Seeing the wide grin on her fiancée’s face, Anne-Marie sighed heavily, knowing that she could put it off no longer.   “Paul?” she said, stepping away from him a little, “I…er…”   She hesitated for a moment, then finally decided to get it over with and blurted out, “Five years ago I was raped….

“Yes, I know,” said Paul.   He sighed heavily.

“By the Sobbing Rapist, as he was called.”

“Yes, I know,” repeated Paul.

“He was a rapist who assaulted nine women, pleading with them to forgive him while he was raping them.”

“Yes, I know, darling.”

Ignoring or not hearing Paul’s interjections, Anne-Marie went on to relate her entire ordeal to him, right up to the time of their first meeting.   All the way through her story, Paul continued to sigh guiltily and say, “Yes, I know.”

It was only as she was winding up her tale that Anne-Marie finally heard him and asked, “What did you say?”

“I said yes, darling, I know.”

“You know what?”

“I know all about you being raped and the Sobbing Rapist being sent to Pentridge Prison for three years.”

“Five years minimum,” she corrected him.

“No, three years,” he insisted, looking down at his feet, too ashamed to face her.   “I got two years’ remissions for good behaviour.”

“You got…?” asked Anne-Marie shocked, staring at her fiancée.

Staring wide-eyed in shock, Anne-Marie asked, “Are you…trying to tell me…that you were the Sobbing Rapist?”

“Yes baby, I….”

“Paul!   That isn’t funny!   I went through hell because of that bastard…I spent four years almost jumping out of my skin If any man so much as said hello to me!”

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” said Paul, crying softly.   “But I’m not joking.”

“But how?   Why?” asked Anne-Marie, still unable to accept that Paul was the one who had raped her.   Let alone believe that her memory had blocked out the rape and subsequent trial so thoroughly that she hadn’t even recognised him four years later.   Of course she had always had a nagging feeling of having known him before.

‘But how could I have failed to recognise him, if he had raped me?’ she thought.

“Oh God I don’t know,” said Paul.   “I…I guess it all started with my mother really.”