Going Too Far

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I think I’d better,’ I muttered, sloshing some into my glass. ‘I certainly need something.’ I shook my head. ‘I just can’t think what got into me.’

  ‘Forget it, I said. Oh, and listen – Josh is taking me out to dinner tonight, can I borrow your pink skirt?’

  ‘My short one? I thought you said it was passé. What happened to all your flowing robes?’

  She went pink. ‘Oh yes, well actually Josh says he likes me best in minis.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘And, let’s face it, who am I really trying to please here?’

  I grinned back. ‘Who indeed?’

  She looked at her watch and jumped up. ‘Must go and have a bath, he’ll be here in a minute, will you dig it out for me then?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She disappeared upstairs.

  I sighed heavily and traced my finger around a knot of wood in the pine table. What did I want to get involved in all this detective malarkey for anyway? What business was it of mine who stole the china – it was for the police to sort out, wasn’t it? I had my baby to think of now, our baby. I couldn’t rush around the country exposing villains. I sipped my wine thoughtfully. I’d go home tomorrow, go and face Nick. Tell him about the baby. Ask him to forgive me. Sort my life out. Go to antenatal classes, decorate the nursery, be normal for a change. I began to feel excited. The little yellow room next to ours would make a great nursery, lots of light. I’d make it beautiful, have a border, ducks and rabbits – no, teddies, pink and blue, just to hedge my bets. Oh, and a mobile, lots of mobiles, and Winnie the Pooh pictures all over the walls.

  Just then the phone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ I screeched upstairs to Pippa, who was running her bath. Nick, it had to be Nick. I’d tell him I was coming home. No, ask him if I could come home. I ran to the hall.

  ‘Hello?’ I said breathlessly.

  ‘Hello, Polly? It’s Lottie.’

  ‘Oh! Hi, Lottie.’ I tried to keep the severe disappointment from my voice.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to track you down for ages. Nick was most elusive when I spoke to him last night, said he hadn’t a clue what you were up to. What’s going on, have you had a row or something?’

  ‘Er, well, yes, a bit. Something like that – sorry, Lotts, I’ve been meaning to ring you but –’

  ‘And how are you feeling? Gosh, I’ve only just heard, you don’t still feel ghastly, do you?’

  I frowned. How the devil did she know?

  ‘Er, not too bad, still feel pretty sick in the mornings actually, but how did you know?’

  ‘In the mornings? What, every morning? How awful! Polly, you must see a doctor. I told Nick and he agreed.’

  ‘Nick?’ I breathed. ‘You told Nick?’

  ‘Well, of course, I thought you would have told him already actually, but he had no idea. Polly, you must go and see someone – it’s not right to feel sick every morning.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I thought it was fairly normal, but – but hang on a minute, Lottie, who told you?’ I stammered.

  ‘Peggy, I ran into her in the street the other day.’

  ‘PEGGY!’ I screeched. ‘How the hell does she know?’

  ‘Well, she saw you leave. She asked me how you were, said she’d never seen anyone in such a terrible state.’

  ‘L-leave where?’ I babbled helplessly, totally at a loss.

  ‘The club, of course, Annabel’s – remember? Tom and I left before you but Peggy said she saw you go.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ I was beginning – slowly – to see the light. ‘Yes, I was pretty drunk that night.’

  ‘Pretty drunk? Peggy said you were unconscious!’

  Well, she would, wouldn’t she, I thought savagely, she probably only drank orange juice, and now she was running around telling tales out of school about me, filtering them back to Nick, no less.

  ‘Well, all right,’ I conceded, ‘paralytic actually.’

  ‘No, Polly, she said you were actually unconscious.’

  I frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, she said you had to be carried out, literally lifted out of the club, by that guy you were with, that film director chappie. Peggy went over to ask if she could help and he said something about you being prone to fainting from tiredness and that you had jet lag or something. She didn’t think anything of it because she doesn’t know you very well, but when she told me I couldn’t believe it! I’ve never known you faint and as for jet lag – where the hell had you been to get that?’

  I sat down heavily on the chair in the hall, trying hard to accommodate all this.

  ‘Are you sure, Lottie?’ I whispered.

