I often consider whether I might exchange my degree for an underwater dome in Atlantis, a mug of hot leaf Juice and an anthology on the misadventures of cats. We recommend that you read chronologically, as the back-and-forth might be jarring and parts of the climax seen in the first chapter will seem unclear. Silence popped into my head, as an echo of every child we see on the news, at the centre of abuse allegations. They are the imagined *what if* in the gaps where we try to empathise with the real child. As with actual children, you may root for Silence to have a happy ending. We hope for Silence to be happy at the end of Chapter 7. We're planning for it. But, to suddenly erase the ambiguity, lifelong uncertainty and vulnerability told again and again throughout these narratives, would feel like a betrayal.