I’ve never told anyone.  To think about it makes my hands sweat and nausea rise from my stomach.  It happened the year I turned eighteen on a sunny late afternoon in February, on the top floor of a building in Double Bay.  I was recently engaged to be married and the wedding was booked for the end of June.  We had gone to the photographer’s studio to have our engagement photos taken.  The photographer was a good friend of my future brother-in-law.  I had met him several times before and had thought of him as old, as my parents seemed to be old, but he can’t in those days have been more than fifty.  He was tiny like a jockey, his trademark cravat tied at the neck beneath a tailored shirt.  His accent, foreign but very English.  His shirt covered the numbers branded on his arm – a childhood survivor of the holocaust.  Continue reading →