Hidden.

I do not exist.


Rose exists now. She sits by the bonfire, fountain pen in one hand, dense letter paper in the other – only the best will do, the written version of an oak coffin for me. How thoughtful.

She waited until New Year's Eve for this severing, as if that date, decided by caucuses of men long before our time, could really help her cleanly cleave the old from the new.

Her handwriting comes out jagged, jumping between the lines, like when you're a kid and you try writing with the wrong hand, just to see if you can. I can still see my spidery style underneath, though; perhaps when all her bones have healed completely, she will write like me again. It might be the one change she forgets to force on herself.

I am Bözsi Emma Callahan, she writes. I am nineteen. I live in Stevenage.

Liar.

I am Bözsi Callahan. Me, not her.

Bözsi from a woman who looked after my Hungarian mother when they were in the camps; Callahan from my Irish father; Emma so that I had a normal English name to turn to if I disliked my Hungarian name.

But Boz suited me well. An odd, boyish name for an odd, boyish girl. I was never what you'd call pretty – all wide features in a narrow face, coke-bottle glasses, and a gap between my teeth that was supposed to bring me fortune. Still, I was complimented on my smile a lot – told it transformed my face, made me seem like the kind of person you could say anything to.

And I was that kind of person. That was one of the things I knew was true about me: good old Boz, friendly old Boz, could fit in anywhere, anyone would talk to her, had friendly conversations with stockbrokers and market traders, cops and robbers, voodoo doctors, circus freaks, nuns –

And one man who likes to kill.

The pen staggers across the page again:

My parents were Kristina Kovács Callahan and Anthony Paul Callahan, and my sister was Mariska Louise Callahan.

The bitter, the blithe, and the innocent, all to be cremated for a second time.

I got 5 As at A level and 13 A*s at GCSE.

I was in the papers and everything, put in by my school, to try to detract attention from the rest of the year's terrible results.

That success was why he targeted me, of course. He liked to skim the cream of the crop. I still don't regret doing well.

I like debating, parties and travelling.

Huh. That's the kind of thing you'd write as a French exercise, introducing yourself to a potential penfriend – except that it actually all means something, to me.

To Rose it means nothing. It is a description of a stranger. She balls the paper up – like it's a mistake, disposable - and throws it into the fire, near the edge so she can watch it burn.

The paper greys, curls up on itself like an animal in pain, and collapses.

And it's all gone – the family, the grades, the likes, the name, me.

Now she speaks aloud; her tongue, missing its tip, slurs the Ls and Ss a little, and her voice is husky, thanks to his poisons; my best friend wouldn't recognise her if she cried for help.

I am Rose May Oliver. I am eighteen. I am the Mother of Harry, Grace and Maia. I live in Cornwall. I like gardening, DIY and sport. I am Rose.

Her voice rises with the last sentence, resolute.

Even in this changed body, slim from starvation – thanks to him – and breasts swollen with milk - also thanks to him – I can still feel my own heart beat, fastened by the flames. The beat doesn't feel any different just because it's now in a woman who has a new name and history.

Rose stands up and brushes the cinders from her dress like a heroine in a fairy-tale. She looks like one too – blond hair (dyed to hide), grown long in the months sleeping at the hospital; tiny button nose (to hide, yes, but also because of the acid); perfect teeth (all crowns, on the stumps he left behind). Now her face truly is transformed. It's pretty.

It doesn't look so open and friendly any more, though; I couldn't imagine people wanting to tell this face secrets – it seems too full of its own.

At least when I look at the children born by her, due to him, from that one impregnation, I can see my father in the boy, my mother in the girls. I can see me in them as well as her - Rose. The English Rose. At least she didn't choose the name herself; that was chosen by the people who placed her under protection.

Rose, who is so quiet. Who hides from people. Who constantly glances round her, with those newly-working lasered eyes. Rose, throwing feed to the hens, strapping beans and strawberries to their stalks, bent over a car engine, instruction manual next to her, its pages held open with a spanner and marked with oily fingerprints. Rose, who is always alone but for the babies; they never leave her sight, except when she has to sleep. Then she lies between them, hand reaching out to touch the further one.

It's as if she's afraid that he's out there watching her, waiting for the second she drops her guard, then he'll magic the children away in an instant. But he would never be that subtle, and he would never pass up the chance to take her too.

She is like that fairytale heroine in a deeper way, perhaps. After all, she is a work of fiction. She is trying to protect her children and herself from the ogre, the beast, the fair-haired, stocky man, him, who killed so many, but that I escaped from - the one that I, with my useless eyes, could not see well enough to identify.

I'll help her.

But I won't help her for herself – I'll help her for me.

I do not exist. But I am not dead. And I will return.