EVERY TIME ANYONE asks me how I came to Australia, I tell them I was adopted from China. It’s a story that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable. It’s a story that doesn’t draw pitying looks. It’s a story that doesn’t make me look like a freak. Or a victim.

Three years after I came to Australia, my best friend and I were sitting in my room, drinking wine and talking through the night. Nearing dawn, she said: ‘One afternoon, when I was in middle school, I was walking home from soccer practice and passed an abandoned tunnel. Someone leaped out of it and dragged me inside…’