So, my coat wrapped tightly around me and my woolly scarf tied high under my chin, I made my way out into the street. Evening was falling already; the trees poked their bare branches up against a slate-grey sky and the pavement was slick with drizzle. I could go home for a bit, I thought, put a load of washing on and do some much-needed hoovering, getting rid of the specks of cat litter that Frazzle somehow managed to spread throughout the house. Or I could go and sit in a coffee shop somewhere and catch up on my social media. But neither idea appealed.
I had a horrible sense of foreboding – a feeling that, again, my life was about to change – and it made me restless. Worry about Maurice, about Joe, about what Shirley and Fabian might be discussing, niggled at my brain. Head down, I strode down the high street towards the park. I’d go for a walk, get some fresh air, and when I returned for the last couple of hours of my shift Drew might have gleaned some useful gossip.
I was so deep in thought that I heard the sound of footsteps hurrying towards me only when they were right at my back, and then I jumped and actually let out a little shriek of alarm.
‘Sorry, Alice! Oh my God, I didn’t mean to scare you. Did you think I was a mugger?’
Archie was wrapped up against the cold too, in a dark green down jacket, a blue knitted beanie pulled down low over his forehead. It matched his eyes.
‘No, not exactly. I was just miles away. Having a bit of a shocker of a day and I guess I was thinking about stuff.’
‘Like whether you can play a Z on that double letter square?’
I laughed. ‘Not even that. Are you taking a break too?’
‘Yeah. No bugger ever seems to want to buy craft beer and artisan gin at four in the afternoon. I can’t think why. So I normally close the shop for an hour or so in the afternoons, have a break, and then get back for the evening rush.’
‘I was going to walk round the park a bit. It’s bloody miserable but I needed to get out.’
‘Mind if I join you?’
I shook my head, and he fell into step next to me, our shoulders almost touching. Joe’s height and long legs meant I always had to hurry to keep pace with him, but Archie’s strides matched mine like we’d been choreographed.
We turned into the park and, not speaking, took the path that led to the top of the hill – the same hill I used to labour up, far behind Joe, when we were still able to go to Parkrun together every Saturday, before my weekends became consumed by the demands of the Nag’s Head.
That felt like a lifetime ago, but the hill clearly hadn’t got the memo – it was as steep as ever. Our steps slowed and I heard Archie’s breath coming faster next to me, just as I knew mine was.
‘God, I’m so unfit,’ he said. ‘You’d think lugging crates of bottles around all day would be enough exercise to keep you going, but…’
‘It’s not, is it? Nor’s dashing around with trays full of glasses, apparently.’
Still, we made it to the top and stopped there, chests heaving, huddled into our coats against the biting wind. Up here, we could see a gap in the clouds, where the relentless dull grey gave way, like a blanket that had worn to pieces, letting bright slashes of crimson and gold show through.
Normally, we’d have been sharing the space with dog-walkers, joggers, mothers hurrying their kids home from the playground, groups of youths chatting or listening to music or smoking weed. But now, on this miserable winter evening, the park was deserted.
Below us, the distant lights of central London gleamed almost as brightly as the setting sun.
Archie took out his phone and tapped the screen a few times, then tilted it to show me. He’d taken a panorama photo of the view.
‘No filter needed, right?’
‘Is that going to go on your Insta? Hashtag no filter?’
He laughed. ‘Probably. I try and keep the account active for the business, you know, building engagement and all that. Talking about how amazing the local area is. Because it is, isn’t it?’
I nodded in agreement. But the truth was, when Joe and I had first moved to south-east London, we’d literally just gone online, searched for two-bedroom flats we could afford, ruled out anywhere that was too far out of town and too obviously dubious, and ended up here. And in the intervening months, we’d found a couple of restaurants we liked, decided Sainsbury’s was a better bet than Tesco, discovered the farmers’ market and the now-closed Star and Garter, and not given much more thought to the place we’d made our home.
