Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  Then she asked me a stream of questions I thought I’d already covered.

  When did I first meet Stuart? Describe him. When did it start? How did he behave towards me on the first date? How did he respond when I asked him not to mess about in the plane? Had I ever given any indication that I wanted a relationship? Were there any indications on the evening of the assault? What were my feelings towards him when he first arrived? Were the drinks he bought me normal drinks? Did he drink? Did I feel drunk? Did I feel he tricked me into letting him into the house? What was I wearing?

  ‘A pink top but it wasn’t that low cut,’ I said quickly.

  Caroline shook her head. ‘Listen love. It was a party. You’re entitled to wear what you damn well please. I’ve always said if you’ve got it flaunt it. It doesn’t matter what you were wearing in that sense. I’m asking, well, we ask to find out how exactly the act was committed.’

  What did you say when he started kissing you? What were his hands doing? What did he do after you said no? Was there any conversation? What were your hands doing?

  This particular query started me off on a grizzle. ‘I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. I tried at first to push him but I was too scared. I couldn’t fight him, I didn’t know how. I feel like I let him do it,’ I wailed. I felt my throat beginning to close. I fought it, squeezed the sides of the chair so hard I broke a nail.

  ‘Holly, try to control your breathing,’ said Caroline. ‘Slow . . . breathe out for a count of three . . . and in for a count of five. Okay. Owwwwt . . . and iiiiiiin. Good. Perhaps you’d like a sip of water?’

  ‘I feel like I let him do it,’ I said again, when my windpipe allowed me.

  Caroline tutted. ‘You did not let him do it. You didn’t want him to kiss you and if he was a gentleman he would have left immediately. You don’t even know if his dizziness was real. You told him to stop kissing you, what did he do next?’

  I dabbed my eyes with a tissue. ‘He sort of pushed me to the floor.’

  ‘Well, that in itself is not the action of a normal person.’

  How exactly did he push you to the floor? Did he try and touch your breasts or any part of your anatomy? Try to remember exactly what happened. Was he talking? Trying to kiss you? Were his legs now pinning you to the ground in any way? What can you remember about him? Was he already aroused? Had he dropped his trousers? Was he wearing underpants? Did you see him put on the condom?

  I didn’t know that many questions existed, although Caroline took care not to overwhelm me. We had more biscuit breaks than at Girl Meets Boy, which is saying something. When, for the third time, she queried a specific detail about – as she always put it – ‘the time of the rape’, I started to feel odd.

  ‘Feel sick. Do you think I could have another glass of water?’ The act of breathing didn’t appear to be delivering oxygen to my brain. I felt dizzy, my hearing went and my vision turned blotchy with yellow and orange light. Even though I was sitting down I feared I might collapse. I ripped off my cardigan, unbearably hot. It was as if gravity had left my head and it might detach itself from my neck and float off, a highly unpleasant sensation. So that’s what light-headedness feels like, I realised a second later. Far worse than it sounds.

  ‘Come and lie on the sofa,’ said Caroline, hauling me there as she spoke, with strong hands. She sped over with a glass of water. ‘Here, lie down, rest your legs up the back, that’s it, upside down, let the blood flow to your head.’

  The feeling passed after five minutes and I felt foolish. I also felt relieved that with all the physical symptoms I’d had that day, I hadn’t flashed back. It had only happened twice and, oh my God, that feel back, when I relived the sensation of that man shoving into me – but never in my life did I want to experience those mind tricks again. It was like my brain was punishing me, sending me back to my worst nightmare for being stupid. Since I’d confided in Claudia neither the flash or feel backs had reoccurred, but I no longer knew what my subconscious was capable of, what would trigger it to mischief.

  ‘I think that’s enough for today,’ said Caroline, shutting her notebook.

  ‘I’m alright now, really,’ I insisted.

  ‘I can see you are, but I think I need a break, I’m not made of such strong stuff as you are. Would you like to talk again tomorrow? You don’t have to come back to the ni—station. If you prefer, I could come to your house. What time is good? Ten thirty? Very civilised! I’ll bring the biscuits, shall I?’

