“Yes, but listen.” Moira’s voice is honey. She is Mephistopheles to my Faust. “You won’t be ruining anyone’s life. That’s an extreme example. You are trying to raise awareness of the masculinist tendency to co-opt women’s narratives. He won the Man Booker Prize off the back of your pain, Lucy.”

He did indeed. He won the Man Booker. Because of my pain. It was my story to tell, and he co-opted it. I need to lean in and reclaim my narrative.

“How?” I say. “How do I do it?”

Mephistopheles smiles and touches my shoulder. I smell brimstone.

“Should I publish my op-ed as a blog, and then tweet the link?”

This suggestion finds no favour. Mephistopheles’ pointed teeth disappear. “That is not an avalanche. That is a stone dropped into a pond. It will disappear without trace. You can do better.”

“Tell me, daemon. I place myself in your hands.”

“Break the op-ed into several smaller pieces. Make them more emotive. Think Caitlin Moran, not Gayatri Spivak. As you publish each one, share the link across all your social media platforms, with emphasis on Twitter.”

“I have a Twitter account, but it’s a dusty and defunct thing with maybe thirty followers. You can’t start an avalanche on flat ground.”

“That doesn’t matter. You are going to tag specific people and organisations in your tweets. So your first tweet might read, ‘I was gang-raped while my father was forced to watch. RT to spread awareness @WomenMedia.’ They are a powerful organisation. If they do retweet it, it will reach twenty-five thousand people.”

My stomach roils at the prospect of turning my experience into a True Confessions headline.

Moira upbraids me for my squeamishness. “How do you expect to put pressure on Coetzee if you’re not willing to get your story out there? It won’t all be True Confessions headlines. You will change your register depending on your audience. So, for @FeministWarrior99, for example, you might tweet, ‘Patriarchy punished me twice for my rape. Please RT.’ And so forth.”

Bleakness rolls over me, blanketing my senses, and numbing my limbs. I don’t know if I can do this. The thought enervates me. But the alternative is equally unattractive. To continue huddling in my little house, scooping syrupy peaches from the tin, washing erratically, eking out a living from my proofreading. Unable to wrench my life onto a different track because the one it is on is a groove so deep and dark that I can’t see a way out.

I need, as they say, to move on.

* * *