by West, Sam
And maybe, just maybe, she was now at the point where she was considering giving up her night-walking altogether.
“What are you thinking?” Lucy asked, and Freya realized that she had gone quiet.
“Nothing,” she said, fixing a smile on her face – a smile that was, for once, genuine. “I’ve had a really great time tonight, thanks.”
“Hey, the night’s not over yet. It’s only just gone midnight, and we’re going back to Gary’s remember?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I hardly know Jim, it might be a bit weird.”
“Weird? How is it weird? You’re my mate, and I spend more time at Gary and Jim’s than I do my own place.”
“Jim lives with Gary? You never said.”
“You never asked. Come on, Freya, they’re really nice blokes. Jim is a nice bloke. You can trust him, I promise.” She put down her drink on the bar and reached out to gently place her hand over her forearm. “Look, Freya, I don’t know what’s happened to you in your life, and maybe one day you’ll tell me, but not everyone in the world is a cunt. There are some nice people out there.”
Freya was torn. Yes, logic dictated that not everybody had to be a shithead. Just because she had yet to meet anyone decent, it didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.
Fuck it. It’s not like I can’t look after myself, is it?
“Fine. Then I guess we’re going to Gary and Jim’s.”
“Atta girl. You won’t regret it, I promise.”
The four of them had caught a taxi together back to Jim and Gary’s one bedroomed flat. Being skint students, it was all that they could afford. Both guys kept their clothes in the bedroom, with one taking the double-bed and the other kipping on the pull-out sofa bed in the living-room. Since Lucy had all but moved in, Jim had been taking the sofa-bed option more and more.
In fact, this was the very thing that he was currently moaning about to Freya. Freya and Lucy were sprawled out on the sofa that turned into Jim’s bed, and the two guys were sitting on the floor. Jim accepted the joint off Gary as he spoke:
“That thing you two are sitting on is the most uncomfortable fucking contraption in the world. I mean seriously, it’s amazing I can still walk in the morning.”
“Yeah, same goes for me,” Lucy giggled.
Jim rolled his eyes. “Yeah. In case you didn’t notice, I do have ears in my head. Unfortunately, these walls are like paper.”
He passed the joint up to Freya, and when her fingers brushed his as she accepted it, a little spark of electricity shot up her arm. God, she was getting really fucking wasted. And it felt good. For the first time in her life, she trusted the company she was in enough to even do such a thing.
This has to be milestone in my life, she thought dreamily.
Gary clambered to his feet. “Mate, if you actually had a bird, then maybe you wouldn’t be so uptight about me and Lucy bonking.” Gary looked pointedly at Freya, and grinned. “Anyway, We’re out of beer. I’m going to Tesco.”
“Tesco?” Lucy said. “But it’s gone one.”
“The twenty-four-hour Tesco, silly. You coming?” he asked Jim.
“Fine,” Jim said, also getting up. He smiled down at Freya, and her heart gave a little lurch. “We won’t be long, twenty minutes, tops.”
“Do they always go everywhere together?” Freya asked once the guys had left the flat.
“Well, you know how it is. They might act all macho, but it’s still a city, and Ashburn has got a bit of a dodgy reputation at night. Safety in numbers, and all that.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I think it’s sweet.”
“Yeah.”
“Freya?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened to you to make you the way you are?”
Normally, such a question would’ve had her shutting down faster than an oyster snapping shut. But as it was Lucy asking, and as she was so comfortably numb, she found herself replying candidly and honestly before she even really knew what she was doing.
“When I was nineteen, I was raped. Like I said before, I haven’t had the best life, but by the time I was nineteen, I was kind of getting it together. I was well and truly out of the care system and I was even at University up in Sheffield, doing a degree in Art. But one night, coming home from a club a little worse for wear, I was jumped by a stranger. I was unlucky. Extremely unlucky. I don’t know if you’re aware, but statistically, women usually know their rapists. Not always very well, but they usually know them, however loose the connection. Not me, though. I was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. This guy, he kidnapped me. He took me back to his house, and he held me in the basement for two weeks before the police found me…”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to give Lucy details of her ordeal, of how she had been convinced that she would die. Oh, the unspeakable things that he had done to her…
A gentle hand on her shoulder made her eyes snap open.
“I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
To her dismay, the kindness in her voice threatened to be her undoing. Shakily, she brought the joint up to her lips and took a hit as the tears prickled behind her eyes.
Her head swam with the strength of the marijuana, but it was a good kind of swimming. Exhaling shakily, she forced herself to relax into the high. Only dimly was she aware of Lucy plucking the spliff out of her fingers and placing in in the ashtray on the floor.
I’m crying, she realised in horror.
“Come here,” Lucy murmured, pulling her damp face to her bare shoulder above the strapless, polka-dot dress.
Freya allowed herself to be held, finding the way that she was stroking her hair strangely soothing. Lucy curled a finger under her chin and lifted her head so that she was gazing into her eyes.
“Freya,” she said softly, and before she knew what was happening, Lucy was kissing her.