  ‘Positive! Peggy said the doorman at Annabel’s helped carry you to a taxi, said he’d seen some pretty plastered people in his time but you really took the biscuit.’

  Christ! I made a mental note not to frequent that particular joint for a while.

  ‘And you’re still feeling sick? Every morning? That’s terrible! You must go for a check-up, really.’

  ‘Oh! Oh er, no – no, that’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, um, nothing really, nothing at all. It’s almost gone now anyway, a bug sort of thing. Tummy bug. Listen, Lottie, I’ve really got to dash now, thanks so much for ringing.’

  ‘Why have you got to dash?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got this – this person coming round, odd-job man – oops – there’s the doorbell now, must be him. Thanks for ringing, Lottie, bye.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Bye!’

  I put the phone down. I stared at the floor. Unconscious. Jesus! Not just a little the worse for wear, a bit tiddly-tight, a trifle woozy, but out for the count. The bastard. The complete and utter bastard. Sally had been right, he was totally unscrupulous, unspeakably vile. What sort of a man would get a girl so disastrously drunk that she couldn’t even speak, let alone stand, then carry her to the nearest hotel and proceed to have his wicked way? I felt physically sick, and this time it was nothing to do with the hormones. This was rape then, wasn’t it? This wasn’t just a drunken one-night stand, this was a ghastly – I sat up straight, my eyes bulged – yes, it was a date rape! God, I’d been date raped!

  I gasped. I clutched my mouth, horror and revulsion rising within me. I managed to stagger to my feet but my legs were like jelly.

  ‘Rape!’ I whispered, gasping for breath and clutching the banisters. All at once I found some air.

  ‘RAPE! R-A-P-E!’ I screeched at the top of my voice.

  There was a great sploosh of water from the landing above me. The bathroom door flew open, hit the wall with a resounding crash and Pippa came hurtling down the stairs, stark naked and streaming with water.

  ‘Where? Where is he? What happened?’ she shrieked, grabbing an umbrella from the stand in the hall and brandishing it wildly.

  ‘Rape!’ I squeaked again, collapsing into the chair and clutching my head. ‘Ooh, Pippa, I’ve been raped!’

  She seized my shoulders. ‘Oh, Polly! Oh my poor darling! Where is he, has he gone?’ She looked around wild-eyed. ‘Which way did he go?’ She flung open the front door and brandished the brolly, clearly ready to pursue him down the street stark naked.

  ‘Oh – no,’ I gasped, ‘not just now, ages ago. It was Sam but I’ve only just found out!’

  Pippa stared at me. She slowly lowered the umbrella. Then she shut the front door. Her jaw slackened.

  ‘Sam?

  ‘Yes, I’ve only just found out, that night in the hotel, he raped me!’

  Pippa put the umbrella back in the stand. She sighed heavily and folded her bare arms against her bare chest. ‘Oh God, Polly, not that again. Is that what you got me out of the bath for? You think Sam raped you now, do you?’

  ‘Yes, yes! Because listen, Pippa,’ I babbled, ‘Lottie’s friend Peggy was in Annabel’s that night, she saw me leave with him, she said I was unconscious!’

  ‘Really?’ Pippa looked grim. ‘Well, you probably were,
does that really come as a complete surprise? I mean, let’s face it, you do tend to shift the liquor and it’s not unheard of for you to lose it in the leg department as a result. For God’s sake, Polly, that Peggy girl’s as straight as they come. She probably saw you reeling around a bit and couldn’t believe her puritanical eyes.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘All right if I go back to my bath now? I mean, there’s no one you actually want me to clobber over the head, is there? No one’s brains you want me to beat to a pulp? Only I’m freezing to death here. As you might have noticed, I’ve got nothing on.’ She shivered violently.

  ‘But, Pippa –’

  ‘Listen.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Sam is undoubtedly a bit of a lad and I’m quite sure he got you plastered and then coerced you into bed, but that’s not quite the same thing as rape, is it?’

  ‘But it explains why I don’t remember anything,’ I wailed, wringing my hands hysterically. ‘It explains everything!’

  Pippa grabbed a coat from the coat stand and wrapped it around herself. Her teeth were chattering now. She knelt down beside me.

