And I had hidden it — under a loose floorboard in our bedroom, kept alive on a charging cable routed behind the wardrobe, quietly recording, and uploading each file to an encrypted drive that my father, before he died, had set up for us.

I did not do it out of courage.

I want to be honest about that, because people have called it brave, and it was not brave.

It was the cold, practical response of a girl who had understood that no one would take her word, and had concluded that if her word was worthless, she would gather something that was not: evidence.

On the last night, when Roland turned toward me and mocked me for being the brave one, I told him I was not being brave.