She lay peacefully in a deep trance in my zero gravity chair. I looked at her face, innocent and utterly trusting, and felt a fierce instinct to protect her flash through me. I had experienced it before, but never for a woman.

The first time was when my son was born and the nurse had given him to me wrapped in a blanket, a wrinkled, mottled, red and, quite frankly, ugly little thing—more changeling than human. His eyes and fists were tightly closed, and the first sensation that flooded into me was not one of joy or happiness, but stark fear.

Would I be able to protect him from this cruel world long enough for him to be able to take care of himself? The feeling had gone as quickly as it had come but I had never forgotten it. The crippling panic. It was back now. The terror of not being able to protect her until she was strong enough to protect herself. I stilled it. I knew I could get to the bottom of this mystery. I knew it was not by accident that Ivana had chosen me.

My intention that day was to return her to the day her mother died, but I wanted to take her to a safe memory first. Something she could come out with and point to as another successful session in remembering the past.

‘You are safe from all harm, Olivia,’ I said quietly. ‘There is nothing that can harm you. You are six years old today and it is bedtime. Where are you?’

‘In the tower,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve had a lovely day. There are presents all over the floor. Ivana says I can have them strewn about today but tomorrow they will all have to be put away neatly.’

‘Is she there now?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, child-like.

‘What is she doing?’

‘Ivana is reading me a story. “Why is Cinderella’s stepmother so cruel?” I ask her. “Stepmothers are often portrayed like that in fairy tales,” she says.

‘“Why?”

‘“Because they can’t help being jealous of their stepdaughters, I suppose.” I frown. “But you’re not like that?” “No, I’m not,” she says, and breaks into a cheeky grin. “But I would be if I didn’t love you so much.” I nod. It seems to make perfect sense to me. “Ivana?”

‘“Yes, darling.”

‘“Why didn’t Cinderella tell her daddy about what her stepmother and sisters were doing to her?”

‘“Perhaps because Cinderella was too nice to tell tales on anyone. And, I think, she might have thought that if her daddy knew it would have been really, really hard for him to choose between her and her stepmother since he loved them both.” I frown and think about what she has said. It is quite a shocking piece of information that Cinderella’s father might have loved both equally. “Do you think he might have chosen the evil stepmother over good, kind Cinderella?” I ask. Ivana hides a smile. Adults are always doing that. “Probably not,” she says and closes the book.

‘I snuggle back into the pillows. “If I were him I’d choose Cinderella,” I say. “So would I,” she whispers and, kissing me goodnight, switches on the blue nightlight, and quietly leaves the room. I hear the echo of her shoes going down the steps of the tower. And then I look out into the night sky full of stars and wonder where my mother is. I start to feel more and more sleepy. I fall asleep.’

She paused and I was just about to guide her out of that memory and back to the day her mother died when she spoke again, and I realized there was more to that memory, by far more.

‘The sound of scratching wakes me up. I am sleepy. I don’t want to wake up, but the sound becomes louder. I open my eyes and listen… And suddenly I am awake. It is not a scratching sound that I have heard but a clicking, the clicking of a dog’s nails on the stone steps coming up the tower. There is another tread coming up together with the dog. It is much heavier. And it is steady. Step by step they are coming up. I clutch my bedclothes to my chin and hold my breath. The door opens.’

Her limbs began to twitch restlessly.

‘Who has come into your room?’

‘Tom the gardener and his pitbull, Tiger,’ she said. There is a tremor in her voice. ‘I am afraid of them. I want them to go away.’

‘Nothing can harm you, Olivia. You are just watching a scene from a very safe place.’

‘Tiger comes into the room, his tags rattling. The sound makes me feel cold all over. He has powerful jaws and a big chest, but he is also very strong. I have seen him train with Tom in the garden. Under his shiny black fur his muscles are thick and rippling. His broad, square head turns in my direction and his small, piggy eyes find me. I am scared of Tiger.

