“I see that look on your face. You’re casting me in the role of slutty best friend. I’m the loud and amusing one who keeps you entertained with her sexual exploits. But from my point of view, I’m the star of the movie, and you’re the weird best friend struggling to come to terms with her difficult past.”

“I don’t think of you as a sideshow. You’re not my light relief.”

But of course she is right. Other people are the bit players in the absorbing big-screen drama that is my life. The role of villain was played by the men who raped me, but now their part has been usurped by my father.

If my father is the major villain and my rapists are the hired goons, what does that make John Coetzee? It isn’t easy to assign him a role in this revised narrative. I see him as a kind of Faust-Machiavelli-Uriah Heep hybrid. He is the great manipulator who profited from my tragedy.

It annoys me that his narrative has remained stable while mine has changed. Fiction-Lucy is still the Madonna, chosen to bear the redeemer-child who will lead South Africa into the promised land. I was one kind of victim, and now I am another. I was an unfortunate casualty of that South African phenomenon known as the farm invasion. Now I am an even more unfortunate casualty of my father’s viciousness. No longer farm violence, but that far more common beast, family violence.

* * *

ME: Am I your most interesting client? I am, aren’t I?

L. BASCOMBE: I couldn’t possibly comment. Why does it matter to you?

ME: Am I not allowed to be interesting? The media finds me so. Since they got hold of this story, they have been fascinated by what I went through.

L. BASCOMBE: That should suffice. You have my professional interest.

ME: What does your professional interest say about this latest development?

L. BASCOMBE: It is . . . significant. It must have changed your perspective in various ways. But I think the most important thing is that you shouldn’t feel guilty.

ME: Guilty? What do I have to feel guilty about?

L. BASCOMBE: I mean you shouldn’t waste time thinking about your childhood and wondering what you might have done to anger your father so deeply that he would want to do this to you.

ME: It hadn’t crossed my mind.

L. BASCOMBE: Well, good.

ME: Until now. You’re saying I did something to deserve this?

L. BASCOMBE: No, no. I’m saying you mustn’t think that.

ME: I suppose I might have been an annoying child from time to time.

L. BASCOMBE: Now you are being deliberately contrary. I would never blame the victim in a case like this.

ME: You have planted a seed in my mind. I will consider it.

L. BASCOMBE: You are trying to make me feel unprofessional.