I’m a big fan of labels, but I like to get there first. If caught in one of my rare, gentler moods, I’d say I’m a bit of a black sheep, the odd one out; perhaps, if I was feeling particularly kind, a gifted free spirit. But otherwise, and to most, I’m a curse, a weirdo, an aberration, a freak. Actually, that last label was lovingly applied by my stepfather. Freak. Of course, I remember well the first time that it happened. I was eight years old and playing in the yard at the back of our house. My mother had brought us three baby rabbits, one each for me and my sisters, as an early Easter treat. They each had mottled brown fur and could only be told apart by the thumbprint sized white spots which appeared at random on their tiny, warm bodies. I christened mine Lucy, as I had spent the weeks before the event absorbed nightly in the adventures of the Pevensie children, and Lucy’s spot fell on her right flank, somewhere between her fragile hind leg and spine. I don’t remember the names of the others as we never spoke about them again after that afternoon. We were excited, but the rabbits were, with hindsight, petrified and kept running away from the grasping hands of my sisters and me. We were impatient for their attention, for them to do as they were told, but they wouldn’t obey our childish directions. My youngest sister, Susie, was quick to frustrate and had started to cry, so I willed them to stop moving. And they did. Just like that. There they were: lifeless on the just-cut grass. Susie’s tears turned quickly into a torrent which drew my stepfather out into the yard to discover what was disturbing his afternoon in front of the TV. I was in shock, I hadn’t meant it to go that far, and that first time had taken a lot out of me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying for the ringing in my ears, but my sisters told it as it happened, and then it came: I was a freak.