  I smiled. ‘I’ve always got. Thank you, Caroline. You’ve been really great.’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘No, Holly, you’ve been great. Look, here’s my direct line, give me a call between now and then if you need to. For any reason. Not if your lights fuse, I’m hopeless at DIY – but seriously. If anything bothers you, anything occurs between now and tomorrow morning, I’m on the end of the phone, and if I’m not, someone here can contact me. Okay?’

  ‘It’s like having an extra mum,’ I remarked to Claudia, two days later, after emptying my memory of every tiny grain of information about Stuart and myself. By the time Caroline was satisfied with what I’d told her, I was sick of the sound of my own voice, and convinced that if I never thought of or heard the name ‘Stuart’ again, I’d want nothing more out of life. A good thing, surely. It was as if the more grim detail Caroline got down on paper, the less ugliness there was contaminating my head. I shouldn’t have felt dirty to begin with, but after giving a statement, I felt cleansed. Weak, and more terrified than ever, but cleansed all the same.

  Chapter 25

  THE FIRST THING I did on returning to work was to pair up Sam and Bernard. What can I say? I was in the mood for love. I rang Bernard first, apologised, and explained that I’d fled the restaurant because (may God forgive me) I’d had what I thought was an epileptic fit. Before he had time to consider this whippet-thin excuse, I added that I wanted him to formally meet a gorgeous woman the following Tuesday, and would he be available? He pretended to check his diary, then said, ‘Yes.’

  Sam also admitted to being free on Tuesday. I decided to give them the last date, so it would be easier for either one to approach the subject of sharing a cab. (It’s amazing, at Girl Meets Boy, how often Wimbledon turns out to be en route to Islington.)

  The pile of paperwork had grown even taller in my three days of absence, yet it wasn’t quite as towering as I’d expected. Fewer cheques than normal. I flicked through them, biting my lip. I’d presumed on a bunch of new applications to appease the bank.

  ‘How many new applications have we had this week?’

  ‘Two,’ said Nige, without turning round. He was in a growl because Claudia had refused to tell him about our secret assignment.

  My stomach fluttered. Would the bank give me an overdraft extension? The office rent was reasonable but then again, I’ve been conditioned into thinking that £2.99 for four peaches is reasonable. And the cost of advertising was obscene. I also paid Nige and Claw a proper pair-of-princesses wage. Even with the GMBites’ regular payments (£50 a month, for which members were introduced to four dates – worked out according to how much one might expect to spend in one evening at a club), at this rate the agency would be out of business within months. I was aghast at how easy it was for a business to fail overnight. I remembered my accountant chirruping ‘It’s all about cashflow’, but only now did I understand what he meant. Jesus. Three and half weeks ago we’d been celebrating its success! I scribbled figures on a scrap of paper and tried to do sums. The calculator refused to be optimistic, so I shoved it and the scrap of paper in a drawer.

  I couldn’t concentrate for more than three minutes. Swelling in my mind like a great pink bubble of gum was the imminent arrest of Stuart. Claudia did her best to distract me, I did my best too. I thought of how happy Bernard and Sam would be together, and how I was possibly engineering the most important evening of two people’s lives. I told myself that I was right to go to the police. I reminded myself of Caroline’
s approval. I thought of her as a supplement to my mother. Your real parents cannot fulfil every role, so you look for substitutes to fill in the gaps. Or at least I did. My own father was terrified of money. Consequently, I thought of my accountant as a rent-a-dad. I worried about his diet (whenever we met for lunch he ate a lot of fatty meat) and hoped he’d keep healthy.

  The truth was, Stuart’s crime was adult, and yet more than ever, I felt like a child.

  I concentrated on organising Tuesday’s dates and anticipated the pleasure of watching Sam and Bernard fall in love. Both had guessed who they were being matched with, and both had rung twice to ask advice on what to wear. Sam had run out of her office at lunchtime and panic-bought a pair of orange trousers and an orange shirt. Further interrogation had revealed that she’d also purchased a pair of orange boots. ‘But you restrained yourself from snapping up the orange hat and gloves?’ I’d said. ‘Yes,’ she’d wailed, ‘but I’ve spent £178 and I look like a satsuma!’ Her excitement made me feel ashamed for not matching them before.

