I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  The waiting room posters were apocalyptic and hard to ignore. ‘Been given any little gifts recently?’ said one, with a picture of a purple Care Bear-type teddy with Chlamydia embroidered across its belly. ‘HIV hasn’t gone away,’ warned another. I know that. I’m here, aren’t I?

  I tried going cross-eyed, letting the colours and words blur into each other in the hope that would make the threat go away. It was ridiculous me being there. An AIDS test was not supposed to be part of my life.

  “Mia Jackson,” the receptionist called out in a girlish voice. “The counsellor will see you now – second door on the right.”

  Counsellor? I don’t want counselling.

  Second door on the right, and, oh no, just my luck, a great beauty’s sitting there, staring at her computer.

  “Take a seat,” this young Elizabeth Taylor lookalike said. Glancing at her raven hair, flawless skin and lilac-blue eyes I felt grubby. Did she forget to go to Hollywood? She was Irish, and probably on a mission to turn bad girls good and get them on the born-again virgin train. I had seen a programme about that. Out in Texas somewhere – all these young kids taking purity pledges to remain virgins till they wed. But if they should happen to be human and fall off the sexual wagon then they could re-zip their legs and proclaim themselves secondary virgins – very convenient.

  “It wasn’t my fault.” I didn’t want Elizabeth Taylor to get the wrong idea.

  “We’re not here to judge you or anyone else,” Elizabeth Taylor said.

  “Someone spiked my drink. I don’t even know what happened.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

  I read her name badge: Dr Ailene Shaw – not so glamorous after all.

  “We’re seeing more of this,” she said. “You’ve done the right thing by coming in. When did the incident occur?”

  I told her the date.

  “Let me see now. Right, because it was a while ago you’ll only need the one test. HIV is a virus, so if a person has contracted it, they will produce antibodies. This takes between three and six months. The HIV test looks for antibodies. We do a rapid HIV test here, which means you’ll get your result back in less than half an hour.” Dr Shaw went on to explain what would happen if my result were positive. I nodded politely at intervals but my mind was drifting. I was banking on a negative.

  “Now, if you’d like to follow me, I’ll take you through to the nurse.”

  Nurse – not even a doctor for this test that could change my life?

  Nurse Battleaxe was more what I had expected: old, spindly and abrupt in a no-nonsense seen-it-all-before way. “You’ve no veins,” she said, inspecting my arm.

  “I won’t bother taking up heroin then.”

  The nurse ignored that comment. “I’ll try here.” She looked at my blank skin – my veins buried so deep it was like staring at the sea looking for the Channel Tunnel. Finally she found a spot and I looked away as she pushed the needle in and a dull ache ensued as a vial of my blood drained away.

  Half an hour to wait – there was a cafeteria somewhere if only I could find it. I wandered through the hospital corridors – more shades of asylum, just like the police station – overcooked peas on the lower half of the wall with old string vest above. Seasons Café meanwhile had chairs and tables screwed to the floor like a young offenders’ institution. There was a bloke with Down’s syndrome sitting near the exit sucking loudly on a pink milkshake.

  I took a tray, ordered a comforting plate of chips and a chunky flapjack and latte and sat at the other end until I spotted a CCTV camera positioned overhead in the corner. I swapped seats, turning my back on it, trying my best not to think about that shitty film Aftermath. If Flood filmed that, what else has he got? I pushed the remainder of my chips away, imagining myself on all fours; face to the wall, as Flood sat on some designer chair, beer in one hand, prick in the other, as he watched my drugged, forced performance on his forty-two-inch plasma screen. What an arsehole. And then it came to me – Somehow, I’m going to make that creep pay.

  I wasn’t dying as it turned out and I left the clinic feeling like I’d got away with something. I caught the bus home, and sat at the back away from everyone else, happy to look back at the hospital with its brown-brick brutalist exterior. I’m okay. Now all I have to do is get my work back on track.

