Before I Let You In

by Jenny Blackhurst

  ‘Must have been a mistake then; they sent you the wrong one.’ Noah started to grizzle, and Eleanor propped him up in his inflatable ring before it could turn into a full-on howl. She was still getting used to a baby’s attention span; it seemed like Toby had been so much more content to sit and play, but of course he’d been much older. This was uncharted territory. ‘You should have called me. Did you tell Fran?’

  It was clear from the way Bea hesitated that she still hadn’t told her sister about what had happened to her – not this week, but sixteen years ago.

  ‘I thought you were closer to Fran these days?’

  Bea nodded. ‘We are closer, but it happened so long ago, how do you bring that sort of thing up? “Hey, Fran, guess what …”’ She trailed off, unable to be flippant about what had happened to her a lifetime ago. Which just showed how much it still affected her, Eleanor thought; Bea could be flippant about just about any situation, no matter how bad. Sometimes it made her and Karen cringe, the way she could joke about the most sensitive of subjects; but not this.

  It had worried them both at the time that she’d never reported what had happened – she’d just turned up at Eleanor’s parents’ home one Sunday morning in such a frightening state that Eleanor had been on the phone to Karen before Bea had made it up the driveway. Karen had taken the first train back from Sheffield, where she was at university, and instantly insisted that Bea went to the police, but she’d refused. Who’d believe me when I can’t even remember what happened? It’d be my word against his – and everyone could see what a state I was in. I’d be the drunken slag who cried rape – it’d be me who suffered and he’d be the victim. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

  Eleanor hadn’t agreed, but at least she’d understood. Karen had pretended to as well, but they all knew that in her black and white world, if someone had committed a crime they should be punished. There was no awful grey area where a girl whose only crime was to have too much to drink got torn apart in the court of human opinion.

  As if reading Eleanor’s mind, Bea leaned forward and lowered her voice.

  ‘Look, you won’t tell Karen about this, will you? I don’t really have the energy to be psychoanalysed today.’

  Eleanor nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. Karen was amazing, the first person everyone turned to in a crisis. She always knew exactly what to do, but sometimes her concern could be a bit, well, suffocating.

  ‘No problem. I think you should just put it down to the stress at work – your prick of a boss stirring up old wounds or whatever the saying is – and the shock of seeing that book you hadn’t ordered. I don’t think you need to worry that the nightmares will start again. After all, you slept okay last night, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Bea nodded, reaching out to pick Noah up from the mat. ‘I don’t need to dissect it – all that “How does that make you feel?” bull. I just want to forget about it.’

  ‘Forget about what?’ Karen’s voice came from the doorway, and both women’s heads snapped up in shock. Bea shoved the banner under the sofa just as Karen walked into the room. ‘Adam let me in – he’s just got home. Forget about what?’

  Eleanor cast a surreptitious glance at Bea, who looked about three shades paler. How much had she heard?

  Bea ignored Eleanor’s look and laughed. ‘All right, bat ears! I was just telling Eleanor about the latest in the saga that is the office. Gary is still acting like David Brent; Sandra said we should spike his coffee, but I reckon I should just forget about it. Get on with my work, you know – be all growed up and stuff.’

  Karen raised her eyebrows, and in that moment Eleanor was certain she had heard everything.

  ‘Sounds like a good plan – have you had a bump to the head?’

  Bea stuck her middle finger up in response and stood up to hand Noah over to Karen’s open arms, kicking a silver foil letter further under the settee as she did.

  ‘You’re just in time, Grandma – I need a glass of wine.’

  17

  Bea

  She hadn’t had the dream for three days – hadn’t dreamt at all, in fact. She’d been scared to go to sleep at first; the thought of seeing his face when she closed her eyes had terrified her so much that she’d sat up on the sofa watching Doctor Who box sets until her head pounded with exhaustion and she’d barely made it to bed before she’d collapsed into the black void of sleep. It had reminded her so vividly of the past, of spending days and nights on Eleanor’s sofa after it happened, the three of them in pyjamas – Karen and Bea’s borrowed from Eleanor because they’d both left home in such a rush – that on waking the next morning she had resolved to snap out of the fug she was heading for if she wasn’t careful and get on with her life. She’d dropped the book round at Eleanor’s on the way to the gym – no sense in wasting a perfectly good book, after all – and attempted to forget ever opening it.

  When it had first happened, all those years ago, Bea had thought about nothing else but getting the justice she deserved. She’d fantasise about him being dragged from his warm, comfy bed in the middle of the night by SWAT teams and sentenced to public castration or hanging by the neck until dead like in the good old days. Sometimes she dreamed that they were standing on a cliff in the dead of the night and Bea was the only thing between him and the rocks below. Live or die – she decides. When she woke from the dream, screaming and crying, she could never quite bring herself to tell her friends which decision she’d made.

  Karen and Eleanor had been amazing, but the one thing they’d never managed to do was convince her to go to the police. As much as she wanted to see Kieran Ressler suffer, the thought of everyone at university, her mum, her sister and worse still her dad knowing what he had done – what she had let happen – was a nightmare beyond the one she had been living. The fact was that it would be her word against his, and there would be plenty of people to attest to the fact that she had been in the kind of state where plenty of women had done things they regretted.

