My father was one of those traditional dads who joked about buying a shotgun when I grew up. He was suspicious of any boy who showed an interest in me. As I entered puberty and my body changed shape, he became awkward about physical contact between us. He would hug me sideways with one arm. If he knew I was menstruating, he wouldn’t hug me at all.

My father has never been comfortable with me as a sexual being. If he could have kept me small and pre-pubescent forever, he would have done so. I know this doesn’t reflect well on him. His attitudes were patriarchal and outdated. They denied my agency as an adult, and as a person with control over my sexual choices. But that’s the way he was.

What must have been going through his mind when he walked into the sitting room of the farmhouse to find me in the middle of a gang rape? My clothes were in tatters, having been torn from my body. My face and neck were covered in blood from the nicks they’d given me with their knives to make me more cooperative. My legs were splayed open, numb from having been held in an unnatural position for so long.

The man rutting above me was finally finished, after sawing away for what seemed like an eternity. This was the moment my father walked in on.

The little girl he had taught to walk, and to swim, whose hand he had held while crossing the road, was undergoing the most profound violation a person could endure. He stood motionless, paralysed with shock. Then he flung himself forward and shouted. They fell back at once in the face of this paternal ire.

I rolled over and clutched the shreds of my T-shirt together, not to hide my breasts from my attackers, but to hide them from my father. I tried to raise myself onto all fours, but my legs were thick and stupid. They felt as though they belonged to someone else. All except my hips, where a distant, screaming ache was emerging.

My arms trembled too much to hold me up. I fell on my face twice, adding to the bleeding and bruising already there. By the time my father came back in, having scattered my assailants, I had given up on trying to rise without assistance. I lay on my side, tears leaking onto the floor, distressed at my father’s distress, wishing I could have spared him this.

He walked past me without a word.

It’s over, I thought. I have disgraced myself. But he was fetching a blanket, which he threw over me in silence.

After a long while, he said, “You must wash yourself, girl. You must get their stink off you. I will run you a bath.”

“Yes, yes.”