  But on the date night in question, Stuart was arrested and after Caroline rang to tell me, I had to leave the bar. I couldn’t be among people. Now he knew what I’d done. Claudia didn’t feel right buying me an ice cream, so instead she bought me the grown woman’s equivalent – a beauty treatment. I’ve never had much patience with beauty treatments. Yeah, I want to be beautiful, but I find the actual beautifying process too tedious to bear. To me, a facial is as spirit-sapping as a trip to B&Q. Claudia knows this, which is why she treated me (if that’s the right word and I’m not sure it is) to a variation.

  ‘The GoodLife Health Centre’s Alternative Health Assessment. Wow. What is it?’

  ‘I haven’t had one, but a friend has and she said it’s excellent. It’s a complementary medicine clinic. I don’t know exactly, but I think they test you for food allergies and recommend you a health plan. I thought it would be good for you, relaxing. You need pampering, girl.’

  I think what she meant was that my body needed some positive imput. She assumed this would do it. (And quite right, for seventy-five quid.) Claw takes an obsessive interest in her own health. Whereas I don’t smoke and presume that, granted this favour, my innards will take care of themselves. Claw once went to a clinic, announced she’d cheated on her boyfriend abroad and was scared she’d caught a terminal disease, ‘And so they gave me every test known to man.’ Naively, I said, ‘But you don’t have a boyfriend. And you haven’t been abroad!’

  The difference between us is, I don’t trouble my body unless it troubles me. Healthwise, I operate on a need-to-know basis. If I’m tired, I put it down to ‘life’ and go to bed early. Claudia taps familydoctor.org into her search engine and investigates the possibility of lupus.

  All the same, I looked forward to my appointment as if it were a trip to the seaside. A break, from everything, a little boost. So it was a great shame that, spiritually, the GoodLife Health Assessment proved to be a monstrous error. I sat with an electrical device in my hand while a white-coated woman named Amilie made herself look busy on a computer. Miraculously, after half an hour of drawing a bleeper pen across the screen, Amilie pronounced my fatty tissues, joints, liver and stomach ‘stressed’ and declared that various other organs – including my heart – were ‘weakened’.

  ‘What?’ I croaked. ‘You’re saying I’ve got a weak heart?’

  She smiled, as if this were funny. Her teeth were suspiciously white. ‘I’ve been checking the energy levels along your meridians. Your meridians control all the body’s biochemical processes. I’ve used acupressure points along your meridians to measure the energy levels within your organs. High energy reveals that an organ is stressed, low energy reveals that it’s weakened.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, not understanding, and feeling too embarrassed to enquire if I had months or weeks.

  As if this wasn’t enough of a blow, Amilie also discovered that I was missing crucial digestive enzymes. She seemed to hint that it was surprising food didn’t emerge from the exit in the exact same form it had been swallowed. She also found me to be intolerant to yeast, tea, red wine, Cheddar cheese, lactose, cow’s milk, margarine, bananas, oranges, corn, Marmite, lentils, bacon – ‘But I don’t eat bacon.’ ‘That’s probably why you’re intolerant of it’ – hazelnuts, sweet potatoes, artichoke, cabbage and mushrooms.

  I was also deficient in magnesium, germanium, chromium, boron, molybdenum, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin C – ‘But I thought you had to be a sailor in the 1700s to be deficient in vitamin C’ – vitamin B3, vitamin P bioflavonoids, and vitamin B5 pantothenic acid.

  At this wretched point, while convinced she’d made up half those minerals, I wondered whether to dial 999 and scrawl a will on the back of my business card. I considered a boohoo, but decided Amilie was far too smug to cry in front of. Her tan was a little too brown, too 1984, for me to trust her entirely as a medical authority. A giggle escaped instead. Amilie looked up from the Personal Diet Recommendations Sheet she was labouring over.