Then, it had just been a place to live, with our real lives taking place among those tall, sparkling towers in the City.
It was only since I’d been working in the pub that I’d started to understand the area, to get to grips with its character, the layers of wealth and poverty, the fabric of people that somehow held it all together.
‘I wanted to be a photographer,’ Archie was saying. ‘I did a course at college and everything. But you’ve got to basically work for nothing while you build up a portfolio, and contacts and stuff, and it all just felt too uncertain. I wanted to be earning a proper living.’
‘And you are, now?’
He laughed. ‘God, no. Now I’ve got a grant from the council and some investment from Uncle Ray and a massive bank loan and I’ll be lucky if Craft Fever breaks even next year. But I feel like I’m finally following a dream, even if it’s a different one from what I used to have. Know what I mean?’
‘I never had a dream,’ I admitted. ‘I did a law course because it felt so kind of responsible and sensible. Like, that’s what ambitious people do. People who want to live proper lives that end up with a mortgage and two kids and holidays abroad and good shoes. I guess I assumed that was where I’d end up. But I never yearned for it, if you know what I mean.’
‘And the Nag’s Head? Running a pub? Is that your dream come true?’
‘Not really. But it makes me feel… connected, somehow. To all this.’ I gestured around us to the park, the quietly glowing streets beyond, the deserted children’s playground and outdoor exercise equipment. ‘Working in the City felt remote from everything. At least it seemed that way to me. Like what I was doing had nothing to do with people’s real lives. Not even mine.’
My stomach lurched as I remembered Maurice, and I realised that emails and files and precedents, long hours of conferences and, eventually, which side of the bed a judge had got out of in the morning would have a huge, make-or-break impact on his brother’s life.
‘Maybe I just ended up in the wrong specialism,’ I finished lamely.
‘Come on,’ Archie said. ‘View like this, we need a selfie, right? Before the light goes completely.’
We turned around, so the view was behind us and we were looking down into darkness. He put his arm around my shoulder and, after a moment’s hesitation, I put mine around his waist. The warmth of his body, so close to mine, made me realise how cold I’d got, standing there talking.
He tapped his phone’s screen a few times and I saw our faces come into focus, lit from the front but also silhouetted against the last streaks of brilliant colour in the sky behind us. He even managed to get the twinkling lights on the horizon below.
‘Ready?’
I smiled. ‘You’re good at this.’
Archie pressed the shutter button a few times, and I tried not to mind that my mascara had smudged and my nose was all red and shiny from the cold.
‘All done,’ he said. ‘Back to work now, right?’
‘Back to work.’
And then, to my surprise, we were suddenly enfolded in a hug that might only have lasted a few seconds but seemed to go on for the longest time.
Twenty-One
Before I got out of the taxi, I said, ‘Thank you,’ to Gordon.
As soon as the words left my mouth, I hated myself for them. But there was no taking them back. Mum and Dad’s dutiful, compliant daughter, the girl who’d been brought up to be polite and respectful always, the trainee lawyer who wanted her senior colleagues to like her, said tha
t. The drunk, frightened woman, the person who had just had something happen to her that she didn’t fully understand, was silent.
I grabbed my bag and stumbled out of the cab. I stood for a few moments by the front door, fumbling with my keys. Perhaps Gordon didn’t want the car to leave until he could see I was safely back inside – but there was no way I was opening that door until I was sure he’d gone.
He must have given up before I did, and I must have got myself inside somehow, because the next thing I remember about that night was waking up, still in the middle of it. My phone – which, thanks to that instinct for self-preservation that had deserted me entirely earlier, I’d remembered to plug in to charge – told me it was quarter to five in the morning. Before I could sort through my memories of the previous night – which were only just beginning to come back to me – I realised with a rush of horrible urgency that I was going to be sick.
I was still dressed, even still wearing one of my shoes, and I just made it to the bathroom. I flung myself down on the floor and spewed and spewed, wishing I could die and end my misery but knowing I couldn’t. Knowing that, somehow, I was not only going to have to survive that night but also get dressed, go to work, see Gordon.
