For twenty years, I had believed I was the adored, and only, daughter of James and Susan Darroway. Upstanding, law abiding citizens in well-paid professions, who idolised me. 

My name is Sienna and I had a wonderful childhood....except for the nightmares. Or night-terrors, as they were medically refered to. I had been plagued with them from an early age.  

In hind-sight, I suppose that was why my parents had given me every toy or gadget in the  top ten best-sellers of the time.  They had showered me with outfits and accessories that made the few friends I had, envy me,  my enemies hate me, and some of the boys fancy me.  I went on all-inclusive holidays to the most exotic locations.  I was given elaborate birthday parties, even though hardly anyone came to them.  All in all, I had had a priviledged up-bringing.  Except, as I've already said, for those nightmares.

Terrifying creatures with huge teeth and claws chased me as I'd tried to outrun them in a dark substance akin to molasses... thick, sticky and unyielding.  Indescribable horrors, of neither flesh or bone, tore and pulled at my clothes, my hair...my soul.  And somewhere, always in the shadows, was a figure.  A tall, masculine, powerful figure.  I never knew whether to run to, or flee from him.  He was always present.  Never helping or hindering me in my attempts to escape the abhorrent creatures that mercilessly hounded me,  he was just...there.  Then a name.  Vittorio.  Was it that man's name?  I didn't think so, but I never saw another man.  "Vittorio, Vittorio, Vittorio..." I could hear it in my head sometimes even after I woke.

I would wake, screaming, drenched in sweat.  Mum and dad would run into my room every time to try and comfort me.  They would hold me, rock me, sing to me, all to calm me down.  It sometimes worked, in the earlier years anyway.  As I grew older though, and the nightmares intensified, they sought professional help for me.  I had attended sleep clinics, psychiatrists (they kept that quiet in their circle of well-to-do friends), hypnotists even a priest (though we weren't Catholic) all in vain attempts to find a cure for my over-wrought, increasingly sinister, subconscious.

And then, two days after my twentieth birthday, I had yet another nightmare to contend with.  I had just been informed by Ian Carter, the family solicitor, over the telephone, that my parents had been killed in a car accident.  Dreadful enough, you might think, but he had yet another blow to deal me. 

I had been adopted when I was three months old.