here, or you don’t know what will happen - murder, madness or worse, mysticism. I won’t be held responsible for anything that might happen. Now pop it off and I’ll get some cream for that sore on your lip.’

That night Susan supped with her new host, bathed again and went to bed with her stomach in knots. For the first time since leaving England she was terribly homesick. These were not her people (but which people were hers?) and she wasn’t due to go up to great Aunt June for a whole month. Calcutta - why did everyone call it Cal? - was hideous: hot, dusty, dirty and crowded. Kind Mrs Lewis, who deep down Susan guessed wasn’t kind at all, had hinted at her innocence, and questioned her virginity.

No one in Hertfordshire ever talked about sex. It was all around of course, in church baptisms and lambing but no one would have discussed it outright. In Hertfordshire they talked of local politics and farmers, occasionally books. Her sex was her own private business - she had begun her periods late and though she knew what it was, she froze at the thought of masturbation.

She had once found rude pictures of a naked couple in an old barn on the adjoining farm and for a minute

had poured over them with a horrified pleasure. In one picture a man was sucking on a woman’s breast, which was exactly what the lambs did. She must have been about twelve then and the vague wave of arousal that most definitely travelled up through her body and made her fanny pulse - she had crushed it down, not knowing what to do with it.

Still she had turned the page to find a woman sucking on a man’s penis and this had made her sit up in a horrified fascination as if she had witnessed a crime. She’d rubbed her twelve-year old fanny into the hay bale she was sitting on but the straw had scratched her and there was surprising pleasure mixed with a little pain but she found if she pressed it further into the bale the pain disappeared and there was only pleasure. She pressed and rubbed further until the bale and her dress were wet and that frightened her so much she stopped. The whole experience was overwhelming.

When a week later she began her first period she had put the two together and was terrified she had injured herself. It was a couple of years before she had fingered herself again - at a friend’s house at night after a birthday party, in a bed that wasn’t hers - but again, she found it an overwhelming experience and stopped