My sister was called Heather. She only lived three years. I've never been told what really happened to her, only that she was taken away from us too early. I used to lie awake all night, terrified of someone coming in through the window, dragging me out of bed, over their shoulder, down a ladder, running across the back lawn, through a gap in the fence and into a van. Driven away forever.
It wasn't until I was about eight years old and settling into a new house (we'd moved four times already) that I came across a scrapbook of...
100 feet away I watched the smugglers struggle to get over the jagged stones, collapse onto the wet sand, expel salt water from their lungs and pray to whatever gods they believed they had reached shore alive.
Frank De Libre was the youngest and most sober on the galleon. Swimming for freedom, literally. Kidnapped two years beforehand from his parent's home, watched his tutor die trying to save him.
I could see everything as the images appeared like a slide show. This was the fifth time I had undergone hypnosis and finally my lifetime of phobias had been explained.
Coincidentally,...