I realize something. I haven't had a single flashback or panic attack since I stepped inside the house. It's so cut off from the outside world, so cocooned, I feel utterly safe. A line from my favorite movie floats into my head. The quietness and the proud look of it. Nothing very bad could happen to you there.

That feeling I used to have of playing to an invisible audience has been replaced by the consciousness, the ever-presence, of Edward's discerning eye; a sense that the house and I are now part of one indivisible mise-en-scène. I feel my life becoming more considered, more beautiful, knowing that he considers it. But for that very reason, it becomes increasingly hard to engage with the world beyond these walls, the world where chaos and ugliness reign.

Oh, hasn't he told you? The ones before. None of them last, you see. That's the whole point.

But I know he loves me. I know he needs our games, that they answer some deep-seated hunger in him.

All these men who loved Emma, I think. For all her problems, men were fixated on her. Will anyone ever feel like that about me?

I feel a thrill of excitement at this first tiny glimpse of self-revelation, of intimacy.