Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  Daniel takes a swig of his beer, rotates his shoulders back and forward. ‘If you didn’t want to see her, why didn’t you just say you were busy? Why did you agree to hang out with her again today?’

  ‘I don’t know – she is fine really. It’s not a big deal. She’s just a bit unpredictable, that’s all. She does random things like that. Grabbing my bump. Turning up unannounced.’ Going into our bedroom and moving photographs around, I add, in my mind. Looking for treasure under our floorboards.

  Daniel laughs again. He puts his beer down on the sideboard, comes up behind me, places both his hands on the bump.

  ‘I don’t know – I haven’t met her. But I just think maybe you’re overthinking it. She sounds all right to me.’ His hands are warm on my belly. ‘Am I allowed to grab the bump still?’ he asks, murmuring into my neck. ‘Or will you think I’m a weirdo, too?’

  I smile, feel my shoulders loosen. His touch is so comforting; I sink into it. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say. ‘That’s different.’ I stroke his knuckles. ‘The baby’s kicking loads today, feel. Just – here.’ I move Daniel’s hand to the top of my bump, just under my ribs, where I’d felt the pressure a moment earlier, like a fingertip poking me from the inside. But as soon as I do it, the baby stops.

  ‘Oh. Sorry, he’s gone. I’ll tell you next time.’

  ‘Mm.’ Daniel’s hands drift downwards. I try to relax, try not to think about how long it has been since he touched me like this without my clothes on. How enormous I feel. His hands move up to my breasts, and he starts to kiss the back of my neck. I am surprised to feel a shiver of anticipation. Maybe that’s the answer.

  Daniel stops, his hand on my necklace.

  ‘What’s this?’

  I feel the sinews in my shoulders clench. I try to keep my voice even, casual, but I am sure he can hear the wobble in it.

  ‘Just a necklace.’ I wriggle free of Daniel’s grip, my cheeks still hot. ‘I saw it in town. Don’t you like it?’ I return to the stove, start ladling more stock into the rice.

  ‘It’s the one Serena was wearing, isn’t it? Helen …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought we’d talked about this.’

  I’d seen it in the jewellery shop on Turnpin Lane, when Daniel and I were walking back from the market last weekend. It was hanging in a glass cabinet, the little charm moving from side to side ever so slowly, beckoning me. I recognised it straight away, remembered it glinting against the silk of Serena’s top.

  I’d gone back the next day. With no Daniel to stop me, I’d asked the curly-haired sales assistant if I could have a look. It had been more expensive than I’d expected. But it was so beautifully made, the markings on the dog so intricate, even though it was no bigger than my thumbnail. Before I knew it I was nodding yes, I’ll take it, watching as she slipped it into a blue leather box, wrapped it in tissue.

  ‘It’s a lovely necklace,’ the girl had said, cutting a length of ribbon. She had a diamond piercing in her nose, jade rings on her fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ I’d agreed. ‘The dog is sweet.’

  ‘Oh, do you think it’s a dog?’ she’d said vaguely. Then she’d glanced at me and backtracked, worried she’d put me off. ‘You’re right,’ she’d gabbled, snatching my credit card before I could change my mind. ‘It does look like a dog.’

  Daniel is watching me as I move around the kitchen. I switch off the gas, start piling the risotto into bowls. The match is breaking for half-time. I turn down the radio, tuck the necklace inside my jumper. I top the bowls with chopped parsley. As I set them down on the table, I feel the heat of Daniel’s gaze at the back of my neck.

  While we eat, I try to talk about my day, ask Daniel about work. But we don’t seem to be able to get much of a conversation started. After a few mouthfuls, he finishes, abruptly, places his fork back in the bowl. He always eats in this manner, as if it is a chore, a waste of time. He gathers up the bowls, even though I’m not really finished, and leaves them stacked by the sink. I stare at the empty table. Is this it, now? Is this how it is going to be? Even after the baby is here?

  I finish the washing up and walk into the living room. Daniel is down on his hands and knees, reaching under sofas, going through the drawers in the coffee table.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He glances up at me guiltily, as if I’ve caught him doing something wrong.

  ‘Just thought it might be under here. The laptop.’

  ‘I’ll have a proper look tomorrow. Can we not worry about it now?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I thought you said you wanted to watch Luther.’

