It was 8:30. The earliest I had been awake in what felt like the longest time to be confined to a bed. I wanted to prove it was possible.

I changed into a blue halter neck and stone wash jeans and threw on a little make-up before making my way downstairs. There didn't seem to be anyone around, so I helped myself in the kitchen and poured a usual generous bowl of cereal. Two to be exact, followed by a granola bar and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

I was spitting out a pip that had become lodged in my back tooth when Carmen appeared, standing at the foot of the table, her eyes wide with surprise. "You are indeed awake!"

"Mmm," I replied, with a mouthful of orange juice. It was too tired to be as ecstatic.

"Well if you have finished your breakfast, I would like you to come into the study." Her eyes shined at the prospect. I gave her my eye of doubt. Was this about my so-called addiction? How I was to reform as an ex junkie gone predictably wrong? "There is someone I would like you to meet." It was clear she was fond of this person. I had a feeling I wasn't going to share the blatant adoration.

"Who?" I slurped.

"Come and see for yourself." She turned to the side as if to show me the way.

I gave her another eye of suspicion, which she modestly ignored.

"Come on." She waved, lifting her skirt to clatter her heels into the hallway.

I took my time to follow her just in case I needed to change my mind, excuse myself with oncoming sickness.

The door was open and not particularly inviting. It was so deathly quiet. Maybe she meant the living room.

But as I took a step beyond the doorway, a woman rose from her chair to greet me with a strong handshake, the kind that meant business.

She was dressed conservatively, in a pale green double breasted jacket that accentuated her square shoulders. A knee length skirt revealed short shapeless legs with thick ankles.

A tattoo of a tiny hummingbird was just above the strap of her nude stilettos, diminishing the well-groomed appearance of a woman of constitutional class, someone who believed to be a cut above the rest of us who may have seemed dysfunctional.

"Good morning Miss Swan. I've heard so much about you." The smile appeared vindictive. I tried not to point out her frosted pink lipstick streaked two of her front teeth. Carmen sat behind her at the desk, purposely trying to appear preoccupied with a letter.

"I bet," I remarked. We stared at each other. She was trying to read me, suspect something immorally wrong with the way I chose to stand so still. "You're a shrink?"

"Psychiatrist," she corrected, unsmiling.

Carmen locked eyes with me, apologetic, but determined to overrule any of my objections. "It will be a good opportunity for you to speak freely. Catherine is a very close friend of mine. She helped a great deal when I became a widow."

Carmen looked to Catherine, both meeting eyes with agreeable smiles.

"Catherine is a very busy woman, Bella. She has arrived here today at short notice from the goodness of her heart."

I still chose not to speak.

Carmen reddened. "A thank you would not cause you to shrivel in size, darling, do be grateful."

"But I'm not grateful."

Carmen looked set to shrivel. Maybe even erupt. "Why ever not?" The veins in her neck throbbed.

"Because I never asked." I looked to Catherine. "I'm sorry Catherine, but I never asked you to visit or help. I really don't need it. You can go back to whatever important work you have waiting."

She smiled at me in a way that told me I hadn't fooled her into thinking I was capable of handling my own decisions. She was to try and dictate me, tell me how I should live, just like they all did, noting down my every essence of a problem down to my infrequent bowel movements and visits to the orthodontist.

I still recalled their tedious advice. You don't eat enough. You should drink more fluids, get out more, see a specialist, grow a herb garden or a cabbage patch to keep you outdoors. Yeah. They really knew how to rattle you.

"If you could just take a seat, I could explain to you why I'm here." She adjusted her glasses.

"I've a pretty good idea."

"You have?" She leaned back against the desk, obscuring Carmen from view. I didn't mind. I wanted to grab her and scream in her face, watch her catty little eyes practically pop out of their sockets.

I smiled deviously at the thought. Catherine the Great noticed what must have looked like the most sadistic grin in all of her years in psychiatric analysis. In other words, taking notes as she slept throughout her sessions of thought-provoking garbage.

"I'm not the first, am I Bella?" Her voice had taken on the fluidity used for patients on day release.

"Yes."

She clasped her other wrist with a melancholic smile, as if she truly felt sorry for me. "I don't believe that's true?"

"I don't believe I care."

Carmen stood and piped in with some favourable accounts of Catherine's success stories as if it mattered. She could have cured a donkey of the jitters or a windsurfer of heights. I still wouldn't have wanted to listen to all the medical terms to "fix" me.

Carmen continued with a lengthy description of a previous client who could now sew on a button without fears of getting it in their mouth and having to have it pried out of her rectum.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked when she began to explain how poop couldn't consist of digested synthetics.

"So you can see how beneficial this is to you."

"But I told you Carmen, I'm better, really I am."

"Yes and I have been very lenient," she quibbled. "I have allowed you to make me turn a blind eye to your…bereavement." Her eyes watered at the comment, brandishing the guilt card again.

"It was a long time ago. I don't even remember." Even as I said it I recalled the smell of thick smoke and Aunt Lorraine whispering "I'll save you. Save you from them all."

