"It was much the same with me." Philomena said sympathetically. "My--my husband. He was twenty when I first met him and I was eight. I was told that he would marry me one day and that was the end of it. I only remember thinking about how old he was, but...you know how you are as a child. I was still rather convinced that I wanted to marry my father when I was eight. It's so innocent, then, all of it. I wish it never became anything else."
Philomena signed and put her hand over Rita's. She was wearing gloves today, long satin opera gloves that looked quite fitting over her slender arms, but which also served the duel purpose of hiding the deep purple finger-mark bruises along her own wrists.
"I don't...want to sit here and weep about how helpless I am, Rita, because I'm not. I could leave--I should leave him but I'm so worried about the kind of shame that that would bring on me and my family. He'll make it into something terrible to cover for what he does to me. I'm sure he'll make me out to be some...whore or--or worse."
He could accuse her of being a Death Eater. Her family was certainly the type that this kind of behaviour would be accepted in, and with everything that was going on she was certain he could manage to have her put away for it, like a modern day witch trial.