by Pip Drysdale
I slammed that door behind me. I needed him to hear. To know how I felt.
And then I ran towards the building’s exit.
What just happened?
My mind was frantically trying to make sense of everything: our perfect love affair had deteriorated so quickly that I could almost smell the sweet stench of dead roses in the air as I pushed through the door and the chill night air hit my face. I rushed towards the road, looking back over my shoulder.
Surely he’d come after me; try to make it better?
But he wasn’t coming. And so I started walking. Quickly. I wasn’t really sure where I was going, I didn’t have a plan, but I needed some time to cool down, to get my head straight. My arms were covered in goosebumps and my bag heavy on my shoulder as I strode towards the bridge that led to Chelsea. Cars drove past me. And I kept checking my phone for a call from him. Surely he’d get worried. Call me? Come and find me?
Shit. He was still blocked.
I scrolled through to his contact, unblocked him and waited a little longer for a call to come in. Maybe he could somehow explain …
Because that fight: it wasn’t us.
But then none of this was us – the app, the sex parties, the fight, the lies, none of it.
And then, there I was: at the river. Crossing. But Oliver still wasn’t calling.
I didn’t want to go too far so I stood on the bridge, staring out at the Thames, joggers moving through streetlights behind me, my arms crossed over my chest and tears streaming down my face. I was shaking.
And I was thinking about all the things I’d tried so hard to forget.
Because there was more to the story of that night when I was sixteen. It didn’t end with date-rape, that’s just how it began. But before I tell you, I need to ask you a favour – please don’t pity me. I’ve worked very hard not to play the victim in my own life.
I didn’t tell the police what happened that night and I was too ashamed to tell my mother, but a couple of weeks later I did tell a couple of friends at school. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right: tell someone? But when I did, all they said was: ‘But he was your boyfriend, right?’ and ‘Are you sure you don’t just regret it?’
Then one of them asked the boy in question, and he said: ‘She wanted it. She’s just upset now because we broke up’.
And they believed him over me.
From then on, I was branded a liar.
And I think that did almost as much damage as the night itself: it taught me that it was safer to stay silent.
So that’s what I did. I pushed it down, pretended it hadn’t happened, and spent my weekends watching movies, telling myself that just like the heroines in them, my life was going to get better soon too. I just needed to hold on. On the outside it looked like I was okay. I turned up to school, did well in my exams, laughed at people’s jokes. It was only on the inside that I was a carbonated drink just waiting for one more shake before I exploded.
And that shake came about seven months later.
I was with a new friend, we were walking into a house party and ‘he’ was there. Halfway up the set of stairs. Standing with a couple of other guys. We needed to walk past them to get inside. All I could hear was ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. So I held my breath and told myself it would be okay.
But, just as we passed him, he gave this little snigger, and the air rang with his voice – ‘Slut’.
My ears roared. Everyone looked at me. My face grew hot and my vision white. That was the moment my lid finally bounced free.
And I attacked him.
Right there – flailing fists, my vocal cords shredding from screaming – with all those witnesses.
Nobody could see the cause, of course. All they perceived was the effect. The crazy girl who’d lied about him was now attacking him.
Which meant I was the one who ended up having to explain myself to the police. That night, my behaviour, is probably still on record somewhere. But it was almost a relief, having a reason to finally tell them the truth: now I had no choice. But because I’d taken so long, because of what had happened, it looked to them like I was just trying to get myself out of a mess.
And once again, nobody believed me.
