Chapter 1
The early years of my childhood from what I was told by my Father were very uneventful, but like most of my formative years until I reached adulthood, it was a lonely time for me. I was an only child, I had a brother who did not come into this world breathing, whose delivery and the trauma of his still birth led to the passing of my Mother not so long after. Leaving me and Father to carry on our lives together and build together the bond between us.
As I became older, I started to notice the problems my Father had with his peers, the fellow physicians who once had held him in high-esteem and had declared him to be the most talented physician of his time began to shun him. But at that time I was still oblivious to the work he was doing straight under our very house.
He hid from me this secret underworld which as I grew older started to play more on my mind. As he became more and more intently drawn to his work a gulf started to appear between us and I began to mourn for the close relationship I was beginning to lose; the closeness of my childhood disappearing rapidly. I believed at that point that it was some part my doing. That as I aged and became more like my mother, that he seemed to throw himself into his controversial work more and to me it seemed he did it so when he looked at me he was not reminded of her. And I thought so of that more when I reached the age of twelve, whilst I was growing up I was schooled at home, a governess teaching me the finer points of English literature, geography and history and my Father who schooled me in the sciences and mathematics which like him I excelled in.
I now realise looking back with some hindsight and the wisdom of my age that this was at the time that the first sanctuary was born which over time occupied me and my father so intently as time passed. But at this time he did not want me dragged into this world which had captured him so much. That he wanted me protected from the secrets he had uncovered. So when I reached the age of twelve he sent me to boarding school.
The years that I spent at that school was so displeasing and painful; he loneliness I had experience at home still continued within these four walls; The other girls shunning me due to my natural intellect which caused me to be so far more advanced than them educationally, their jealous of that making them unwilling to accept me as a friend. I was more alone there than I had been at home with Father. I was left there for months on end by myself with only the occasionally letter from father and no contact from any of my other relatives; even the cousins which I was close to which I had spent some part of my early years with.
For the six years I was at the school I was the most alone I had felt in my life.
But this was about to change, change in a way that I was least suspecting.