"It's funny how what we endure isn't always written on our bodies. It can become how we mark time."
She had said it to him after she was out, after he was back from Ireland. Times in her life became while she was waiting, while he was gone with Vera, while he was falsely imprisoned, after what happened, when she was pushing him away, when they pulled her away and she herself was falsely imprisoned. The absurdity of it; the vulgarity.
She is strong. She says it, he says it. It was scrawled across so many different notes, from so many different souls at the Abbey, while she was a number. (She refuses to write that number down, to say it out loud; she won't be a number again). Her mettle has been forged since she was small, by what she has endured, by one blow after another, and the occasional plunge in cold water.