But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same thing Josh did: that I should have just told the police on the night it happened. You’re probably right, but life is rarely that simple. To start with I felt sick. Really sick. The world was blurred when I woke the next morning, wrapped in a white rug I’d crawled into at some point in the night. I only got home at 10 am, just in time for the vomiting of bile to begin, the porcelain of the toilet bowel cold beneath my arms as images from the night before flickered through my mind each time I heaved. And I was confused in a way I don’t expect you to understand but need you to try. Because I knew I’d said ‘no’ consistently before that party and into the palm of his hand in the fragments of memory I had of that night – that I’d struggled and he’d forced me and he’d hurt me, but I’d never had sex before and I told myself that maybe that was normal. The pain. The swelling. It was as though my mind was trying to protect me by saying things like It’s just sex, who cares? Like if I could minimise it, if I could tell myself it was no big deal, I could somehow quash the pain. But the problem was that it wasn’t just about the sex. It was about the helplessness. And no matter how much I tried not to think about it, I couldn’t make it un-happen. Nor could I shake the shame because he was a ‘good’ guy, so something must have been deeply wrong with me for him to do that to me, right?
And so, as soon as I’d finished school and saved a little money, I did what any good movie heroine would do: I left it all behind me. I drew a line in the sand, moved to London where nobody could remind me, and recreated myself. Yes. The token blonde wife.
But as it turns out, nobody can outrun their past forever.
Nobody.
So that’s why that night, my reaction to Oliver’s hand over my mouth, the scratch and everything that followed happened.
I stared down at my phone. I needed Oliver to text. Call. Something. To make it okay. But nothing came. The wind whipped my hair around my face and it was getting stuck in my tears. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. It had been fifteen minutes: he wasn’t coming. He wasn’t going to check on me. He was too busy with whatever was going wrong with his business stuff. He was probably on the phone to Justin right now.
I always had been number two.
And so I kept walking. As I got to Chelsea Embankment, I looked around. There was a black cab coming towards me. Its orange light was on. And so I reached out my hand, it pulled over and when the driver wound down the window I said ‘Crouch End, please.’
Then I got in, sank back into the chair and, as the car started to move, stared at my reflection in the window, telling myself that at least now it was over.
8.11 pm
Tess lived in a one-bed flat in Crouch End; a big, dishevelled, brown brick building on the outside – the functional, artless sort with the odd Legoland tree planted between slabs of concrete outside and staircase bannisters inside that you didn’t want to touch for fear of picking up a bug. But her flat itself was lovely. She’d been in it since I met her thirteen years before.
When her grandmother died (and left her some money), Tess had the good sense to put down a deposit on a flat. So she was the only person I knew, aside from Justin, who owned their own place in London. Oliver and I had been planning on buying soon too, but that wouldn’t be happening now.
Nothing I thought was going to happen would be happening.
She was on the fifth floor and when the lift opened there she was, waiting for me, the door open. She reached out and gave me a hug. Her hair was wet and smelled of coconut, like she’d just washed it, her face shiny from night cream, and she was wearing a pair of pink pyjama bottoms with a frayed grey t-shirt. ‘Shit, are you okay?’ she asked, ushering me inside.
I nodded.
But we both kne
w that was a big fat lie. So did the cab driver who’d picked me up – I’d sobbed the whole way over, my eyes becoming more and more puffy, dazed and mascara smeared as a darkening London whizzed by. By the time I got out, I’d stopped crying but looked like a very sad, heroin-chic cabbage patch doll.
‘Fuck him,’ she said, closing the door behind me, heading to the kitchenette and opening the cupboard above the sink. ‘What can I get you, hon? Gin? Tea? Gun?’
I gave a small laugh. ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ I asked. I’m not a smoker per se, but I do smoke when I’m stressed or sad. It’s like I’m trying to fill the cracks in my heart with tar before the whole thing falls apart.
‘I may do …’ she grinned, opening a drawer and rifling around. I moved over to the big, denim-covered sofa that stood against a wall that was half window. I could see lights in the neighbouring building switching on and off as I sat down. There was a mirror to my left with a set of fairy lights twisted around the frame, an enormous desk-slash-bookshelf to my right that I’d helped her assemble and the door to her bedroom just beyond it.
‘Here we are,’ she said, holding up a box of Marlboro Lights and some matches.
