“When your new lover has scars you can’t help but wonder. When your past means you recognise them as healed cigarette burns, there’s a great desire to know more. How did she get mixed up with someone like that? Who was it? Why had they done that? Why had she let them? I stopped abruptly at this last point and chastised myself for assuming everyone is as capable of defending themselves as I am. The fact I can disable a person of any size with a few well-placed jabs of a finger or thumb makes me the exception, not the rule.”
My short story “Patching Things Up” is now available in Woman Friendly from Xcite Books also available on Kindle from Amazon.