‘My father is now fifty-three, he is not as professionally active as he used to be, he was an important person in the travel industry, he still has a travel agency which does well. I was in awe of my father, sometimes I was frightened of my father although he was very playful and rarely ever drank alcohol. It took me all my strength to confront him when I grew up; I confronted my father, he said, “I was playing with you, Jennifer. I thought you enjoyed it.” He told the twin, “I was soothing you. Remember how you got convulsions?” I left my father’s house after that, I lived with an aunt, then mother called me back. I returned because I wanted my father to understand that I would no longer be giving in to his patriarchy and power games.’

Honor thy father and mother, every Sunday morning Mass Jennifer hears this in church. It is an important thing to believe in as the sun shines on a week-weary world renewing its faith in itself on its day of rest. Honor thy father and mother at all cost, to not do so is to admit that parents are both sly and sorrowful, parents are abusive; they have betrayed their child. Jennifer does not need a sermon on Judas the great betrayer in church anymore, she has working knowledge of what is betrayal. There is no defence mechanism called denial here, there is no denial at all to protect Jennifer from anything so painful. Those who do not have a wall of denial around them appear fearless. The harder for this kind of wall to come down; walls of denial can come down with a crash, a wall of fearlessness is so achingly vulnerable, lower it please only brick by painful brick.

Her dark eyes, repudiating everyone and everything; those cheeks red as she triumphantly stands her ground, uncomforted; that head held high with its angrily, closely cropped hair: is that a child still visible in that woebegone face?

‘I must tell you at the outset, I am a lesbian.’

Yes.

‘You are not surprised to hear it?’

Who can honestly say that there is any real advantage in being loved by a man?

‘I realized this when I was nineteen years old, since then I am part of a gay group. We are not the most functional group but we are all right, we manage.’

Good, it is in everyone’s interests to be up and about, there is nothing to be gained by settling into a miasma of primitive feelings. Perhaps she will eventually set up her own house with a girl as wonderful as her.

‘Oh no, I cannot live with the idea of just one partner, I need, to have a variety of women.’

Yes.

‘You are not shocked to hear it?’

Sad is the word, overwhelming sadness as one observes a perpetuating pattern—promiscuity can be one of the by-products of hard-spectrum sexual abuse at the hands of a father. But this must play itself out for Jennifer to truly know.