What You Did

by Claire McGowan

  ‘I do,’ I sobbed, wishing the opposite was true, that I was able to soldier on, instead of drafting in old crushes and my estranged mother to help prop me up.

  ‘Well, I’m here to give it,’ she said, in the same resolute tone. ‘It’s what I’m here for. So no more thanks. If anything, I should be thanking you, for the chance to know your children. They are – a credit to you.’

  So many more things I could have said, like why had she let our contact lapse, why hadn’t she chased me down, so I could have spilled out how angry I was with her. But it was too late, and so I just cried some more, and for a brief second she squeezed both of my arms with her bony hands. The closest she came to hugs. ‘You’ll be alright, Alison. I raised you that way.’

  I made an excuse to go out not long after that, uncomfortable with the rawness of feeling in the house, and left Benji watching The Lego Movie while my mother polished glasses that didn’t need it. It was a relief to throw myself into the shopping mall, the blur of faces, the cold sterile air, the tinny inoffensive music. I was queuing in Debenham’s with some modest checked pyjamas for Cassie when I saw them. A family, choosing kids’ clothes. The mother, the father, a baby in a buggy and a little girl of around three. I blinked and it was Julie Dean. I remembered her weeping and bruised in the police station, but here she was glowing with happiness, her laugh high and unfettered as mine hadn’t been in years. The man beside her settled a heavy arm over her shoulder. It was him. The husband, the one who’d attacked the refuge, sending women and kids screaming into the night. Got Julie by her throat against the wall. Brought a knife. He looked like a nice guy. Maybe you never did know.

  Julie caught my eye as I looked over, clutching the flannel of Cassie’s pyjamas in my hands, and she turned away, into her husband’s embrace.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Cassie was awake. I could see the peep of blue under her heavy, bruised eyelids, and as I went in, laden with clothes and flowers and treats, anything I could buy her instead of what she needed, she gave me the same look of shame my mother had.

  ‘Oh darling.’ I went to her, wanting to crush her in my arms, but there were too many tubes. I stroked her greasy hair from her face.

  ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was small, raspy from the stomach-pumping.

  ‘It’s alright.’ I wasn’t going to say how scared I’d been, or beg her not to do it again. I needed her to feel safe, not judged and ashamed. I knew now that shame could corrode a life right down to the bones.

  ‘I was just – I felt so alone. I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened? I mean – the night of the party?’ I felt her tense, and knew I’d got it right. It had been there in front of me – Cassie out of the house at night, her strange avoiding behaviour, the abrupt change in how she dressed – but I hadn’t had the space to see it.

  She sighed, deeply. ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘If you do, I might be able to help.’ Though I could hardly promise that when I’d not fixed anything so far, only made it worse. ‘I’ll try at least. And you might feel less alone.’ Another small sigh. ‘Was it something to do with Aaron?’ A tiny nod, her head shifting under my hands. ‘He made you do something?’

  Through her damaged throat, the words dredged up as if in deep-sea nets, Cassie told me what had happened. One more story of that night, the space of a few hours in which so many things had been broken for ever.

  It had been easy for Cassie to slip out. I’d gone to bed, her father was – preoccupied, and also very drunk, and Benji was fast asleep. A house of adults, full of their own concerns. She’d gone out the back door into the woods, in her flip-flops and pyjamas, a cardigan thrown over them. Aaron had been waiting for her under the trees. It was very dark, the streetlights on the main road hardly penetrating. ‘I was scared,’ Cassie told me, sounding ashamed. ‘I kept thinking about that film, the Blair Witch one. It freaked me out.’ She’d been pleased to see him, glad to get away from whatever strange tensions were in the house, but when she’d tried to tell him about it, her parents’ boring, drunk friends, he’d stopped her words with a heavy kiss. ‘Not even like a kiss,’ she said, trying to work it out. ‘Like he didn’t want me to breathe.’

