I remembered the nights I had been too exhausted to lift Esme, and Ottoline stepping in, so helpful.

The mornings the joint pain was bad and she brought the tea to my bedside so I wouldn’t have to come down — the tea, always the tea, delivered with a nurse’s gentleness by the person ensuring I would need a nurse.

I remembered thanking her.

I remembered, once, weeping into her shoulder about how scared I was of what was happening to me, and her stroking my hair and murmuring that she was there, she would always be there, I wasn’t alone.

She had held me while I cried about the thing she was doing to me.

Sitting in Thandeka’s lab, I understood that I had not merely been betrayed.