  ‘It explains nothing,’ she said gently. ‘OK, maybe you did pass out momentarily and then perhaps you came round in the taxi or something, who knows? But honestly, Polly, I wouldn’t make a big thing of it, because, believe me, it won’t sound good. I mean, think about it, it’s a classic, isn’t it? A girl feels guilty about an extramarital bunk-up, she broods on it for a while, feels bitter and resentful and then eventually, ages after the event, accuses the guy of raping her.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Well, that’s about the size of it, isn’t it? And, believe me, that’s certainly how it’s going to look. And, anyway,’ she said with a quizzical smile, ‘I thought he was a thief? Two minutes ago you were convinced he was a burglar, now he’s a rapist.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘I mean, which is it, Polly? Know what I mean?’

  I gulped and stared at the floor.

  She grinned, gave my hand a quick squeeze and then with chattering teeth turned and leaped back up the stairs two at a time to the bathroom.

  ‘Look, I’ll talk to you about it in a minute when I’m out of my bath, OK?’ she yelled. ‘But I’m freezing to death here!’

  I watched her go. The bathroom door slammed. I heard the radio go on. I sat dumbly, staring at my reflection in the hall mirror opposite. A rapist or a thief. A thief or a rapist. My eyes stared back at me. Yes, I wondered, which indeed? I set my mouth in a grim line. And why not both? Far-fetched? We’ll soon see about that. Forget about it? No way. I’d had a feeling all along there’d been something very fishy about that night, and now I was going to prove it.

  I waited until I heard Pippa splashing away happily in the bath again, then I stood up and quietly plucked my car keys from the hall table. I silently opened the front door, tiptoed around it and shut it softly behind me. Then, with my heart thumping wildly, I ran down the garden path to my car.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I closed the car door softly behind me and glanced anxiously up at the house to see if Pippa was looking out of the window. I didn’t want to have to explain myself; she thought I was mad enough as it was and she’d think I’d gone completely doolally if I told her where I was going, but I’d had an idea. I was going to go to the hotel. I was going to go and find out if anyone remembered me from that Friday night, find out what sort of condition I’d been in. The only trouble was, apart from the fact that it was a reasonably classy joint in Mayfair, I was a little vague as to its exact location. There was going to be a certain amount of trial and error involved here. Duke Street? I wondered. Stratton Street, perhaps? I started the car. Somewhere like that anyway. Maybe if I meandered around the vicinity it would all come flooding back.

  I roared off to Mayfair, trying hard not to think about Sam in case I was sick all over the steering wheel, and instead concentrated like mad on trying to remember which particular road the taxi had picked me up from on that fateful morning-after-the-night-before. I drove slowly round and round Berkeley Square, peering anxiously down side streets and feeling more and more unsure and confused. Suddenly, on a gut impulse, I hung a left. I parked the car on a yellow line and dashed up Mount Street.

  I ran towards Grosvenor Square, glancing up at the tall, elegant buildings which towered on either side of me. It hadn’t been a large hotel, that much I remembered, and it was just a hunch, but I had a feeling it was somewhere around … here! I skidded to a halt and gazed up at the ancient redbrick building I’d stopped in front of. It was definitely a hotel – albeit a discreet one, just a tiny gold plaque on the outside to let its punters in on the secret – but was it the right one?

  I pushed through the smoked-glass doors and peered dubiously around the reception area. It didn’t actually look terribly familiar and I was just about to go when – oh yes! Hang on a minute. I stared down at the carpet. It was royal blue with a tiny gold fleur-de-lis pattern on it. That pattern, surely I remembered it from the towels in the bathroom? I crouched down and took a closer look, peering at it.

  ‘Yes, brilliant, Polly, right first time, this is it!’ I exclaimed, much to the astonishment of a group of jabbering Japanese tourists who were clustered at the reception desk.

  They instantly broke off from their animated discussion and bustled over to have a look. Had they overlooked some fascinating ancient carpet? A first-class tourist attraction in front of their very noses, right here in the hotel? I smiled and nodded.

  ‘Seventeenth century,’ I whispered, ‘genuine Aubusson.’