"Bella." Carmen was holding me. "Are you alright?"

I blinked away the blur of her neatly pleated hair.

"Yes." My voice sounded far away.

She pulled me along to a chair and sat me in it. I didn't have a reason to struggle.

"This won't take long darling." She stroked my face. Although she still looked unclear to me, jagged like an illusion. "Please try," she begged. "For me." A sob caught in her voice as she stepped back and left the room.

Catherine was pre-prepared and sat in front of me in a large chair. She was so tiny it looked like a throne she had been propelled into by force.

A notepad and pen was ready on her lap. One short leg was crossed over her knee; the tip of her pointy shoe was facing a brief case. The letters JTR were embedded across the middle.

I was beginning to see I was at the wrong place at the precise wrong time. My heart rate lowered, but the visions of being surrounded by smoke hadn't yet faded.

"So." She scribbled, taking prior notes. "When was the last time you slept undisturbed Bella? Carmen tells me you've been having nightmares."

She wasn't even looking at me as she spoke. It was as if it didn't matter how I seemed in person. I wasn't going to give her a reason to gloat at my expense.

"You're not local," I interjected, gratefully composed.

She stopped her generous note taking to peer up above her tinted glasses. "No, I'm not." She strained a smile and straightened her neck, looking at me despairingly with pointed eyebrows than ran out to the sides of her bangs like whiskers. One raised itself into a shape of a triangle, rippling her forehead.

"Dakota?" I asked flatly.

"Cincinnati," she replied, just as bland "Born and coaxed into civilisation on cornmeal and rocky roads."

"Sounds like a real momentous journey."

Her smile broadened, smoothing the dents that appeared on both sides of her voluptuous mouth. "It's had its ups and downs."

She seemed to think I was buying into the whole idle conversation as she relaxed into her chair, clicking the top of her expensive pen, certain in her trained, tested ways of manipulating me into a confession.

It wasn't going to happen. Not today. Not ever. I wasn't some new experiment for her to bend out of shape. I was already way more twisted out of shape.

"Who doesn't?" I shrugged.

"Oh, no one." She returned to being serious. "In fact, no one is ever completely compelled to reveal what they are. Some things always tend to remain hidden." Her pen clicked on.

"Good for them?" I shrugged, feeling a chill. I rolled down my sleeves.

"Why are your lips so blue? Are you cold?" She leaned toward me, her concern convincing.

I touched my lips. They were hard and numb. I shivered.

"It's more than thirty degrees outside. How could you be so cold?" She leaned back to wonder rather than see if I was well.

"Bad circulation," I muttered, standing. But my feet felt unattached to my legs. I almost tripped over the vintage rug.

Hands pressed me back down into my chair.

"Please sit, just for a moment." Her voice had taken on the gentle tone of a care assistant. Ordained to supervise the dependant and needy, people like me. I really was becoming more and more pathetic each day.

"Deep breaths." She gestured with her hands, showing me how with her own lungs. I didn't even realise I had replaced my breathing with loud unformed gasps.

"Slow breaths, nice and easy." Her harnessing tones quieted the ringing in my ears. The room stopped spinning, and although my heart felt as if it was still pumping wildly outside of my chest and somewhere on my lap, I was beginning to regain some control, composure. I was beginning to bring myself back as the girl who acted as though she had no problems or complaints. This way I could be untouched, free to hide what I had to with all the shame that buried it all.

My hands were clasped in hers. I began to relax as if a piece of string had been let go by a one-sided pull. I wanted to sleep, but she shook me. Hard. "Bella sit up straight. Talk to me." I could hear her fingers clicking. It took a moment for me to see them.

A glass of water was placed to my lips and pushed further into my mouth.

"Thanks." I whispered, my voice thick and coarse.

"There you are." She placed the glass down and I could see clearly as she faced me. Her smoky green eyes were wide open, evaluating my whole face, posture and speech until she sat back into her own chair, replacing her glasses and pulling back a lose strand of hair behind her ear. I noticed a teardrop diamond earring hanging loosely from the lobe, capturing the incoming ray of sunlight from the window. For a moment I was lost in the luminous colours it reflected onto her neck and collarbone, the way it made her skin look the colour of silky sand dunes.

We sat for a long time without looking at one another. When the clock chimed outside in the hallway, she clicked open her brief case. I glanced down to see what was happening.

She was rifling through stacks of papers and leaflets. A cell phone beeped then rang, but she ignored it, ruffling through half a rain forest as if it was her handbag not an item of business.

The briefcase clicked closed and I was handed a couple of leaflets. Some of them had smiling happy faces of youth and all the good tiding of hope, some weren't as optimistic, and were dramatic freeze frame screams of adolescence and crying unwanted children bearing pain and long term mental suffering.

I had a feeling I knew which category she was to store me in for a future debate and cajoling.