When the worst of the nausea had passed, the horror descended on me. There was no relief from having been sick – it was like I’d moved from one circle of hell to another.
What had I done? How had I allowed that to happen? What had even happened?
I clutched the toilet bowl and moaned out loud. Then I heard a tap on the door and, without waiting for a reply, Heather came in.
‘Jesus Christ, Alice. Are you okay? I heard you crashing around everywhere when you came in. It sounded like you were totally spangled.’
‘I was. I think I still am. I legit want to die. Could you ring the local vet or something and have me put out of my misery?’
She laughed. ‘Come on, let’s get you sorted out. Have you finished vomming, do you reckon?’
‘Not sure.’ But I answered my own question when I felt a fresh rush of sickness and threw myself over the loo again. I felt Heather’s warm, gentle hands holding my hair back from my face.
‘Fucking hell,’ she said once I was done, passing me a glass of water from the tap, ‘you must’ve given it some, for a school night. Who were you out with?’
I sipped and spat, flushed the toilet and wiped my face. Then I stood unsteadily, realised it was a bad idea and sank back down onto the blissfully cool tiles.
‘Gordon.’
‘Your head of department?’
I nodded miserably.
‘God, Alice. So you not only went out and got bladdered, you went out and got bladdered with a senior partner? Who else was there?’
She wrung out a washcloth in cold water and passed it to me and I pressed it to my face.
‘No one,’ I said, the flannel muffling my voice. ‘Just me and him.’
‘Just you and… Are you sure that was a good idea? I mean, clearly it wasn’t, but…’
I started to cry.
‘Alice!’ Heather squatted down next to me and put her arms round me. ‘Come on. It’ll be okay. Did you make a tit of yourself?’
I pressed my face, damp flannel and all, into Heather’s shoulder, and sobbed. I cried for a long time, while she stroked my hair and patted my back and shushed me, kindly ignoring the fact that I must have absolutely stunk of booze and worse. At last, I moved away from her, blew my nose and looked at her.
The expression on my friend’s face had changed. Before, she’d been amused, even a bit annoyed with me for being an idiot, as well as concerned. Now, there was something else in her face – a hardness, almost anger.
‘Alice? What did he do? What happened?’
‘Nothing. He took me to his club for dinner and we drank all the booze and I got shitfaced. It was stupid of me – and unprofessional. And now I have to face him at work later, and for the next six months until I can move to another department.’
She met my eyes, and I could see the lawyer she’d become one day – a woman with an unerring ability to detect bullshit.
‘What happened afterwards? After you left his club?’
‘We – I got a taxi home.’
‘Just you? Or you and him together?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. Seriously.’
‘Seriously,’ she said, ‘something’s happened to you. This isn’t just beer fear. Come on, you can talk to me.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I insisted.
‘About what? About what happened on the way home?’
‘Yes. No. Nothing happened.’
‘Alice. Come on. Something did.’
‘Heather, please. Just leave me alone, okay?’
Reluctantly, she stood up. ‘There’s no point going back to bed now. We may as well get ready for work. Why don’t you have a shower and I’ll put some coffee on, and we’ll see if you can drink it without puking again. And take a couple of paracetamol.’
‘If I can without puking?’
‘Yeah.’ She hugged me again, and I felt fresh tears threaten to fall.
In the shower, it was hard to tell what was hot water running down my face and what was tears. I could taste them in my throat, along with the acrid sourness of vomit, which even cleaning my teeth over and over hadn’t managed to dispel. I scrubbed my body from top to bottom, over and over again, like Gordon had somehow marked me, with fingerprints or the faint smell of dry-cleaning chemicals I’d noticed clinging to his suit when he’d been close to me in the taxi – so, so close; so much bigger than me and stronger and more powerful in ways that had nothing to do with his physical size.