  I remembered kisses like that. The kind that say, shut up now, silly girl. Then it was all going fast, and his hands were under her pyjamas and he was undoing his jeans and pushing at her. That was how she described it. ‘Sort of pushing, and grabbing, really hard, so it hurt.’ How I wished I’d taken the time to talk to her about sex. Not ‘the talk’, with all the distant biology of it all. About how it should be, that you shouldn’t feel like you were fighting off a mugger or negotiating a contract with someone’s hand down your pants. That it should never hurt, and that your own pleasure mattered. All things I had no idea of at her age. And beyond.

  ‘He made you?’ I asked quietly.

  She screwed up her face. ‘I told him I’d changed my mind. I wasn’t ready. He – he was pissed off.’ I wondered how I would act if I saw Aaron around town, his mother with her pinched lips and Prada handbag. If I’d be able to walk past without grabbing the little bastard.

  ‘Sweetheart, if he made you – if you didn’t want to – you know what that means?’

  She went quiet, and I worried I’d pushed it too far with the feminist lecture. ‘Jake said that too. On the night. He thought I shouldn’t do it.’

  Jake. Trying to protect her, only to stab her father a few days later. I couldn’t make sense of it. ‘So . . . ?’

  She gave a small sigh that turned into a sob. ‘He didn’t make me. But I think that’s why he finished with me. Like, what a cliché, you don’t put out so you get dumped. I guess I like, “led him on” or whatever. I said I was into it.’ She tried to do air quotes, but her hands were tangled in tubes. ‘That’s why I sent the stupid picture. I guess, if it meant I could have him back . . . I’d have done it the next time.’

  And there she was, learning for herself what so many women had learned before her. That sometimes, you’d hide it so well that the man might not even know you hadn’t wanted it. That it was hardest to admit this to yourself of anyone. And I realised what I ought to have known weeks before – I should have taken Karen’s side. No matter who she accused. I knew her and I knew rape and if she had the courage to be that victim, to take on that role, I should have been at her side.

  A thought struck me. ‘Where did Aaron go, after you said no?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was angry, and I was crying. I went back round the side, and by the time I did, Karen was, like, screaming.’

  I tried to add up the time in my head. ‘How long did it take you?’

  She shrugged, as best she could. ‘I was upset. Could have been a few minutes. More maybe.’

  So that meant Aaron had also been around the house that night. Another person we hadn’t known about. Angry, rejected by Cassie. I leaned over to kiss her wan forehead. ‘I have to go now, sweetheart. I’ll back soon, OK?’

  I waited near the school until he came out. He was hard to miss – already over six foot at sixteen, broad-shouldered as a grown man, and the shine of his fair hair in the sun. My hands gripped on the steering wheel. Aaron. The other person who’d been at the house that night, who I hadn’t even thought about. I couldn’t believe I was even considering this – that it could have been Aaron who wandered into the garden, somehow getting there ahead of Cassie, and attacked Karen with no one else seeing him. Surely he was too tall, too broad to be mistaken for Mike. Maybe I was going mad. All the same, everything else about this was mad too. I thought about going to DC Devine, yet again, telling him there was another possible suspect. Even though my current position was that Mike had admitted he’d done it, confessed to me on the night it happened. DC Devine would think I was a lunatic. I thought about it all for a long time, so long the kids had all gone home, and the school gate was deserted. I started the engine, and swung the steering wheel around, away from the school. The sun was in my ey
es, and for a moment I was almost blinded.

  I drove to the police station, finding parking in one of the expensive bays outside. It was one of those annoying machines that you have to text payment to, so I fiddled about with that for a while, growing more and more impatient. Then I dashed inside, and asked to see DC Devine.

  Back in that same room again, the one with the chipped table. Him and me staring at each other. I thought how this man had brought me so much of the worst news of my life, how even if this was all resolved somehow, I would never forget him. But for him I was probably just another member of the public, an annoying one who kept pestering him for updates, changing my story. A woman who’d choose a man over her hurt, abused best friend. He wrote down what I had to say about Aaron being near the house that night, but I could tell he was just humouring me. ‘Don’t you think it’s worth looking into?’

