Moira swings the car onto the highway hugging the mountain above the City Bowl and the air becomes thick in my chest. I used to love this view. I adored craning my neck to watch the boats in the harbour. I loved the icebreakers best. I used to imagine where they’d been—forging their way through the ice floes of the Antarctic, the crew bundled up in oilskins and rain slickers, their heavy-soled boots gripping the deck as it lurched and reeled with the movement of the waves.

Today there are no icebreakers in the harbour—only a couple of battered freighters and an obscenely top-heavy cruise ship. Anxiety is stealing up on me on Sandberg’s little cat feet. It is getting harder to breathe. I want to beg Moira to take me home. If she won’t listen, I will batter her with my fists, forcing her to pull over.

L. BASCOMBE: Why do you think you have this reaction to the university? The rape didn’t happen there. It was your place of work. And, from what you’ve told me, you were happy there.

ME: I was hoping you could tell me.

L. BASCOMBE: Okay. Let’s unpack this. You were last on campus before the rape, correct?

ME: Correct.

L. BASCOMBE: None of your attackers was associated with the university in any way?

ME: Not as far as I know.

L. BASCOMBE: You never saw them there, or anyone who looked like them?

ME: Nope.

L. BASCOMBE: You were attacked at your father’s farm. He used to work at the university.

ME: He took early retirement years ago. There was some trouble with a female student. It was all blown out of proportion. And he never finished his PhD, so that was held against him too.

L. BASCOMBE: Does anything about the farmhouse remind you of the university? Are they built in the same style? Do they give you the same feeling when you look at them?

ME: Not at all. They couldn’t be more different.

L. BASCOMBE: So what is the connection? Do you have any inkling?

ME: I think it had to do with the reason I was there.

L. BASCOMBE: Right . . . right . . . you were going to ask a colleague of John Coetzee’s if she knew where to find him?

ME: That’s right.

L. BASCOMBE: And he’s the man who used your rape as fodder for his novel . . .

ME: Yes.

L. BASCOMBE: The university is a secondary site of trauma for you. You feel violated by what Coetzee wrote, so the whole campus has become associated in your mind with the rape. It is the scene of additional abuse that you experienced.

ME: I’m sure you must be right.

L. BASCOMBE: You sound sarcastic. Did you expect me to get it sooner? Wait, did you have it figured out all along?