  The other thing that scared her, even more than telling the police, was that one of these days, in one of these dreams, she would remember what had actually happened after he’d taken her home. Which would be worse? If he’d done what he’d done after she had passed out unconscious, or if she’d been awake the entire time, so terrified that her inebriated mind had chosen to blank it out? What would happen to her on the day it all came screaming back? And – something that haunted her waking moments as well as her sleeping ones – what if she’d said yes? What would happen to her on the day it all came screaming back? How would that memory rewire what had become of her life since that night? Her entire existence had been split into two – Before the night and After. Going out into the night with her friends, dressed in a black playsuit that skimmed the ample cheeks of her arse and with a neckline that ended at her navel, as someone who firmly believed that bad things only happened to other people – stupid women who were careless and walked home on their own after dark, dragged into bushes with knives held at their throats; and waking up the next day in her own safe, comfortable bed, her naked body bruised and aching, as a victim.

  Now, sixteen years later, she could think of nothing worse than the truth coming out, or justice being served. These days, even the thought of him walking into a police station (though that wasn’t really possible, was it?) and confessing his sins, dragging up the past, letting everyone know what a stupid little girl she’d been, could stop her heart in her chest. She’d spent a long time, after all, cultivating her tough-cookie, good-time girl image; no one could ever know that she’d been acting her way through life ever since that night.

  Bea wondered sometimes what it was like to live without despising yourself. To know exactly who you were and be proud of that person. It was funny; people automatically assumed that what her life was missing, what she must desperately be in need of – after all, wasn’t every woman? – was a husband. When in actual fact she wasn’t desperate to be loved by another person; all she wanted was
to feel the slightest bit of affection for herself.

  Bea wanted to be a success at something. Anything. When people talked about Eleanor, they always spoke with awe about how much she loved her family, and how lovely Toby was, and now she was thinking about starting her own business with a three-month-old in tow. Karen had her own beautiful home that she’d mortgaged without Michael’s help, and a career that was only headed upwards. What did they say about Bea? How much fun she was, always up for a laugh and a joke, another pint or a glass of wine. How her shoes were always killer and she never left the house without make-up. How was it that all she had to show for over three decades of living was an ability to match the right shoes to an outfit and drink the same volume of alcohol as a seventeen-stone rugby player?

  She didn’t blame her whole life on him. It would be easy to think that what had happened to her that night had made her incapable of giving or receiving love, or that she would have been head of some corporation or other if she had never met Kieran Ressler, never let him walk her home, but she had no way of knowing how things would have turned out, so what was the point? What had happened was so much a part of her life that it would be like wondering daily what it would be like if she’d been born taller, or skinnier, or blonder. It wouldn’t change anything, and anyway she might have screwed up just as royally as a tall skinny blonde.

  When she’d found out about the accident, she hadn’t known how to feel. Karen and Eleanor had both told her he’d got what he deserved, but she found it hard to reconcile the pitiful creature in the hospital bed on the news with the monster she’d seen so many times in her dreams. He seemed smaller somehow, shrunken and pale, with all those tubes keeping him alive. He certainly didn’t seem dangerous any more, and for that she should feel grateful, but all she felt was numb. His living hell didn’t seem enough, and yet had she felt sorry for him? The thought repulsed her, but she was only human and she couldn’t bring herself to feel glad that anyone should be trapped in that existence for the rest of his sad life. Cognitive dissonance, wasn’t that what Karen called it? This feeling that two separate people existed inside her, constantly fighting to take control of her thoughts.

  She’d done so well not to think about him lately, not to even google his name. Now she was going to have to relearn how to forget all over again.

  Her mobile phone began to ring, and she glanced at the clock: 9.20 – she’d been sitting there for two hours. It was Karen calling, somehow sensing after all these years exactly when her friend needed her most.

  18

  Karen

  ‘I’ve got an idea, about this weekend.’ Karen was at the cooker, checking the early dinner she was making, some fancy recipe involving far too much attention considering Michael was leaving in just over an hour and she should be spending every last second stuck to him like his shadow.

  ‘Hmm?’ Michael wandered over to the cooker and reached around her with a fork to stab at a scallop in the frying pan.

  ‘Stop it, you’ll ruin my swanky supper!’ Karen swatted at him with the fish slice and he wrapped his free arm around her waist whilst trying to shove the hot scallop in his mouth.

  ‘What’s your idea?’ he asked when his mouth had recovered from the pain.

  ‘How about you don’t go? Say there’s been a problem, you can’t make it. We can spend all weekend here in bed. Naked.’

  Michael groaned and let go of her waist. ‘Don’t, Karen. You know I’d love nothing more.’

  ‘Would you?’ Karen fixed him with a look, even as she heard her head voice telling her to stop. Don’t send him away on a bad note. Don’t be that person. The neurotic girlfriend.

  ‘Of course. But I have to go. You know I do.’