  I had sketched three large self-portraits on A1-size stretched canvases. I completed them at home with my door locked – each incorporated my naked torso, onto which I daubed layers of thick acrylic paint in crimson and Prussian blue. The facial features were obscured and weren’t obviously me. And then onto each canvas I fixed a graphically correct replica of a section of a Rohypnol packet. On the first, the Rohypnol packet covered the eyes, on the second each ear and the third the mouth. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I needed a title. Date Rape seemed too obvious, as did Sex Crime. Three Monkeys? No.

  Once again I bribed Slug to help me down the hill. Finally, I had something tangible to hang in my space. I cleared away the fashion magazine cuttings, knocked three nails into the partition and hung my triptych. I had made it in time. The two Mikes were doing the rounds. To the right, I could see Mike Manners’ cowboy boots tapping away in Graham’s space. We had individual crits now it was our third year. The ritual group humiliation had subsided. After ten minutes or so, Mike Cherry and Mike Manners finished with Graham and made their way over.

  Mike Cherry sighed. “Mia, what have we here?” They stood in silent contemplation. “Is there a title?” Mike Cherry asked.

  “Modern Romance,” I said.

  Mike Manners gave a little nod and went up close, peering into each of the canvases in turn. “Can you elaborate?”

  “It’s what it feels like for a girl,” I said.

  “Go on,” Mike Manners said.

  “It’s like the Sixties gave us the sexual revolution and now we have the fallout. I want to address whether sexual freedom has left women too vulnerable.”

  “Good, keep it up,” Mike Cherry said.

  Did I hear that right?

  “I didn’t realise you were capable of such fine work,” Mike Manners said.

  “I agree,” Mike Cherry said. “Bravo, more of this please.”

  ‘Julie Walters’ wasn’t there the next time I called. Someone else answered the phone. “I’ll call back some other time,” I told the alien voice. This other person couldn’t help. Julie and me had something going. I couldn’t just switch to someone else: there’d be too much to explain and I couldn’t go through all that again. I thought about calling back to ask when Julie would next be in, but I could hardly call her Julie Walters. I’d have to sit tight and try to help myself.

  I decided to wash early and then watch TV in my room, hoping for something to take my mind off things but everything seemed to relate to death and murder: EastEnders, Holby City and Midsomer Murders, just for a start. Perhaps I’d never be able to watch anything to do with murder ever again?

  Jenny’s brutal death had made the world a different, harsher place. I considered incorporating that loss into my work. Disappearing Friend? I could do some mock-up CCTV pictures and have a girl frozen in time leaving a building then in photos two, three and four she would fade to nothing.

  Did it have to be Jenny or could it be any woman? Was it wrong place, wrong time or did her killer seek her out? I went through everyone at the restaurant, questioning whether they could harbour twisted fantasies or be capable of some heat of the moment mistake. Jason could certainly be hot-headed but all his reactions to her loss and murder seemed genuine. I like Jason. It can’t be him. Warren? He was a fool whose fantasies probably didn’t go beyond Page Three of The Sun. While Clint was more obsessed with indie bands than any girl and Duncan was loved-up with his Japanese girlfriend. No, it’s not anyone from Saviour’s.

  When Jenny first went missing, the police had mentioned her interest in the Internet. Perhaps she’d met some dangerous stranger from a chat room? It didn’t seem like s
omething Jenny would do and besides why would she? She’d just started seeing Jason. Then there was the running club. Was there an oddball there? Someone who saw her every week in her shorts and T-shirt and wanted to do her harm? And what of the local attacks that had been going on for nearly a year? There was a murderer who preyed on prostitutes; could he have targeted someone else?

  Outside my window, two girls paced up and down to combat the cold. One was scrawny with legs so thin there was a gap at the top of her thighs while the other was well padded – a comfort eater?

  A car slowed and they both talked at the window before the heavier one got in. Scrawny continued to pace then stopped to light a fag.

  She looked up. Shit, my light’s on.

  Scrawny gave me the finger.

  “Sorry.” I ducked away from the window.

  Thirty

  When I got back from college to find two police officers at my front door, I assumed Jason must have gone ahead and told them about the ‘white man in a white van’ and that they’d come by to get me to back his story. Then I wondered if something else had happened.