"I want you to read these, Bella, just to see how it makes you feel. If you want to speak to me, ask any question. I will return here on Monday to check." She was scribbling again, this time into a tiny black book, probably a book full of people who were traumatised victims of their past, waiting in line to be visited and cured of every degrading memory. Maybe I was to be next in that line. I didn't want to be. But part of me said otherwise.

"And here is my cell number and e-mail address." She handed me her business card. Transcribed with Dr Catherine Shorne MDD. JTE. I was starting a collection of cards on my second week. Maybe the next one would be from the local Undertaker.

"About Carmen," I muttered, shyly.

"I assure you there's no need for you to worry. I won't be discussing this meeting with Carmen. This will stay between the two of us, unless I see fit to decide otherwise."

"But there's nothing wrong with me." The way my voice wavered like a dying sparrow, I couldn't even reassure myself.

She took her glasses off with a wave of her hair and popped them into her jacket pocket.

"I know there isn't. But you could be in need of some support. It couldn't do any harm." Her smile widened.

When I didn't speak she reached over to grab my hand. "Bella…" The way she looked at me reminded me of Aunt Lorraine. From what I could somehow recall, she had the same two-tone grayish, green eyes, round and small with heavy lashes that felt like feathers stokes against my skin. "People don't have panic attacks like yours for no apparent reason. You're suppressing something that even you might not understand. The mind is very complex, extraordinary." Her eyes shined as she explained in depth, a topic which obviously filled her with great pride, satisfaction and worthiness. A part of me envied that air of superiority. It was the kind of sureness that was unimaginable to me. To know who and what you are and why you were supposed to be it must have felt…gratifying.

"You can't keep it to yourself, Bella. You need to let it spread out from you, onto others, so that they can connect and embrace the real you. Not the make believe person you put on display to conceal what's really hidden behind this shield of yours, this arrogance you have to brush away affection from people who love you. If you don't allow others to enter this condensed inner life that you privately hold on tight to, you'll never…well you'll never entirely be you. Do you see?"

I nodded. Not because I had to or because I wanted to make her absence quicker, or so that I could run and gorge my face with every bit of greasy sugary food I could get my hands on.

No. I agreed because I understood. Completely. It wasn't like it never crossed my mind. I knew talking was necessary at some point. It was inevitable that it would be needed to clear it from my memory and from sight, clear every nightmare that haunted me with visions of a night where I was put through hell without a place of refuge or arms to console me. Without someone to dispel the faces and names that collectively laughed at me whenever I tried to forget them, I had to tell myself it was another dream that I had woken up from.

Only knew what had happened could never come undone to bring me back.

"That's good Bella. Perhaps on my next visit you'll be able to let go of whatever it is you're keeping to yourself. Free it out into the open. Unburden yourself from being convinced you're alone in this. Stop the fear of talking about it and making it more real. Because as you can see, you're not alone at all. There are plenty of people around you who care and want to see you happy, including me. That's why I'm here, to get you through this without harming your future. You have potential to rise above moments that can't be changed, but eventually they can be rectified with the truth. Your first step is to admit the past happened. It caused you to suffer and plunge severely into denial. And it's my duty to warn you, Bella, that it will prove pointless."

I looked up at her, feeling betrayed by my own trust to silence, since my mouth moved too open. I took a breath to speak, express my reason to be afraid of what I was about to say out loud to a world that made me question my reasons for being born.

"I…"

"Yes."

"I…I was…It was all my fault." I shook my head, trying not to lose my distinction between the images and my thoughts. Tears tried to excrete like needles through the back of my eyelids.

"Go on, you can tell me."

It was difficult to keep still. My arms twitched no matter how riveted I remained in my seat. No matter how determined I was to stay unaffected.

"I was waiting…"

"For who. Who were you waiting for, Bella?"

"Hm, Jess…" I suddenly lost my nerve and jumped out of my seat. She stood and grabbed me.

"This isn't about your parents' is it?"

I shook my head.

"Or even your aunt?"

"No."

"Then who?" The demand in her tone was unbearable. My sight filled with red dots and stung as I closed them tight, but it only made me see horrible images of that night, projecting through to disarm me, make me see every particle combine into one person and their cruel smile.

"I can't say." I struggled in her arms, but she wouldn't let go. She was strong, relentless. Whereas I was powerless, as always.

"Let me go."

"No."

"Let go, please," I begged.

"You have to tell me, tell me what has happened to you."

"No, I can't."

"Just say it, Bella, let it go. You have to let it go now."

"I can't. I can't remember." My voice didn't sound mine. I sounded small, crippled and verging on tears.

"Yes you do. You're lying. Admit the truth. You can do it."

"No! No! I'll never tell you." The window behind me crashed open and blew in a flurry of leaves. I shook my hair and stumbled back and fell against the wall, seeing Daniel's wicked smile play out over and over again.

When I opened my eyes, Edward was stood by the doorway, his eyes no longer shaded.

And for the first time, he looked a fraction pleased to see me, as if he had finally noticed I existed. Yet at the same time he seemed equally disturbed by it. Looking away, he too soon forgot me, and turned to leave again.