  ‘Oh yeah. OK.’

  So we sit down to watch TV, sheltering together in the one corner of living room that we’ve managed to preserve from the building work. The nicer chairs and tables are draped in white sheets like ghosts. I watch the blue light of the TV flicker on Daniel’s face, and wonder what it is that my husband is hiding from me.

  GREENWICH PARK

  On the high street, car headlights and street lamps flicker on. Shop shutters start to come down, like eyes closing. She watches, and waits.

  The man is behind the glass, a window that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. All the other lights in the building are off. His is the only one remaining.

  She shifts on her feet. The sky is darkening, the light draining out of it in streaks of pink and orange over the houses. He would normally be home by now. But something is keeping him here this evening. Something stopping him going home to his beautiful wife.

  The man stands up, slings a bag over his shoulder, gathers his things. Picks up a magazine on his desk, tries to tear it in half, but it’s too thick. Now, feeling foolish, he glances up, as if he senses he is being watched. Her neck prickles – has he seen her?

  But no, the man has not seen her. Of course not, she scolds herself. She is safe here, in the shadows. The man tosses the magazine into the wastepaper bin instead. Then, finally, he picks up the envelope on his desk. Here we are, she thinks. Here we are. The man takes the envelope, rips it open and pulls out the contents onto his desk. She watches, gleefully, this silent film. She feels her fingers twitch, the saliva pool in her mouth, as the bag slips off the man’s shoulder, as he grabs for the side of his desk, as if he has been tossed, untethered, into space. Into a place without air, a place without gravity.

  KATIE

  As I sit in court, I try hard to focus on the evidence. I take down the defendant’s answers in shorthand, my pen makes a scratching sound against my notebook.

  ‘Her eyes were open.’ The defendant is tall, blond, with bright blue eyes. His palms are turned up and outwards in the body language of honesty. ‘She pulled me towards her.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘We kissed.’

  ‘You kissed her?’

  ‘Yes, and she kissed me back.’

  ‘And you were in no doubt whatsoever that she consented to this contact?’

  He smiles, looks straight at the jury. ‘None whatsoever.’

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  ‘And what happened after that?’

  The weather is getting cold now; the clerks wear cardigans and scarves inside the courtroom, plug heaters in at the walls. Everything about the room is starting to grate on me; the awful, cheap patterned carpet, the filthy plug sockets, the musty smell, the dust along the windowsills. DCI Carter is here again. He is wearing a diamond-patterned jumper under his suit jacket. I nod at him and he gently nods back.

  After we went for coffee that time, I’d kept thinking about the way he’d reacted when I said that thing about rape cases. It made me wonder whether something had happened, in the past. Back at the office, I’d pulled up the digital archive, searched for his name. There were murder cases, kidnapping cases. Not many for rape.

  Eventually, I’d found it. The papers had called it the Boathouse Rape. The echoes with the current case had been obvious. The privileged backgrounds of the accused. The
vulnerability of the victim. The beauty of the backdrop. The ugliness of the detail.

  It had been even worse for the victims back then. They couldn’t report this girl’s name, of course – she’d have anonymity for life under the law. But everything else about her life had been laid out in lurid technicolour. The underwear she’d had on, the number of drinks she’d had at the party. The way she’d been dressed, the way she’d behaved, how much sexual experience she’d had before. It was all in the stories, every last bit. She had been just sixteen years old.

  I guessed the conclusion, even before I came to the end of the cuttings. There was a picture of the two smirking defendants on the Cambridge courtroom steps. Quotes from their lawyers complaining that they should have had anonymity too, that their young lives had been shattered. And at the very bottom, a few words from the senior investigating officer, about the bravery of the victim in coming forward, his hope that the verdict would not deter others from doing so. His name was DCI Mark Carter.

  I saved the cuttings in a folder on my laptop, clicking and dragging each article one by one. As I did so, I noticed the date of the offence. It had all happened in the summer of 2008. I counted on my fingers. Hadn’t Helen still been at Cambridge University that summer?

  The next time I spoke to Helen on the phone, I asked her if she remembered it.