  The officers were both female and I recognised one as the chunky blonde, DC Wilson, whom I’d met at the rape suite. It’s about Flood I realised and it caused an instant churning in my belly.

  “We hoped we’d catch you in,” DC Wilson said, and I noticed her hair was now a darker mixture of blonde and brown stripes. “Can we have a quick word inside?”

  I showed them through to the living room at the back, and we spaced ourselves between the collapsed sofa and wooden-framed chairs.

  “This is cosy.” DC Wilson’s sidekick smiled. I didn’t catch her name.

  “It’s not good news,” DC Wilson said. “The tests have come back negative.” She was referring to the cut-up clothes: my favourite jeans and Blondie T-shirt. “There’s no evidence, I’m afraid. We can’t proceed.”

  “There was nothing – no DNA at all?” I thought DNA was wonder-evidence that’s dispersed everywhere and can stand the test of time, securing convictions years later.

  “Forensics could only pick up your DNA. Sometimes, items that you assume are evidence don’t come up with the goods.”

  I looked down at my feet in worn-out Converse trainers. They were faded blue and fraying at the edges, but at least I knew they were mine. Again I relived the horror of that moment in the hotel room when I was so out of it my own boots were unrecognisable. “I should have gone to the police sooner,” I said.

  “If you had come forward earlier there might have been physical evidence, some bruising perhaps. And we could have tested your blood and urine for drugs. Even so, the conviction rate for rape is depressingly low – below ten per cent.”

  “That’s rubbish,” I said. “How can it be so bad? It’s the dark ages.”

  DC Wilson shifted in her seat. “It’s notoriously hard to prove as it’s often one word against another. The men always claim it was consensual and then the defence will pull the woman apart, often blaming her for being drunk. Understandably, many women can’t go through with it.”

  “It’s not good enough. Something needs to be done.”

  DC Wilson nodded. “Every day I feel like I personally fail women like you.”

  The other officer interjected, “At least you felt you could come forward and report it. More women are doing that and that’s a good thing.”

  DC Wilson shook her head. “Day in, day out, I listen to women reporting rape, assault and abuse. No wonder I’m on antidepressants.”

  The sidekick stared out the window at our grey backyard.

  DC Wilson continued, “The way I see it, men are no longer necessary.”

  “Jan, give it a rest.”

  “You’re best off without them.”

  “Have you been through something similar?” I asked, sensing bitterness.

  “My ex-husband – he was violent.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No man will darken my door again. It’s bad enough I have to work with them. That’s why I transferred to sexual crimes – to get my own back (legally, like), only it’s too difficult. They keep getting away with it.”

  “That’s enough, Jan.”

  Jan gave me a leaflet detailing support groups and helpline numbers, but I threw it away as soon as she left. I had ‘Julie Walters’ for that.

  Flood’s got away with it and there’s nothing I can do, I thought, as I trudged back upstairs to my room and forced myself to call DCI Cameron.

  “A white man in a white van, that’s what the psychic said,” I told him, feeling foolish, but to my surprise he seemed to take it seriously. Maybe dealing with so much shit every day makes you more inclined to believe in other better worlds, or indeed a hell for all the scumbags you catch – or worse, fail to catch.

  I lay back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling’s textured landscape of icy peaks and troughs. What happens to all the rapists and murderers that get away with it? Where do they go? Are they the kindly old men with twinkly eyes that I always smile at in the street? Are they the ones feeding birds in the park when they can no longer summon the strength to pull women into bushes? Do they sit on benches so they can watch the younger rapists do their stuff?

  I could see Jack Flood shuffling across a hotel room with a Zimmer frame, then struggling to set up his camera. As an ageing artist he’d probably still have access to impressionable young fans. At eighty he could still drug some poor young art student sixty years his junior, though he might have to pause to take Viagra before struggling to manoeuvre his stiff legs up onto the bed. His hairpiece would come unstuck and he’d puff and pant and worry about his dodgy ticker and she’d be so fresh and beautiful beneath him. But it wouldn’t be enough any more – he couldn’t get off. He’d need to do more, do worse things to get the same kick. He’d move on, try asphyxiation perhaps. That poor girl wouldn’t make it and it would be my fault. I should have gone to the police the morning after. I could have stopped this, whatever it is that he does.

