But it was the relic of the night I stopped being a passive participant in my own life, the night a frightened, dying woman on a rug had the presence of mind to make certain that, whatever else happened, the truth would survive her.

That watch had done what I could not.

It had refused to let the truth die with me.

There is something I have thought about a great deal, in the months since, about that small ordinary object and what it represents, and it goes beyond my own story into something larger and, I think, genuinely hopeful.

For most of human history, a woman in my position, alone in a house with a powerful man who decided to kill her, would have had no recourse at all.

It would have been her word against his, and her word would have died with her, and his word, backed by his money and his status and his lawyers, would have become the official truth.