouth until he cannot swallow and they spill out, down his chin, onto his shirt front, choking him with their significance.

Then he will see how they matter.

I’ll give life to the details. The silence will be destroyed by the details. Forever and ever.

I have fallen asleep, the bedside lamp left on, my book across my chest. The child is whispering in my ear. Giddy. I am still choking and my arm is still breaking. Can I come into your bed? He climbs over me and snuggles under our covers. He strokes my face. He sighs, and rolls into my arms.

It’s two in the morning. The world is silent.

Details are everything. I will show you that much and this time, you will not be allowed to turn your face away.