  ‘Mrs Morris. Are you suggesting this lad, Aaron, he might have attacked Ms Rampling?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  He put down his pen and looked at me. His eyes were tired. ‘Mrs Morris. In cases like this, there’s often not a lot of evidence. It makes it hard to convict. But this time – we have Ms Rampling’s injuries. Your friend, Mr Anwar, he saw them on the lawn together. And we’ve had the DNA results back now. The semen – it was from your husband.’

  I hated the clinical way he said that word, semen. ‘But they slept together earlier in the day. Couldn’t it . . .’

  ‘There was no other DNA found. And you yourself said you thought he’d confessed to you.’ He was calm, but I could feel tremors of irritation in him. I didn’t blame him.

  ‘I know. I was just . . . telling you what he said. I don’t know what it meant.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Isn’t it good to know everything that happened? Everyone who was there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll . . . look into this?’

  ‘I’ll speak to Aaron, take a statement.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You should go now, Mrs Morris.’ I stood, clutching my bag, and he said, in a different tone, a kinder, more human one: ‘Ali. I’m really sorry this has happened. No one ever wants to believe it, when it’s them. But – it does happen. You know? It does.’

  I didn’t know what to say, and so I left, feeling deeply ashamed of the person I’d become. Or maybe it was even worse than that. Maybe I’d been like this all along.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘I could stay longer, you know. A few weeks, even. There’s nothing for me at home now. The house is so quiet.’ My mother was folding towels, which she’d taken and washed and hung out on the line, all without me asking. I could have been annoyed at the presumption, but instead I just felt a deep relief that someone else was there to manage things. Minus the slight guilt I’d had when Bill was around, the sense that I would have to pay it back at some point.

  Mum was due to go home the next day. I hadn’t heard a word from Bill since he’d gone. I didn’t even know if he was in the country. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Mike’s parents will be here from France soon, and . . .’

  She nodded, understanding. Our parents had only met once, awkwardly, on the day of our wedding. Mum and Dad stiff and uncomfortable at the swanky hotel ceremony the Morrises had insisted on, Dad asking how much everything had cost, then raising his bushy eyebrows. That’s a terrible waste, Alison.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been up to visit,’ I mumbled, seizing some laundry to avoid looking at her.

  ‘We both said some things when your father passed.’ That was an understatement. My father had died five years before, when Benji was five and Cassie was ten. Karen had come to stay to help Mike – and I could guess now what they’d done while I was gone, with my children and her son asleep in the house at the time.

  It had been a small funeral. Dad and his temper had managed to estrange most of our neighbours in the small, dingy street I’d grown up in, and he’d never really had friends. It was only a few cousins, who’d barely known him, some people from the pub, a few old colleagues. The vicar had said some lies about him, how Dad was a loving family man, quick with a joke or a helping hand. He hadn’t been any of those things.

  After the funeral, helping my mother clear out his sad, worn-out slacks, the jumpers with holes in the neck, the oppressive smell of the house all around me, I’d come across his pipe, resting on the side of the armchair. Where he sat night after night, controlling the TV, shouting if anyone banged a door or talked too loudly. Mum had said something like, he loved that pipe, make sure you don’t break it, and I’d exploded. Said some things – how could she pretend he’d been a good man, after all he’d done. How could she sit there in church as if he hadn’t controlled our lives with his moods and temper, his quick fists. As if he’d never broken her arm, or kicked her when she lay winded on the floor. Never left slap marks on my face, or thrown a full cup of tea at me when it wasn’t to his liking.

  She’d fought back. How dare I, coming back here, turning my nose up at their life, dishonouring my father on the day we put him in the ground. When I stormed out, grabbing my wheelie case and rushing down the street in uncomfortable heels, not caring which of the neighbours saw my angry tears, part of me had felt relief. I didn’t need to go back now, bring Cassie and Benji for awkward visits, watch Benji trip on the death-trap stairs or Cassie’s bafflement at the tinned, sugary food my mother dished out. That part of my life was over.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I shouldn’t have said it. Not then.’