I felt like nothing – no amount of lime shower gel or deodorant or the Flowerbomb perfume I sprayed on – could make me feel clean. I felt like the heavy mask of foundation and concealer I applied couldn’t hide the shame in my face. I felt like even through my drab charcoal suit and slightly crumpled white blouse (I’d been going to catch up on my ironing the previous night, I remembered, but that hadn’t happened; the Alice who’d planned a quiet evening and early bed was like a girl from another world) everyone would be able to see the parts of me that Gordon had touched.
I put my slippers on over my nude tights and went through to the kitchen, soaked in misery.
Heather was leaning against the counter, drinking coffee and picking at a plate of sliced ham and avocado. Low-carbing was her thing at the time; she’d read somewhere that it helped keep her energy levels up.
‘Coffee? Orange juice? Tea?’ she offered.
I shook my head, a fresh surge of nausea threatening to overwhelm me. She poured water from the tap into a glass and handed it to me, wrapping my cold hand around the glass with her warm, dry one.
‘He hit on you, didn’t he?’
I shook my head. Then, deep inside my mind, an idea surfaced. Maybe that was all that happened. A bit of minor flirtation with a senior colleague over dinner, with drink taken. A tiny bit beyond what was appropriate, but no more than that. Nothing to be ashamed of; nothing to end a career over.
I said, ‘Yeah, kind of. A bit. I encouraged it, I suppose. He was nice to me.’
‘Nice? People don’t come home spewing and crying after an evening with a senior partner who’s being nice. Cop on, Alice.’
Her words might have been harsh, but her voice was gentle and her face full of concern.
I forced myself to meet her eyes and I said, ‘Okay. In the taxi on the way home, he groped me. Worse than groped.’
‘Oh shit,’ Heather whispered. ‘He didn’t – he didn’t rape you? Did he?’
I shook my head. There it was – less than rape but more than groping. And now someone else knew. Even though it was Heather, my best friend, who I loved and trusted implicitly, I felt a fresh tide of shame and panic rising in my throat.
‘Alice,’ she said. ‘You should go to the police. You know that.’
‘Heath, there’s no fucking way I am
going to do that. No way on earth.’
We stood there silently for a minute in the warm, quiet kitchen, the first rays of the morning sun spilling through the window. I knew what Heather was thinking, because it was the same thing I was thinking. If I reported this, it would go nowhere. Gordon was powerful. He was rich. He was well respected. Maybe a police officer would interview him, and he’d say it was just a drunken fumble between two contenting adults. I’d led him on, he’d say. And all I’d have to counter that would be my increasingly shattered memory of the night, and the phrase that still ran tauntingly through my brain: handsy in taxis. And in the vanishingly unlikely event that the police did decide to prosecute and it went to trial, what then? There’d be witnesses: the staff at Gordon’s club, who he’d tipped lavishly over the years, who’d seen me happy, laughing, eating and drinking with him.
His word against mine. That was all there was. That and the central principle of criminal justice: innocent until proven guilty.
‘HR, then,’ Heather said. ‘Go and see them today. You could take a union rep with you.’
I shook my head. ‘Heather, I’ve been a trainee at that firm for less than two months. He’s a senior partner. Whose career is going to end over this?’
‘His. His fucking should. That filthy bastard.’
‘I’m not going to, Heath. I’m just not. I can’t.’
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself. I could feel my shoulders shaking, even though it wasn’t cold.
‘I understand, Alice. I do, honest. But just think about it. It doesn’t have to be today. You’ve done nothing wrong. People will support you. You know it won’t be just you, right? There’ll have been other women he’s done this to, in the past. And…’
She stopped, but I knew what she’d been going to say. And in the future. Other women who I’d be putting at risk through my silence. I said, ‘It’s almost seven. We should get to work.’
I turned away, blinded by tears again, and hurried to my bedroom to finish getting ready. It wasn’t until I arrived in the office and one of my fellow trainees, a tall, lanky man with a kind face, took me aside and told me, that I realised I’d put on one black and one navy shoe by mistake.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 19