At first, Freya didn’t fully register what was happening.
This must be a mistake, came the fleeting thought, but when Lucy’s tongue darted into her mouth, Freya realised that this was no mistake.
Freya jumped to her feet, roughly pushing her off her and stared down at a glassy-eyed Lucy on the sofa.
“Lucy? What the fuck?”
Jumping to her feet like that so quickly had been a bad idea, and she swayed slightly on the spot.
“Jesus Freya, I’m sorry.” Lucy said, she too scrambling up from the sofa.
“Stay away from me, Lucy.”
She spun around, and went careering into Gary. Jim, who was still out in the hallway, was speed-talking as he shut the flat door behind himself:
“They almost wouldn’t serve us – good job I had my driver’s license on me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, this challenge 25 policy is a joke. Do I seriously look like I could be under eighteen…”
His voice trailed off as he came to a halt next to Gary, looking in bewilderment from one person to the nest. “What did I miss? What’s going on?”
Gary folded his arms across his chest. “That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
Freya felt her cheeks flame, still damp from the tears. How could Lucy do this to her? She had trusted her.
“I have to go,” she said, weaving around Gary and Jim.
She stalked out into the hallway, grabbing her long leather coat off the coatrack as she did so.
“Freya, wait! It’s the middle of the night, you can’t just strop off like this,” Lucy called after her.
“Freya?” Jim said, hot on Lucy’s heels. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe you should ask Lucy that,” she said her voice cracking.
Not hanging around for a reply, she yanked open the flat door and threw herself out into the city night.
Once more, she was on familiar ground. This was where she belonged. She belonged to the night, and the night belonged to her. In that moment, she vowed that she would never let her guard down again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lucy stared after her, wide-eyed.
Shit, what the fuck have I done?
Dazedly, Lucy watched her departing figure, and only when the door slammed shut behind the upset girl did she spring into action. Shoving past Gary, she hurtled into the living-room in search of her shoes. Last night, when she had stayed over, she had quite fortuitously left a pair of trainers behind.
Sure enough, they were still there where she had left them, sticking out from beneath the floor-length curtains that adorned the bay-window.
“Lucy?” Gary asked.
Gary was generally a pretty even-natured kind of a guy, but there was no mistaking his ill-concealed rage.
“I have to go after her,” she said, shoving her feet into the trainers and refusing to look him in the eye.
“You had your fucking tongue rammed down her throat. If you walk out that door now, you can fucking forget about ever walking back through it.”
Jim cleared his throat. “Why don’t I go after her? Leave you guys to talk…”
“No. This is my mess. I’m going.”
Still refusing to meet her boyfriend’s eye, she ran out of the flat and into the night, her shame weighing heavy on her conscience.
Out on the street, she looked both left and right. Her attention snapped to the right; she was sure she glimpsed Freya’s long, black coat disappear around the corner of the long street.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath, breaking out into a sprint.
She regretted not wearing a coat, but it was supposed to be summer and she didn’t have one with her. And somehow, she doubted that Gary would’ve been in a charitable enough mood to lend her one of his.
Oh God, what have I done?
Honestly, she had no idea what had come over her. She wasn’t that drunk, and she wasn’t a lesbian.
Oh yeah? So then why did you kiss her?
She had no answer for that as she jogged down the usually busy, main road. Up ahead, where she had thought she had seen Freya, the road turned into a quieter side street. As she neared it she slowed to walk, clutching her sides as the stitch ripped through her.
All the way down the end of the suburban street, she thought she glimpsed her again, disappearing up an alleyway between houses. But she couldn’t tell for sure if it was her or not, it was just so dark.
Still clutching her sides, she resumed her brisk walk along the street. Her own breathing was ragged in her ears, blotting out the sounds of the night.
Why the fuck did I kiss her?
She had no answer to that one thought it her head. It blared in her mind, blotting out all else. Freya was just so damn beautiful – so fucking beautiful, it hurt. Lucy was no slouch in the looks department herself, but on the rare occasion that she saw a girl out and about who was arguably better looking than her – which, truth be told, wasn’t that often – she felt nothing but a fleeting stab of insecurity, or maybe the briefest flit of jealousy.
But Freya’s beauty blew her mind in a whole new way entirely. Even in her dowdy work uniform she made Lucy think of a solar eclipse; a girl not to be stared at for too long for fear of burning out your eyes. She was dazzling, there was no other word to describe her.
And tonight, she had never been more dazzling. Her beauty had sucked Lucy in, and the more she looked, the more beautiful she became. Freya’s beauty, especially tonight, was an ethereal beauty, utterly devoid of ego, a real sledgehammer to the brain. But it was more than that. When she had finally opened up about her past and cried, she had been just so heart-breakingly vulnerable. Not miserable, or angry, just somehow noble in her vulnerability. She had seemed so raw and exposed, and oh so brave to open up like that. So what did Lucy go and do? She went and pissed all over her trust, is what she did.
And now, chasing after a woman that simply didn’t want to be caught, the full magnitude of her actions hit her hard.