There was only a small sliver of window that opened. As she unlatched it, I reached for a cigarette. I lit a match, the end of my cigarette glowed amber and I knelt on the sofa, dangling it outside to avoid setting off the smoke alarm again. That had happened once before. We got in trouble. And as I did all that, I caught sight of my reflection: I looked so fragile. You’ll be okay, Charlie.
‘So what did he say when you asked him?’ Tess asked gently. She was kneeling beside me now, lighting her own cigarette and hanging it out the window.
‘He didn’t say anything really. He was on the phone and fucking around on his computer. Saying he had been locked out and had to get into it. It was awful.’ My forehead creased but I felt strangely calm now.
‘Wow. Not even an excuse?’
I shook my head. ‘No, he wanted out. He was probably relieved.’
‘What makes you say that?’
I sighed. ‘I messaged him on the app, as Annabella.’ I reached for my phone, scrolling through to the app and finding the messages for Tess. I handed it to her.
Her eyes narrowed just a little as she read them – a wince.
‘What a fucker. Did you tell him this was you? That you’d found him on the app?’
I shook my head, taking a drag of my cigarette. Blessed nicotine. ‘But I did tell him I was going to send a screenshot of his profile to his mum. So he knows I’ve seen it.’
Tess started to laugh. ‘Good for you. Did you send it?’
I shook my head and my chest contracted as I remembered everything that had happened.
‘No. It was horrible, Tess. I’ve never seen him like that. We had a fight and he got so angry.’ I took a drag, exhaled a cloud of smoke outside. ‘He banged my head against the wall. I mean, I don’t think he meant it, but it happened.’
Beat.
‘It was so bad,’ I said, taking another drag. ‘But it was me too. I scratched him.’ My throat grew tight as I said the words.
She reached out and squeezed my hand. ‘It’s over now.’
I nodded and she let go of my hand. ‘And on a positive note at least you’ve still got the ring,’ she said, nodding to the yellow stone I loved so much, glittering from my finger. It was small and tasteful: a cushion cut, natural yellow canary diamond surrounded by lots of little white diamonds sparkling in a halo around it. He’d said it was just like me. Unique. Unforgettable. And now look.
‘Why don’t you hock it and we can go on a holiday?’ She stubbed out her cigarette on the windowsill and let it fall into the garden bed below.
I laughed. ‘God, can you imagine how pissed he’d be?’
‘Would be so worth it to see his face when you told him.’
Stubbing out my own cigarette, I reached for my finger and slipped my rings off – engagement ring, then thin gold wedding band – putting them in the inner pocket of my bag. ‘There, now I’m single.’
Tess shot me a small, sad smile. Because she knew as well as I did that it wasn’t that simple.
‘I have an idea – let’s go through his files. Where’s the USB?’
I reached into my bag while Tess went over to her desk and returned with her laptop.
I handed her the USB stick and she plugged it into the side of her computer. I watched her face light up with the screen. She was frowning. Scrolling. Opening things.
‘Shit, there’s a lot here,’ she said. Click. Click. Click. ‘Okay, you have some fucking high credit card bills. But you have more than enough money to pay them all off. And now that you have these, any major purchases or withdrawals from now will be his problem not yours. So good work, hon.’
‘I’m starving,’ I said as she kept clicking.
‘There’s bread for toast and cheese in the fridge. I think there might be half an avocado in there too,’ Tess said, not looking up. Tap. Scroll. Tap. Scroll.
So I left her to it and opened the fridge: nail polish, cheese, half a loaf of gluten-free bread, cottage cheese, some baby spinach, a browning half avocado on a side plate and an open can of pineapple. That was what my fridge would look like soon. Single girl food. Maybe I’d sign up for one of those food delivery services that count your calories for you.
‘Do you want some?’ I asked, pulling out the bread and cheese.
‘Yes please.’
I dropped four pieces into the toaster and the smell of toast filled the room. I reached for the red plastic cutting board and started slicing cheese with the smallest knife in the rack while Tess clicked away on her computer.
