The Sobbing Rapist had lived up to his name, breaking into tears in the courtroom twice.   As a consequence the judge had given him a lenient sentence: a minimum non-parole period of five years, plus two years mandatory psychiatric treatment.

The time after the trial was fuzzy too.   Anne-Marie could dimly recall her mother, Phyllis, returning from the United States, where she had been born and had returned to three years earlier, after divorcing her Australian husband.   Phyllis stayed in Australia for more than a month before returning to the USA, leaving Anne-Marie’s father, Allan, to take her round to the rape-rehabilitation centres.   Until a year after the trial, when he had unexpectedly died of a heart attack.

After the devastation of her father’s death, on top of her rape, Anne-Marie had sunk right into her shell for another two years.   Until finally her friends from work came to the rescue, dragging her along to parties and discos with them.   But she had been more terrified of the loud-mouthed, beer-swilling men she was introduced to, than she had been of the quiet-spoken rapist.

Her friends had been on the point of despairing.   Then one day she had been introduced to Paul Sonneborn at one of her friends’ parties, and had soon fallen head-over-heels in love with the tall, gentle man.   Although at the back of her mind had always been the nagging conviction that she knew him from somewhere else.   But Paul had insisted they had never met before, making a joke of it, saying that he was sure that he would have remembered if he had ever met someone as beautiful as her before.   Although her friends had groaned at the cliché, Anne-Marie had blushed profusely at the compliment.

Looking at Paul now as they stood together arms entwined in her bedroom, Anne-Marie realised how little she really knew about him.   When they first met, he had told her he had just finished working three years with the Victorian government.   But he was very reticent when questioned about which department he had worked for.

As much as she didn’t want to break Paul’s playful mood, Anne-Marie knew it would be wrong to go any longer without telling him what had been done to her by the Sobbing Rapist.   And about the years of trauma she bad gone through afterwards and to some extent still went through.   She had been wrestling with her conscience for months, continually putting off the day of reckoning, telling herself that there was still time, the marriage was still months away…then weeks away…but now only days away.