  She waved a hand. ‘Put it behind you, Alison. We need to get you sorted here now.’ She was right – the mess of my recuperating daughter, now out of hospital but refusing to go anywhere or see anyone; my husband, who was set to receive a partial liver transplant in just a few days. He would be receiving it from Jake, and in return for ripping himself open, Jake would likely face a lighter sentence; and if Mike recovered, he would go on trial. Where I would testify and say I thought my husband had raped my best friend, in our garden, while I slept upstairs. I’d say he had confessed the truth to me, because it was the only way to save his life. I’d fought it for so long it felt strangely inevitable. I hadn’t been able to stop any of it, and my efforts had only made things worse. It was time to just give in. I hoped Karen would never hear of my madness the other day, suggesting Aaron might be involved somehow. A last-ditch, desperate attempt. They had Mike’s DNA. I had to face the truth.

  ‘I’ll put the tea on,’ Mum said, and I dimly registered that not long ago I would have winced at this, snapping ‘dinner’ back at her. I’d worked so hard to shed those working-class tells. As she moved into the kitchen, the phone began to ring and I heard her answer it: ‘Morris home.’ I felt a brief stab of gratitude that she was here, that maybe we could salvage something from all this. And if it meant old Ali, working-class Ali, wasn’t gone after all, perhaps it was good. Middle-class Ali hadn’t got a clue, it turned out.

  Mum appeared in the doorway, holding the wireless handset to her chest, looking troubled. ‘It’s a nurse,’ she said.

  ‘Mike?’ I stood up too fast.

  ‘No, in London. Something about a Mrs Mackintosh, having her baby?’

  If Mum hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gone. I had too much to do to keep my own family together, never mind other people’s. But Jodi was my closest friend now Karen hated me, and she’d asked for me. Mum had the house in hand, and knew to make sure Benji ate well and did his homework, to not believe Cassie if she said she was fine or wasn’t hungry. And so I ran to catch the train to London. It was quiet, all the commuters going the other way. Within two hours I was at London Bridge and swapping trains to Waterloo, and then to St Thomas’s Hospital.

  1996

  The first time I lied to the police, I was twenty-one. It was two days after the ball, and I still hadn’t been able to take in Martha’s death. We hadn’t been friends, but she was so alive, so young, and then gone. I think we all str
uggled, especially as everyone was due to go home over the next few days. There was a lot of crying and hugging in the lodge while confused parents stood by with overpacked cars. Mine had heard about it on the news, and my mother had called to say they were coming to get me the next day. No mention of my father’s threats to kick me out, or that he’d slapped me, as was so often the way. Brushed under the carpet.

  I wasn’t even sure the police would interview me. They had a lot to get through, and I think we all had a certain awareness that once we were home for the summer, in our semis in Wales or mansions in Surrey, they wouldn’t be coming after us. Martha had been killed by a stranger, of course. The security had been lacking. Someone must have got in. There was no CCTV in the garden and it would have been possible to climb over the back wall. The ball was so busy, no one would have noticed. None of us mentioned the fact that a stranger not in black tie might have stood out somewhat. So when it was my turn to present myself at the tutor’s office, I didn’t even think twice. I didn’t see it as lying, just as helping out friends. Helping out Mike. And Jodi was doing it for Callum, saying he’d been with her all night, so it couldn’t be that bad. All the same I was sweating as I waited outside, in a strange repetition of admissions interviews. In jeans and a She-Ra T-shirt, I looked very different from the night before. I was just Ali again, and all my problems and longings were there waiting for me like the socks I’d rolled on that morning.

  Bill came out as I waited there. We hadn’t really spoken since the morning after the ball. ‘Hey.’

  He just nodded. ‘They’re asking about Mike and Cal.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Are you going to do it?’ He looked me in the eyes. ‘What he asked?’