‘God, I can’t believe I’m going to need a flatmate again,’ I said, thinking of Tania, the girl I was living with when I met Oliver. She left dish soap in all our glasses and always used my razor. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to that.
‘Well, you can stay here as long as you need,’ Tess said, smiling up at me briefly.
The toaster popped up. ‘Thanks,’ I said, buttering it with the same knife I’d used for the cheese, then laying pieces of cheese down on top. I’d just picked up the plate to take it to Tess when she spoke.
‘Well, hello,’ she said to her screen.
‘What?’ I asked, rushing over. I expected the worst: love letters to someone else, naked pictures, proof of polygamy.
‘Did you know Oliver had a company in the Cayman Islands?’
‘No,’ I replied, relief pulsing through me.
‘Lucamore Enterprises,’ Tess said, frowning down at her screen.
‘He’s never mentioned it,’ I said, sitting down on the sofa and offering her a piece of toast. ‘Are you sure it’s not just one of the companies they were looking at investing in?’
‘Hmmm,’ Tess said, taking a bite.
‘No, there’s stuff here addressed to him. But this is good, babe, offshore means proper money. Maybe you can fleece him in the divorce.’ She looked up at me with a naughty grin.
‘Maybe,’ I said, chewing my toast. ‘Might make up for the worst week ever.’ I left the plate by her legs and sunk into the sofa.
‘At least now you know. At least this way you’re still young and pretty and you can get out there and act again.’
Tess hadn’t approved of Oliver’s no-more-romantic-leads terms and conditions. She said I shouldn’t have to sacrifice part of myself – such a big part – for him.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. I was wondering whether I ever would have discovered all this if I’d gone home to Oliver just half an hour earlier on Tess’s birthday. If that had happened, we wouldn’t have been looking through that app. If I hadn’t seen Oliver’s profile I probably wouldn’t have been so suspicious of @lover7. And I never-ever-ever would have been on that app as Annabella or breaking into Oliver’s computer. It might have all just gone on for years behind my back.
I glanced down at the green ribbon around my wrist. The Bahia br
acelet he’d tied three knots on. There was one final thing I had to do in order to be free. And so I sat up, let out a sigh and went back to the kitchen. I opened the cutlery drawer and pulled out a pair of red-handled kitchen scissors.
Tess looked up as I handed them to her, offering my wrist.
‘Can you cut this off?’
‘Sure.’
And as the blades hugged the fabric, in the very instant before she snipped, I thought of my wishes: being wrong about the app, the newspaper article, till death do us part.
And then snip.
It looked like I wasn’t going to get any of my wishes. But it turns out, I was going to get all three.
MONDAY, 11 JUNE 2018 (7.44 AM)
‘Okay, you know how to lock up, right?’ Tess called from the kitchen as she dropped her teacup in the sink with a ceramic-on-metal clang. I was still in bed, staring up at a crack in the ceiling. My tongue tasted of last night’s cigarettes and my head throbbed.
‘Yes, lock from the inside then pull,’ I said, repeating the instructions she’d given me twice in the last three minutes. I craned my neck and squinted out the window behind me. The sky was baby blue and flawless, and the sunshine coming in through the window was warm and the colour of daffodils. How was everything so fucked up? It was summer, when the air smells of sunscreen, jasmine and cut grass. Nothing bad is supposed to happen in summer.
‘And don’t forget the spare key if you go out,’ Tess said, popping her head back into the bedroom as she slipped on a lightweight trench coat.
I turned to her and nodded. With her pixie cut and taupe beige trench she looked like a brunette, tanned version of that American girl in À Bout de Souffle, the one who sells The New York Herald Tribune.
‘Okay, remember coffee is in the freezer. Good luck today. Text me.’ She picked up her briefcase and with a bang of the door she was gone. The flat was cold and silent without her there but it still smelled like her perfume: rose incense. I reached for my phone and turned it off airplane mode. I expected an apology to be waiting for me. A voicemail. Something to make me feel less sick.