‘“Attention,” Tom says, and Tiger walks into the middle of the room. From this position he will not move until Tom gives him the command to leave. His yellow eyes never blink. He opens his mouth and starts breathing noisily. Drool starts sliding from his teeth down to the floor.

‘“I don’t want to,” I tell Tom. “Please. It’s still my birthday and Daddy says I’m allowed to do anything I want on my birthday.” Tom laughs. “I’ve got a birthday treat for you.”

‘“I don’t want it,” I say. Tiger begins to growl. The sound terrifies me. I start to cry. “Stop it,” Tom scolds. “I can’t bear it when you do that.”

‘Tiger’s growl becomes more ferocious. He starts frothing. Tom makes me take my knickers off. Then he puts his mouth between my legs… And he licks and sucks me…down there… And then my head goes funny, and after a while my body starts floating.’

I sprang out of my seat, stunned, and paced the floor with my right hand pressed against my forehead. I couldn’t believe it. I had found the white owl. And it was the fucking gardener! A hiss of pure hate tore from my throat. Disgust, like fingers, was in my guts, stabbing, clawing ripping. Pedophilia never ceased to amaze me, no matter how many times I heard about it. How could human beings take their sickness out on innocent little children?

The bastard. The sick, sick bastard.

My eyes filled with tears of rage. If he had been there I would have killed him with my bare hands, I swear it. I started to retch, but it was dry—the grotesque thing would not come up. I covered my face with my hands and dragged my fingers up and through my hair. I could not let her go on. I could not hear another word. I was so violently angry my body was trembling uncontrollably.

‘Stop,’ I screeched.

The sound was so loud in the completely silent room her body jerked. I turned and stared at her with narrowed eyes. Her eyelids fluttered and then she went still. Fuck! That was stupid. I could have shocked her out of her hypnotic state and made it all so much worse.

I felt desperate to leave the room and glug down half a bottle of JD. All I wanted to do was get rid of the filthy, ugly image that was clinging like a rotten fungus to my brain. I just didn’t want to deal with it. I felt incapable of it. First Maria. Now her.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down.

Now I understood why she had answered ‘growl’ when I had said ‘dog’ during the word association play. And it explained why she had allowed herself to be debased by the Invisible Society. A society that she spoke of with disgust.

It was a direct result of what that worm had done to her. By forcing her to climax in the presence of a growling dog he had rewired her child brain to connect sex with fearful circumstances. As an adult she needed danger to get the same high. So she had taken risks with her sex life. Putting her life in danger to get back the sexual high that had been forced upon her as an innocent child.

I went and stood over Olivia and gazed down at her. She was lying with her eyes closed, her face blank of all expression. Completely oblivious to what was happening around her.

My chest rose and fell with every breath I took. I experienced a strong desire to rest my cheek on top of her golden head. I was still staring at her with a mixture of longing and pity when it hit me. I had been so shocked and horrified by what the gardener had done I had missed it. Completely. I turned toward her.

‘Where is the white owl, Olivia?’

And she began to shiver with absolute terror. And I knew then that whoever the white owl was, he or she was not the gardener. The little girl’s fear was such that once again she was in danger of being ripped out of her trance.

‘That’s all right, Olivia. You’ve done well. You can go to your safe place now. I want you to remember a happy memory. Can you do that?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, warmth flowing back into her voice, and recalled a picnic with her mother.

I brought her out with the instruction to forget everything except the picnic.

She turned and smiled at me. ‘I feel really good.’

Suddenly I felt so depressed that I could barely move. All over the world other children were being abused and irreparably damaged. ‘That’s great,’ I said and left the room.

She came out slowly. ‘Is everything all right? Did something happen?’

I turned away from the window and smiled. ‘Everything is just fine.’

She walked toward the couch and sat on it.

I didn’t plan it. I had not even thought of it. One moment she was sitting on my couch and the next she had lifted her skirt, showed me her bare blonde pussy and said, ‘Fuck me if you dare.’

