The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  Up ahead, St. Jerome’s is a black spike against the dark sky. Perhaps he will simply leave her at the door. He’s a grown man now, not a reckless teenager. Back then, it was Tabby who insisted it was rape, but the judge said it was no more than raging hormones, that she had willingly taken part, until the sober light of day had brought with it a sense of shame at her own promiscuity. That she had made the accusation to assuage her own guilt. Did she give them some sign that she wanted them to do what they did to her? Over the years, she has decided that she must have, that if she had been clearer, they would have stopped. It wasn’t rape, just a failure of communication. Her fault.

  They reach the door.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “My pleasure.”

  He makes no move to go. Hopelessly, she slips her key from her bag and pushes it into the latch. The foyer door opens.

  “Thanks,” she says again. “Bye.”

  She walks in. He follows. The door shunts closed.

  They stand in the gloom of the foyer.

  “I’ll be all right from here.”

  “A gentleman always sees a lady to her door.”

  He holds open the inner door, and she steps through. A sliver of light spills from Mrs. Lyons’s flat, illuminating a semicircle of concrete. Should she scream for Mrs. Lyons to help her? To call the police?

  But what would they say at being called out because someone had the temerity to try to see her safely home? She was warned before about wasting police time.

  “What floor you on?” His voice is loud and intrusive. No one speaks loudly in St. Jerome’s. From upstairs, she can hear the lilting murmur of Abe’s music.

  “The fourth.”

  His heavy steps echo through the stairwell as he follows her up the stairs.

  “This must keep you fit, eh?” he says. “No wonder you’re so skinny. I always liked that about you. If you just had some tits…”

  “Thank you,” she murmurs.

  “Wanna know the other thing I’ve always liked about you?”

  They’re on the third floor now.

  She gives a wan smile. “What?”

  He gestures for her to go on, and she starts the final ascent to the fourth.

  “That you’re so completely full of shit.”

  She hesitates. Has she misheard him over the music?

  “Seriously, you’re fuckin’ famous for it. Who were your parents again? Not a pair of kiddy fiddlers who pimped you out to dirty old farmers? Course not.” He laughs.

  She stares at him.

  “Remind me how they died again? Wasn’t your dad castrated by his cellmate? Oh no, my mistake. He was shot down over Iraq, wasn’t he? A war hero. You must be so proud.”

  Her chest cavity fills with ice.

  “And your mum found God, didn’t she? Said the devil had made her let men stick farming implements up her six-year-old daughter? Hell, Jody. What a life, eh?”

  Her trembling hand makes the grocery bag rustle.

  “Now.” He steps up onto the fourth floor. “You owe me, for what you did to me back then. What you did to poor old Felix.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—”

  “And this is payback time. A good match always makes me horny, and what’s one more cock for a slut like you? Now be a good girl and don’t make a fuss, because you know what happens if you try to stop me, right? I fuck you anyway, and then it’s my word against yours. And what do you think your word’s worth, Jody?” His bottom lip pokes out, and he shrugs. “You tell me, honey. I might just sue you this time, for defamation. I could have before, but I let you off ’cause I like you.”

  She backs toward her door, fumbling for her keys.

  “Did you get that stitch Felix was on about? Hope so, ’cause seriously, it was like driving a minibus through the Grand Canyon.”

  His laugh is a rifle shot ricocheting around the stairwell. Her fingers close around the keys. She won’t have time to open the door, dash through, and close it again, but if he attacks her out here, surely someone will come out.

  On impulse, she hurls the keys over the banister.

  He grins. “Nice try.” Then he lunges at her, shoving her up against the door so hard, the wood splinters. His thumbs gouge her shoulders.

  She should have screamed before, when she first saw him. She should have screamed and run and not stopped until she reached the sanctuary of the church. This is her chance. Her last chance to save herself. To be saved.

  “ABE!”

  He punches her. Her lip splits, and warm blood flows into her mouth.

  “WHAT DID I SAY?”

  The lock is loose now. One more blow, and they will be through, into the flat, and he will be able to do whatever he wants to her. He yanks her body into his, then throws it back to ram the door. Her head rebounds off the wood, but though the lock rattles, it still holds.

  “Hey!”

  Two heads turn in the direction of flat 10.

  Abe is silhouetted against warm light. The music is louder, and the lemon scent of dishwashing liquid drifts across the landing.

  “Piss off, mate,” her attacker says with a sneer.

  “The hell are you doing?”

  “None of your business. Piss off back inside.”

  “Jody?” Abe takes a single step out onto the landing. “You all right?”

  “Seriously. Get lost.”

  She watches him, holding her breath. If she has truly been imagining his love for her all this time, Abe will do as he’s told and go back inside.

  Another step. “Jody? Answer me. Are you all right?”

  Their eyes lock. She is dumb with fear, but she doesn’t need to speak. They have such a powerful connection, he can read the truth in her eyes.

  His brown eyes harden. “Let go of her. Now.”

  Miraculously, the other man does so. Then, in one fluid, muscular movement, he crosses the landing and throws a punch that sends Abe crashing back against the doorframe.