  God, I’d love to humiliate that man – stand up in Ruby’s one day, point and say, “That man drugs women. Whatever you do, don’t accept a drink from that man.”

  Hold on, that’s it, I thought, and immediately turned my room upside down, emptying boxes, my wardrobe, delving under the bed. Somewhere, I still had Flood’s business card. I emptied my desk drawers onto the floor. And there, among all the old letters, postcards, photos, cinema tickets for art-house films, festival wristbands and dozens of clear lilac beads from a broken necklace, lay his simple white business card, and on it in a retro typeface his name and contact details. I slipped it into my bag and headed downhill to college.

  In the library I logged on to the Internet and began my search. The Age UK site was an instant success with its pictures of incontinence pants – almost as expensive as Calvin Klein underwear. And there I found lovely ‘Cosyfeet Richard’ slippers and walking aids and outdoor comfort wear – everything the old git could possibly need.

  I Googled ‘impotency’, and a few porn websites came up but I ignored those (that’s not what he needs) and went for a genuine health site. I printed off an impotency quiz and the sections on ageing and impotence and the treatment options. Saga was full of possibilities. I requested their holiday brochure, health insurance and information about their credit card. And then I came across Care Homes.com – maybe he’d see sense and put himself away.

  Back home, I dug out all the sexual health leaflets I’d been handed at the HIV clinic and gave Stannah Stairlifts a call: “It’s my grandfather; he hasn’t been upstairs for two years and the only bathroom is up there. I’d be so grateful if you could come round and show him how your wonderful product could transform his life – next Tuesday at eleven? Fantastic.”

  I was buzzed up at the thought of all this stuff arriving in Spitalfields. I couldn’t afford to actually order the stuff, but still I liked to imagine there really were incontinence pants and toupees turning up at Flood’s door rather than
just the catalogues and leaflets.

  Mind you, Kelly’s pragmatism brought me a little way back down to earth. “What if he knows it’s you?” she said, as we sipped tea in the kitchen.

  I hadn’t given it a thought. “How can he know?”

  “The postmark.”

  “I ordered it straight from the Internet. It’ll be fine.”

  Kelly shrugged. “I guess it depends on how many girls he’s upset.”

  I’d crossed a boundary. I knew that. I wasn’t living by normal rules. Anything goes, I thought. And so what, I’m leaving soon, I can escape if things get out of hand. But I was sad about having to leave. I didn’t know what to do next or where to go. I was dreading the thought of returning home to Bumblefuck.

  I’ll head to London, but I’ve got no money – can’t think about this now – I’ve too much to do. Already I was having second thoughts about the leaflets. What if Flood dismisses them as junk mail? For all I knew, he might have learnt not to open certain post. My efforts might be wasted. I need to step up a gear.

  Sod the overdraft and the student loans; I may as well put all that enforced debt to good use and actually order the stuff. And so I did, starting with a ‘hernia truss and undergarment’ that was basically a pair of pants with built-in hernia support that ‘creates compression only where needed’. I unpacked them and photographed them and then sent the original product on to Flood.

  Flood has so far received: a contraption for the infirm to steady a chair, another to help him on and off the toilet and a twelve-step guide to recovery from sex addiction. And I also arranged for someone to call about installing an upright bath with a little door so he wouldn’t have to climb in any more. But I did stop short of sending round funeral directors. Kelly said it was too much and he’d probably phone the police.

  Still, things were looking up. My work was really coming together though I wasn’t sure how the tutors or the external examiner would take it. Anyhow, I was working hard; taking it seriously and that meant I also had to hand in my notice at Saviour’s. I still needed the money of course, but I had too much to do. I was working all hours – something had to give. And besides, I thought it would be good for me to get away from the place, what with the grief hanging in the air, the guilt over Jason and the thought that Jack Flood knew where he could find me.