And before I knew it I had stridden over to her. I was sitting on the edge of the sofa pulling my dick out of my underpants while she was upside down. Her cheek was resting on my floor close to my shoe, her elbows were bent, her palms were flat on the floor, and her legs were splayed open like a pair of scissors. I held onto her hips and plunged into her like a mad bull. The thrusts into her slender body were fierce, relentless and full of tension. Perhaps I was exorcising my demons, but her tight inner muscles recognized nothing but pleasure. They began to spasm and cramp violently as her body contorted with her orgasm. I didn’t wait a second longer.

With a grunt I let myself explode inside her.

I pulled her up and rested her so she was lying face down across my thighs, and slumped back, exhausted. I closed my eyes, my hand absently stroking the smooth curve of her buttocks as both our pulses and breathing returned to normal.

‘I’m hungry. Aren’t you ever going to feed me anything but cock and semen?’ she teased.

I couldn’t show her how disturbed I was. I had to be normal. I opened my eyes and smiled down at her. ‘What would you like to eat?’

‘I’d like to go out to a place where they serve cocktails in jam jars. Do you know such a place?’

‘I do indeed.’ And I couldn’t resist slipping a finger into her lovely pussy.

She giggled.

My finger was still inside her when we were interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing. She jumped guiltily. ‘That will be Ivana. I had better not take it, I don’t want to lie to her about where I am or who I am with.’ She bit her lip. ‘She doesn’t know about us.’

My gut constricted! I pulled my finger out of her and she sat up and pulled her skirt down over her hips. My first instinct was to shout, Don’t tell her, don’t tell anyone yet. There’s so much still behind the veil.

My horror must have shown on my face.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said with a small smile. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone. I know what they would do. They would disapprove and try to stop me from seeing you.’

I felt relief pour into my gut. Like a condemned man who is given one more day. I knew the reprieve would be short-lived and I had to get to the bottom of the white owl before anyone found out about us. We were not being discreet. Something told me I had very little time left.

I took her to Carambas and like a lovesick fool watched her eat and drink many margaritas. I knew other men were looking at her with desire. She was the cool ice-queen. So unknowable. So mysterious.

My hands went around her waist, possessively, pulling her to me. She was mine. She laughed and pulled me to the small dance floor where we bumped hips and pretended to do the samba and the merengue and the rumba. She was light and it was easy to carry her really high and swing her around my waist or pass her between my legs. She seemed so happy creating hard-on’s that she would have to pay for later. I looked into her flushed face and her shining eyes were silvery and I wished it could always be like that.

She smoothed the fabric of her skirt and I remembered the first time she did that. When Beryl had engineered us into having tea in my office. Then I had watched her hands, white and fragile, and struggled with the intense desire to cover them with my own, to protect her from all the demons of her past. Now I reached forward and placed my hands over hers. They were so small they disappeared completely underneath mine.

She looked up surprised. ‘What?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

A young girl, possibly still in her teens came up to our table. She was pretty much wasted. ‘You’re Lady O, aren’t you?’ she shouted above the music.

I felt a tremor of fear run through Olivia. She turned to me like a child. I smiled reassuringly as if I were her parent.

She turned to the girl. ‘Yes, I guess I am,’ she said.

The girl said. ‘I’m so glad you’re OK. After the accident, I mean.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh and I really liked that green dress you wore to the Ascot races last year.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Ok then byeeeee,’ the girl called as she was pulled away to the dance floor by one of her friends.

Olivia turned to me.

‘You did brilliant,’ I encouraged.

She smiled.

And WHOA sunlight suddenly burst into my heart. I was shocked by the intensity and force of the sensation and I think I made up my mind then. I was going to destroy all the records. I was never going to tell her about the abuse or the Invisible Society. Her brain had hidden it away for a reason. She was happy. She was no longer that person. Why bring it back? I helped Maria to remember and where did it get her? In the middle of a bonfire, that’s where.

Perhaps it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Let the white owl remain in the past. Perhaps the white owl didn’t even exist anymore. Perhaps it was even a figment of the other Olivia’s imagination.