  For a moment, he sways unsteadily, but though he is slight, she knows that Abe goes to the gym under the arches every day. As the other man draws back his fist, Abe bends at the waist and powers forward, butting her attacker in the abdomen, driving him backward until, with a hollow ring of metal, the bigger man’s meaty back comes up against the banister rail.

  He has to grip the rail with both hands to stop himself tipping backward and is helpless to protect himself as Abe draws back an elbow and punches him once, twice. The bigger man’s nose explodes with blood, and he gives a gargle of surprise, then brings his hands to his face, swearing.

  Abe turns to Jody. His face is flushed. The mop of bangs falls damply across his forehead. She can hear the whisper of his shirt against his skin as his chest rises and falls. “You OK?” He reaches out for her with those long, elegant fingers.

  She is so filled with emotion, she cannot speak. He loves her. He loves her.

  She reaches for him. Their fingers are almost touching.

  Then the monster raises its head. Over Abe’s shoulder, she sees black eyes glaring from a blood-streaked face.

  “No!”

  Abe turns too late. The creature clamps its thick arm around his neck and drags him to the banister. There is a sickening crunch as Abe’s spine makes contact with the metal handrail.

  It all happens so quickly.

  Abe’s feet scuffle against the linoleum, and then the scuffling stops, and he is kicking through air.

  “No!”

  He bends like a high jumper.

  He is balanced on the small of his back, a human seesaw. Then the seesaw tips.

  Her feet carry her to the banister, and the rail crushes the air from her lungs as she strains forward, reaching for his flailing arm. She manages to grasp the fabric of his shirtsleeve, but the stitches give, and i
t slips from her fingers.

  For a split second, he is frozen in time, arms outstretched like wings, an angel flying out of the darkness. Then he is gone.

  38.

  Mags

  We sit side by side against the wall of the tower. Through Abe’s shirt, I can feel the rough stone against my back. It is as cold as the lead beneath me, as cold as her hand resting on mine.

  She has stopped speaking.

  Blown by the wind, her hair is a silver curtain across her face. I push it behind her ears so that I can look into her eyes. They are watery gray, red-rimmed with the loss of my brother and perhaps the loss of everything she has ever dared to value.

  “Abe didn’t love me in the way I wanted him to,” she says softly. “But if he didn’t care about me at least a bit, why would he have given his life to save mine?” Her eyes search my face. “It’s true. Please believe—”

  I smile at her. “I believe you.”

  Then I tell her a story of my own.

  My father had found my stash of the pill that I’d persuaded the doctor to give me without their consent. When I got home from school, he dragged me to the bathroom and held me, fully clothed and bellowing, under the hot shower as punishment. I was fighting him so much that he’d actually had to get in the bath with me and was suffering under the scalding flow as much as I was.

  I suppose it must have been shortly after Eilean Donan. Something had changed in my and Abe’s relationship. If not actual affection, then something like a mutual respect had grown up between us. We were partners in misery after all.

  Without warning, my silent, self-contained brother burst into the bathroom and started trying to pull our father off me. As he pulled and I pushed, the old bastard slipped, cracking his head on the tiles. It wasn’t much of an injury, but Abe knew what he would get for it.

  The beating he received for protecting me was the impetus for my leaving home. In case he tried to stand up for me again. Because as he stood there, back straight, stony-faced, while my father clambered out of the bath with blood dribbling down his scalp, I knew that he would. He may have been skinny and young and scared, but he was brave.

  I don’t have much faith in Jody, but I have faith in Abe. I think he would have come out of his flat to help her when she called his name. He would have taken on a bully who was bigger than him, stronger, crueler. For love. Not the love Jody’s talking about, but because he cared about people. Funny. She believed in guardian angels, and in the end, one came to her aid.

  When I’ve finished speaking, she is smiling. But then the smile falters, and she starts to cry. “I’m sorry. He did this for me. He saved me, but I was too scared to do something for him. I should have told the police. I just knew they’d never believe me.”

  The wind buffets her narrow frame, snatching at her hair and the gray dress with its cheap plastic beads. The things that I sneered at her for when we met—the frailty, that yearning to please, to be loved—now twist my heart.

  I’m not a good person; I know this. I’m impatient, selfish, contemptuous of people more vulnerable than me. I can be cruel. But how could anyone get pleasure from hurting someone like Jody? Like a child torturing a kitten.

  What kind of a man would do that? Someone who must dominate the weak to make him feel less inadequate? A calculating psychopath? Or just a mundane bully satisfying his most basic urges?

  He thought it would be easy. Easy meat. He knew he would get away with it, just like he did before, because who would believe someone like Jody? They didn’t the last time he raped her; they considered themselves lenient in letting her off with a caution, free to return to the wreckage of her life. But if she dared to cry rape a second time, to throw their clemency back in their faces, she would have to be taught a lesson. No wonder she was afraid.

  I take her by the shoulders and look into her eyes.

  “They might not believe you, Jody. But they’ll believe me.”

  Then I smile.