  ‘I told the girls you were going to Doncaster,’ she said, turning back to the cooker.

  ‘Doncaster? Do I have to come back with a northern accent?’

  When she didn’t laugh, he put the fork down and turned her around, pulling her close to his chest. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just tell them the truth. They’re your best friends.’

  Karen put her head on his shoulder and sighed. ‘I just don’t want to. Not yet. Let’s not talk about it any more. Let’s just eat.’

  ‘I have a better idea. I have an hour until I need to go. Now what could we do in an hour?’

  Karen forced a smile on to her face. If she had to watch him go, she could at least give him something to think about while he was away.

  ‘I can think of a few things,’ she said, reaching round to unhook her bra.

  She sat on her bed in just her dressing gown, knees up to her chest. The smell of sex and aftershave was still in the air, even though it had been two hours since Michael had showered and left. She couldn’t bear to get on with her evening the way the girls would be imagining she was, so she reached over and pulled her laptop from her bedside table on to her knee. She booted up, clicked on the Internet Explorer icon and typed F into the address bar. The computer filled in the remaining address and the familiar blue band loaded, already logged in.

  When Facebook had first arrived in their lives, Karen hadn’t bothered signing up. Bea laughed at her and told her she was the only person she knew who hadn’t been on Myspace and now she would be the only person on the planet without a Facebook account, but Karen had replied that her life was far too boring to subject other people to it, and if she found herself desperately needing to know what Bea had had for breakfast, she could always call her and ask her.

  It wasn’t that she felt she had anything to hide. She could have joined Facebook, posted random rubbish that had no bearing on her real life. She could have pretended she had a perfect life even on days when she wanted to scream, or moaned about trivial grievances like the entire Western world seemed to do. It was nothing to do with hiding things; she just didn’t feel like pretending any more than she already was.

  But Bea and Eleanor thrived on it. Karen thought they might as well have printed out timetables and stuck them up at random bus stops around town – along with a miniature map powered by Google and pictures with blurred backgrounds and faded edges. A sepia-tinted Instagram lifestyle. Bea couldn’t go from the living room to the kitchen without checking in. Bea Barker is eating toasted sandwiches and drinking wine … classy! With Eleanor Whitney and Karen Browning at My Pad.

  None of her friends knew about her secret Facebook account. It had no picture, a fake name and no friends. It was locked down so tightly that to anyone who came across it accidentally, it probably looked like a defunct account that Julie Sparrow had all but deleted. There was only one name in the search history, and she clicked it now, waiting the few painful seconds it took to load. She did this so often when she was alone, it was like second nature. Like picking at a scab that you know will be painful but your fingers do it automatically. You know it’ll never heal if you keep picking, but then the scab works free and there’s that instant satisfaction, followed by a sting that lasts much longer.

  Emily Lenton is feeling excited!

  That was all it said, but that was all it needed to. She was happy, and that was what caused Karen’s pain. She flicked through recent posts, pictures of Emily and her family, smiling, beautiful creatures who looked to Karen like the children she herself would never have. She carried on through their family holidays and birthdays until she found the one she was looking for: a Christmas dinner, the whole family beaming. Karen had first seen it on Christmas Day and had cried for hours until Michael had found her asleep on the sofa, worn out by exhaustion, the remains of her own Christmas lunch splattered over the wall of her living room.

  And there it was. The pain of working the scab free, only this pain wasn’t physical. It was the pain of her heart breaking.

  19

  Karen

  Karen worked all day Saturday, distracting herself from the constant ache in her chest that set up camp every time Michael went away and stayed until he was back in her bed. In the evening she called friends, not Bea and Eleanor, but
her pie-crust friends, easily made, easily broken, people just out for a good time. People who didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.

  In the week she usually wore her long dark hair pulled back from her face, wore two-piece suits of navy, black or grey. Her shirts were fitted and showed barely any neck let alone – heaven forbid – cleavage. The little make-up she put on was neutral, professional. During the week she was the consummate professional. But not at the weekend.

  Her red lip gloss glistened wetly, and she smiled to get her cheek rouge just right. She combed out her hair and ran the straighteners along it, spraying on shine to accent the lustre. Her black jeans and low-cut red V-neck clung to her lithe frame like a second skin. Karen had no real curves, not like Bea – or Eleanor, pre-baby – but she was slim and athletic and never failed to turn heads. It might sound vain, boastful even, but at her age she was incredibly proud to pass for a woman in her twenties.

  She met her friends outside a bar in town, three girls she’d gone to college with, all unmarried with no children to worry about rushing home for. These were professional singletons who loved to drink and flirt with every man in the bar whilst moaning about how much they hated the opposite sex. Tilly, blonde, plump, with breasts that entered a room five minutes before the rest of her; Erin, tall and willowy but plain-faced and painfully shy; and Catherine, with yellow tiger-striped highlights and a too-tight black dress, who insisted on being called Cat even at their age.

  They hugged without embracing and air-kissed without anyone smudging their make-up. A counterfeit greeting for counterfeit friends, pulled together by grim circumstance.