I, Tina Kennard, grew up in a small place in North Carolina. I graduated from High school with flying colors and got a job as a leader of the developing department of a media society in Alphaville. Here I also got to know Eric. He was a media lawyer and a big art lover and art collector.

One night he took me to this art opening at the Bette Porter Gallery. So I called my friend Alice who told me the way, because Eric was still on his way and wanted to meet me directly there, and that she would be glad about the fact that I would finally get to know her ex Bette then. Anyway. She had this amazing reputation for picking all the great artists. And she was smart, and tough. And unbelievably beautiful. So then, Eric and I got invited to one of her artist dinners, and, her artist dinners were really, really famous. There were… … all these people there form Paris and New York. Some celebrated intellectual, you know, some big shot critic. It was, uh, intimidating. But she was so… warm, and gracious. And then, um… And then the earring thing happened. Okay. So then, that night I go home and I realize… I left the earring at her gallery even though I could have sworn that I put it back on my ear. Call it fate. I call it destiny. I immediately went back to the gallery that night, because I knew that she still had to be there, and that I would have the best chances to get my earring back that way. Of course she had already found it and when she wanted to give it to me … our hands touched, then such an incredibly strong feeling ran through me, such a lot of warmth and my heart was fulfilled by so many unusual feelings, with the songs of angels and wild pictures, that I knew, there was something happening with me and it was so big that it let everything fade what had meaning for me so far.

And then she kissed me, quite natural and it was the most incredible kiss of my life. From then on I knew, that this woman, whoever she was, whatever would happen, whoever I was, that this woman had changed my life.

I split up with Eric and soon afterwards moved in together with Bette. We told each other about our childhood dream and quickly realized that we could also have all that together and wanted it. As everything went quite well with us, we decided to found a family. However, it was anything but easy for at that time. I had problems to become pregnant and Bette was put under pressure very much by her job.

Then I had the miscarriage as well and for both of us the world broke down. I have tried to keep my grief away from Bette, because I felt, how much she suffered from it.

And then one day she went away, she simply broke out of our life. She had probably seen no other way out than the escape? And who was I …

The escape…in the mirror?