What a complete and utter cunt I am. She must hate me, and she has every right to.
So engrossed was she in thinking about Freya, that she gasped in surprise when a figure spilled out from one of the front-gates about five houses in front of her. The man stood in the middle of the pavement, blocking her path.
Lucy slowed down and her heart sped up. This was wrong. He was wrong. The way he just stood there, legs slightly apart like that, made her flesh creep.
Silently, she cursed the darkness of the street. Given the fact that the high hedges obscured most of the light that the houses might normally have thrown off, and that he was standing a good distance away from the nearest streetlamp, he was cast almost entirely in shadows. From what she could see, he was dressed in black; black jeans, and a black hoodie with the hood pulled up over his head. As such, it was impossible to determine the man’s age.
The only reason why she didn’t turn around and run was because he had his back to her. The front-gardens on this street were long, their hedges high. She suddenly felt completely and utterly unsafe because unless someone happened to be looking out of their bedroom window at this very moment, no one could see her.
Don’t be such a drama-queen, she told herself. Yet still she ground to a halt, on the brink of fleeing.
She let out a shaky sigh of relief when the man began walking away from her. She too resumed walking, ignoring the little voice in her head telling her to get the fuck away, right now.
She walked, he walked. He slowed, she slowed. Now there were just three semi-detached houses separating them.
It’s just a guy walking home, she told herself. He’s been round a mate’s house, or his girlfriend’s, and now he’s going home.
She didn’t like how dark this street was; how little traffic there was. No, she didn’t like it one bit.
But now, because of the man in front, she had slowed her pace to such an extent that Freya would be long gone by now; she would have no chance of catching up with her.
What the fuck am I even doing, anyway?
Good sense prevailed, and she turned around, briskly heading back the way she had come. She would go back to Gary’s, try and make peace with him. Maybe she hadn’t blown it, maybe if she could just explain…
Explain what? What the fuck is there to explain?
Just as she was thinking about throwing herself on his mercy and explaining the unexplainable
(I am not a lesbian, I am not)
the sound of footsteps cut through her musings. Her heart slammed painfully in her chest as the adrenalin coursed through her. Without turning round to see she picked up her pace, breaking out into what she hoped was not too much of an obvious jog.
The footsteps behind her quickened, drawing ever closer. The pretence was off. With a small cry of terror, Freya broke out into a full-blown run.
So did the man behind her, and before she could fully understand what was happening, she was grabbed and shoved into the prickly depths of a seven foot hedge, the man’s hand pressed over her mouth. Her lips mashed painfully against her teeth with the force of his palm pressing down on her face. The foliage scraped her bare arms and legs, the man’s other arm gripping her upper arm.
The man’s face, mostly obscured by the hood he wore, leered down at her. A glimmer of recognition danced on the peripherals of her mind, just out of reach. That brief sense of familiarity was swiftly swamped by panicked terror because she couldn’t properly draw breath. The edge of his forefinger mashed into her nostrils, bending her nose to the side. She tried to suck down a breath but mainly filled her lungs with the stink of his hand – something salty and vaguely meaty.
“If you scream, I’ll end you. Nod if you understand.”
His voice was soft, barely a whisper. And again, that same, fleeting feeling assailed her: I know this man.
She peered up at his face through her haze of tears, assessing him in a split second. She could not see his hair given that he wore a hood, but the lay of the shadows suggested that he had a crew-cut. But try as she might, still she could not place him. She knew that long, straight nose, that thin mouth
, the corner of which was lifted into a cruel smile… Fuck, she was just so sure of it.
Not wanting to suffocate, she nodded her head, gasping down air when the hand thankfully lifted. He didn’t let up, though, not a chance, and in a moment of utter certainty, Lucy knew that she was going to die, or at the very least be raped.
No, he can’t rape me here, we’re in the middle of the street…
“Please don’t hurt me,” she gasped.
His grip on her arm tightened, and his other hand snaked up to firmly cup her neck and jaw. Not being able to stop herself, Lucy opened her mouth to scream. It was immediately cut dead by a stinging slap to her face. Her head snapped sideways with the force of the blow.
“You will pay for Freya’s stupidity,” came the strange words through the ringing in her ears. “Walk with me. My car is parked close.”
Not a fucking chance, came the panicked thought.
Despite the direness of the situation she found herself in, she understood that statistically, doing as he asked would drastically decrease her chances of survival. Every damn second that she was with him, so her chances of escape diminished.
The headlights of an approaching car had her heart soaring in hope, only to be dashed as the car drove on by.
“Walk. Now.”
Did she detect an edge of panic to his voice? Yes, she decided. She had. They were still out in public, she still had a chance. She could still run, scream, fight.
“Don’t even think about trying anything funny.”
He leaned in close to her face, his grip on her neck coiling tighter like a Boa-constrictor. A hot, beery, garlicky gust of breath hit her square in the face, making her wince in disgust. She also caught the faintest waft of a woman’s perfume – a familiar scent – like he had been close to a girl recently.
Oh God, he raped and killed some girl, and now I’m next.
