The escape

and

The escape…in the mirror

Prolog

When I was a little girl, I dreamt of finding the true big love. I thought, I would have a family, such as ours was, with an affectionate husband, a few children, a house and a garden in which the dogs romped around during a nice summer’s day and everyone having fun.

When I, Bette Porter, was a child, my big sister Kit took me with her to her performances sometimes. I stood beneath the gigantic stage, watching her up there and I always thought, ‘That’s my sister and I am so proud of her!’ I always wanted to become like her, she was my big role model. She was strong and had a miraculous voice and all the people admired her for what she did. She gave, without even knowing it, courage to so many people to believe in themselves and to trust in the fact that you can reach everything, whatever you are dreaming of, if you just want it strong enough.

When Mom died it soon became clear to me that I was the woman to take care in the house now, because Kit was on the move a lot and Daddy needed me all the more. At that time I had learned what it meant to be strong and before I even understood what happened there with me, I had already grown up, my life firmly controlled, owning an art gallery and trying to find my luck in quite a lot of hopeless women’s relationships. Well, now this sounds so easy, but it was not at all. I also had relationships with some men, but they were unfulfilled, I always knew that there was something missing for me. So I did what Bette Porter had already learned back then: ‘If something is uneasy for you, then change the cause!’ When I had fallen in love then with a woman and had experienced my first rather pitiful trials with contact and relationship and erotic attempts, I knew what had released the uneasiness. So I did not experiment too long, after all I knew what I wanted. Well, until … I had just turned 34 and had ended my relationship with Alice and we were best friends, however …