  They instantly erupted into an excited babble and thousands of yen’s worth of camera equipment whirred into action. I left them to snap and flash furiously as I hurried over to the now empty reception desk.

  There didn’t appear to be anyone about so I banged the little gold bell and shouted ‘Hello! Hello!’ once or twice.

  After a minute a pale, rather bored-looking young man appeared from a back office. I had the feeling he hadn’t liked the urgent way I’d rung his bell because he took his time to arrive at the desk and peered down his nose superciliously at me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said rather breathlessly, ‘um, d’you remember me?’

  He raised a laconic eyebrow. ‘Should I, modom?’ he enquired in an unnaturally plummy voice.

  ‘Well, hopefully, yes, you see I was in here – well, I think I was in here – about four weeks ago with – with a friend of mine. It was a Friday night and I believe I was rather, you know, out of it. Ring any bells?’

  He regarded me coolly. ‘I’m afraid not. An awful lot of people stay in this ’otel, modom, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Just the one night was it? You and your, er, friend?’ he said with a sneer.

  One of these days, I decided, I’d tell one of these snotty-nosed receptionists or shop assistants who worked in smart London joints and looked at you as if you were a pile of poo when you walked in that they weren’t fooling anyone, because that’s exactly what they were, receptionists, for God’s sake, shop assistants. They could be as superior as they damn well liked while they were in Mayfair but I was pretty sure at the end of the day they went home to their bedsits in Kilburn, dropped their h’s, crucified their vowels and ate Vesta curries on their laps in front of Brookside.

  However, I pretended I hadn’t understood the implication and smiled sweetly. ‘That’s it, just the one night.’

  ‘Name of?’ he said wearily, flicking through a large diary on the counter.

  ‘Penhalligan and, er, Weston. Or possibly just Weston – yes, Mr and Mrs Weston.’

  He pursed his lips to hide another sneer.

  ‘Yes …’ He ran a finger down the entry for Friday 8th. ‘Here it is, Mr Weston and Mrs Penhalligan.’ He snapped the book shut.

  ‘Oh! Really? Did I sign it then?’

  He sighed and opened the book again. ‘You tell me, modom,’ he muttered, swivelling the book around for me to see.

  I shook my head. ‘No, that’s not my writing.’

/>   ‘Must be your friend’s then,’ he purred.

  ‘Yes, must be. Good, so we were definitely here, that’s a start. Were you on the desk that night, by any chance?’

  ‘I was, as it happens.’

  ‘But you don’t remember me?’

  ‘As I said, modom, an awful lot of people pass through these –’

  ‘Here, what about this then?’

  I ruffled up my hair, smudged my lipstick across my face and pulled my T-shirt off one shoulder. He looked alarmed. I slumped forward on his desk, rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth, frothing a bit. He started to back away in horror, but then abruptly stopped. He peered, stepped forward and took a closer look. His face cleared.

  ‘Oh blimey! Yeah, yeah, hang on a minute, it’s all coming back!’ Suddenly we were in Kilburn. ‘Yeah, I’ve got it!’ he said cheerfully, waggling his finger at me. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first wiv your clothes on an’ that, but you were the bird wot was carried in wiv her undies hanging out!’

  ‘Er, yes, yes, quite possibly, was I actually carried in?’

  ‘More or less, yeah. I mean ’e had ’is arm around you and was sort of draggin’ you along, but you couldn’t stand up. An’ then while ’e signed the register ’e propped you up on that sofa over there but you kept toppling over, like. You was in a terrible state, terrible!’

  ‘Really,’ I breathed, ‘go on.’

  ‘Well, I asked your bloke wevver I should call a doctor, like, but he said no, you often got like that an’ you just needed a good night’s sleep. Said it was a mixture of jet lag and booze but, I tell you, I’ve seen some pretty godawful drunks in my time and you looked more than half cut to me: your eyes were rollin’ round your ’ead somefing terrible. It was ’orrible! Maria said we shouldn’t ’ave let you in in that state, but he’d paid the bill and was up them stairs before we could say ’ang on a minute, mate!’

  ‘I knew it!’ I cried, slapping the counter with my hand. ‘I knew I had to be a hospital case to let him bring me here, the bastard – and did you see him leave too? In the morning?’