  He won’t know what hit him.

  December

  39.

  Mags

  Jody and I have Christmas together. I intend for us to spend it quietly, in memory of my brother, but then I think screw it and book us into Claridge’s for Christmas dinner and a room for the night. It costs more than my flights, but we agree that Abe would love the idea of us being here. He would appreciate the spa-brand toiletries, the Egyptian-cotton bedding, and the deep-pile dressing gowns Jody swans around in. I tell her that they and the contents of the minibar come with the room and she should help herself.

  Over breakfast on Boxing Day, I explain my plans for New Year’s Eve. She blanches, but I reassure her that everything will be all right, and trusting soul that she is, she believes me. Later, she returns to St. Jerome’s in a cab with both our cases, while I head off to the Boxing Day rugby fixture.

  My father loved rugby, my brother too. Just being at the ground takes me back to my childhood. A bit of sentimental nostalgia to ease my homesickness, which is always worse around Christmastime, especially since I’ve just lost my brother. I couldn’t resist popping in on my way past during one of the long walks that I’ve taken to making to clear my head and process the last month’s sad events.

  This is what I tell the old duffers propping up the bar at halftime. Clive and his merry band compete to impress me with their stats knowledge and witty banter. They buy me drinks, and I’m careful to explain that I’m off alcohol since my brother’s accident (we think drinking may have exacerbated his depression). Not that it stops me enjoying myself, I insist. New Year’s Eve is my favorite night of the year, although this year it will be a lonely affair…

  Right on cue, they bring up the party I’ve known about ever since I started researching the team.

  Would I like to come, as their special guest, in memory of my brother?

  “I wouldn’t know anyone.”

  “You’d know us!” They link arms, all rivalry for my attention forgotten.

  “That’s very kind of you. I might just take you up on it.”

  My day’s task successfully fulfilled, I can concentrate on the rest of the match. I spot him at once, from Jody’s description and the name printed on the back of his shirt, and am relieved to discover how easy it is to dislike him: the way he stalks the field as if he owns it, the casual violence against players who oppose him, the unsportsmanlike crowing over points scored and petulant protests when they don’t go his way.

  He comes within touching distance of me as he clumps past on his way to the dressing room, his flesh red with the blood pumping around his muscles, nostrils flared, smelling of sweat and victory. So big, so powerful. He must think he’s invincible.

  I smile and wave at the old duffers making their way back to the bar, and then I head for the bus stop.

  January

  40.

  Mags

  He’s clearly not expecting the call. I sense wariness in the careful neutrality of his tone, but he’s still in London and agrees to meet me in a coffee bar in the city, near to the bank where he works. They’re in the middle of a corruption scandal, he says—that’s why he hasn’t yet returned to the United States—so he won’t be able to stay long. A get-out clause if he needs one.

  I arrive early and scroll through all the possible ways I can frame the request I plan to put to him, all my possible bargaining tools. Free legal advice with his divorce, sex, money. I know gangsters; I can feel that greasy aura that tells you a person has a price and usually how much it is. Daniel never had it.

  He arrives before I’ve come up with anything.

  He looks better than last time. His skin is smooth, and his hair has grown and started to curl. He wears a gray suit with an open shirt, and a pink tie flops like a dog’s tongue from his pocket.

  Clearly, married life is doing him good. I resist the urge to say so as I rise from the low-slung armchair.
It will sound like sour grapes.

  He hugs me without a word, and for a moment, I let myself sink into him. His neck smells of soap. Lucky Donna.

  Then I take a deep breath and pull away. He’s not mine to enjoy.

  “Another coffee?” he says.

  “Latte, please. No sugar.”

  He brings the drinks on a tray with two pieces of cake.

  My lip twitches. “No sugar, but I want a super-healthy chocolate brownie?”

  “You could do with putting on a few pounds. You don’t look great.”

  “Gee, thanks. You do.”

  Shit, shit. We both studiously look in opposite directions.

  “I meant”—oh, here I go—“you look well. You must be happy. I’m glad it’s all working out. With Donna.”

  He cuts his brownie in half and clears up the crumbs with a licked fingertip.

  “So what can I do for you? After some investment advice?”

  I look away. I deserve the insult.

  “Sorry,” he says quietly.

  “Don’t be. I asked for it.”

  His face is as expressionless as it has been since he arrived, then, heartbreakingly, he smiles. “You did.”

  I sigh. Too late now.

  “I wanted to ask you something. To do something for me. A small thing.”

  He watches me steadily, sipping his coffee. He knows it isn’t a small thing.

  I feel myself redden. It’s an odd sensation. I haven’t blushed since I was a child. The truth is, I have no idea how to approach this. I could pretend it was all true. Truth is what you can make people believe. I could make him believe the lie.

  Or I could tell him the real truth.

  I close my eyes and step out into the abyss. “Someone might ask you…about the nights we spent together.”

  His mug pauses halfway to his lips.

  I take a deep breath. “There’s a court case. I’ve made a rape claim against someone, and they will want to imply that I enjoy casual sex.”

  He pales. “Bastard.”