  When she read it out I didn’t listen, as I was too busy fidgeting, but I gave it a cursory glance in the cab home. I was still cross at being guilt-tripped into spending twenty quid on enzymes at the front of the clinic. The Diet Recommendations Sheet could be summed up in two words: Fat Chance. I was to avoid all foods I was intolerant of for four weeks. I was to drink two litres of water and fresh hot lemon daily. I was to eat four fruits daily and three servings of fresh vegetables. Breakfast was to be rye toast, fresh fruit salad and live yoghurt. Lunch was to be a rice salad, a stir fry with tofu, home-made soup or fresh grilled fish. Or rice noodles. I should also snack on sunflower and pumpkin seeds. There was to be no chocolate.

  This is the trouble I have with healthy eating. You have to devote your whole day to it. When you work in central London, it’s not that easy to secure yourself fresh grilled fish for lunch. This diet would only be viable if I moved to the Caribbean. Also, on the rare occasions I have the time and money to eat in a smart restaurant, if ever I try to be goodly and eat fish and vegetables, my stomach starts to rumble within half an hour of returning to the office and I’m forced to make an emergency dash to Martha’s. Normal people can’t exist on fish and vegetables. We need four roast potatoes and a Mars bar to complete a meal.

  But I didn’t wish to spit in the face of Claudia’s kindness – even if the health assessment had confirmed that I was falling to bits – so I told her I’d enjoyed it. The next six weeks passed in a blur of agitation. The bank announced that if I didn’t take control of my finances they’d call in my overdraft. This might have played on my mind, were it not for the fact that I had more imminent concerns: any given moment I expected Stuart to hammer down my door and throttle me. If ever I was in the street – rare – I’d brace myself to be gunned down by a hired hitman. I also thought incessantly about the CPS, imagining a fusty gaggle of grey-haired men and women, poring over my files by candlelight, adjusting their pince-nez.

  So when, early one Friday morning, Caroline rang me at home and asked if she could pop round with the investigating DI, the sickness rose to my throat. I had a bath, peered blearily at my face in the mirror – purple eye bags, blotchy skin tone, presumably this was routine when you reached thirty – and dressed in black. Any other colour would be tempting fate. Two police officers. I opened a fresh pack of biscuits. Then I sat and drummed my fingers on the table, watching the clock tick. Had Emily not brought in a mouse to while away the minutes until the doorbell rang, I’d have dissolved with anxiety.

  The second I saw Caroline, I knew it was bad news. Her fiercely blonde hair was stiffer than ever and she wore no make-up. Her face was grave. She’d chosen a longer skirt than normal. The DI, who she introduced as ‘George’, was also in plain clothes. He was friendly but subdued. They still looked like coppers, and I bet all the neighbours were agog. I led them into the lounge, as if I were in a dream.

  Caroline didn’t hesitate. She looked me dead on and said, ‘Holly
, I am really sorry. The CPS have decided not to prosecute.’

  I stood up. ‘Wait a minute.’ I strode into the kitchen and carried the tray of coffee and biscuits into the lounge. Neither of them took, so I just served without asking. I was biting my teeth together so hard I’m surprised they didn’t crumble in my mouth. Then I said in a dull voice, ‘So they didn’t believe me?’

  George looked apologetic, like it was his fault. He glanced at Caroline. She said, ‘Holly. We believe you. These people don’t know you. It’s difficult because after nearly a month there’s going to be less forensic evidence than you’d get with a recent rape. At the end of the day it’s your word against his.’ She paused. ‘But love, we’d hope that you did feel better for telling us. And if he does it again we’ll know, because you were brave enough to come forward and tell us.’

  I said, ‘Why didn’t they believe me?’

  Caroline sighed. ‘They haven’t seen you, they don’t know what you’re like. I believe you, George believes you. You have to trust us that we dealt with it as thoroughly as we could. But . . . if you haven’t got the evidence, you have to rely on someone else’s mistakes somewhere else along the line.’

  I stared ahead at the orange wall. Nick and I had painted this room together. Painted, sex break, painted, sex break. That’s the beginning of a relationship for you. We were happy then. Everything he said turned to gold. I felt like a goddess. Even when I peed in the toilet and Nick shouted from the bedroom, ‘Oi! Who brought that horse in here?’ Even then, with my unladylike bladder, I was the most desirable woman in the world. I could do no wrong. I was loved by the one I loved, and there was no greater achievement. How did I get to this? I knew Stuart wouldn’t slip up.