11 Birth
London, March 1972
Things with Mrs Marika had not been the same since the baby’s birth, and Nefeli wondered sometimes what she had done to upset her. In Nefeli’s mind it had all started on the day she had come back from her compulsory counselling session feeling disturbed and drained. The woman had tried to appear friendly, but Nefeli had felt grilled. She was asking her all sorts of strange questions. What was her relationship with her parents like? what was her childhood like? had she been abused? (she had had to explain to her what she meant by that), and what was the first time she had s*x like? Nefeli had given her the official story.
‘My parents were happily married, but poor’, she told her. ‘I always felt that my horizons were restricted at home, but they wanted the best