  ‘There was loads in the national papers,’ I told her. ‘The Boathouse Rape, they called it. A young girl who turned up at one of those May week parties at Cambridge, the summer you left. She said two male students had got her drunk and raped her.’

  Helen didn’t respond straight away.

  ‘Helen, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Can’t remember it,’ she said vaguely. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason really. Just researching the detective on this current case. Thought you might remember it, what it was like being at the university when something like that was happening.’

  ‘Oh, right, I see.’ Her voice was odd. She sounded relieved. ‘Well, I think we’d left by the time all that was really in the news.’ I frowned. I thought she’d said she didn’t remember it being in the news?

  ‘All rise.’

  The case is breaking for a bit. Everyone stands. When I look up, DCI Carter is gone. He must have slipped out the back. I had been hoping to lure him to the pub at lunchtime, try and get a bit more out of him. Ask if he ever passed the victim my letter.

  I head to the toilets. It occurs to me how tired I am. I think about seeing Charlie tonight. He has promised to cook me pasta, and I can stop thinking about the case for a while. Maybe after dinner we can watch The Apprentice and laugh at the contestants. If I can get back in time – the last time I drove from Cambridge to Charlie’s flat in east London, it had taken me two hours. My heart had sunk when I’d seen the long snake of red brake lights cramped together on the motorway. It occurred to me how much I wanted to get back to Charlie, how homesick I felt for him, how much I longed to see the light on at the window of his little top-floor flat.

  I step out of the cubicle to wash my hands. I close my eyes as the warm water washes over my hands, inhale the lemon smell of the soap. I haven’t had a day off for weeks now. I long to lie in a bath, soak the exhaustion from my body. Curl up under a duvet without first setting an alarm for 6 a.m.

  When I open my eyes, she is standing straight in front of me, on the cheap lino of the courtroom toilets, next to the hand dryers. Her cuffs are pulled over her fingers, her fists balled up inside the sleeves of her cardigan as if for protection. Her hair looks unwashed, her eyes puffy. It’s Emily Oliver. The victim.

  Our eyes meet. I take a deep breath. The situation feels surreal. Surely a victim in a criminal case has access to their own toilet? It seems hideous that she is here, that she should have to bump into me like this.

  ‘I got your letter,’ she says flatly. She rubs one eye with a balled-up hand. ‘But they told me not to talk to you.’ I notice the skin around her thumbnail is bitten to bleeding.

  ‘I’m sure they did,’ I say. I shake my hands dry gently, wipe them on my trousers. I don’t want to come closer, to risk setting off the hand dryers, breaking the spell. I don’t want any noise.

  ‘I can’t talk to anyone. Even my therapist,’ she says. She looks up at me, angry now. ‘Did you know that? Even what I say to my therapist could be used against me. That’s what they said.’ Her voice is brittle, catching in her throat. ‘I can’t talk to anyone.’

  I pause, weigh my words carefully. ‘The police are right,’ I tell her, my voice so soft it is almost a murmur. ‘They’re trying to protect you. They’re right that you shouldn’t talk to anyone – not at the moment. Not before the end of the trial. So if anyone asks you to – any of the other journalists – I would say no.’

  ‘What about after?’

  I take a deep breath. She is a bird, inching towards my outstretched hand. One false move and she will fly away.

  ‘That’s up to you,’ I say, slowly. ‘But, if you would like to tell your story, I could help you, if that was what you wanted.’

  In the mirror I can see the door, its tarnished handle, the sign that says PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS. I stare at the door and will it not to open. If anyone else comes in, this conversation will be over.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  I take a tiny step forward. Look her in the eye.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘I do.’

  ‘Does the jury?’ Her voice is slow, controlled, but her teeth are gritted. ‘Or do they believe them?’ This last word is pronounced with quiet venom.

  I hesitate. I think about saying yes. But I need to tell the truth. And the truth is that it is complicated. She is not the perfect victim. She drank. She flirted. She prevaricated over the decision to report.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, eventually. ‘But you have done everything you possibly could.’

  The girl’s hair falls in front of her face. She pushes it straight back behind her ear, crossly, with a small, pale hand. When she hasn’t said anything for a few moments, I reach inside my bag, feel for the sharp edges of my business cards. I take one and slowly reach towards her, holding it between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘I’m Katie,’ I say.

  She stares at the card, the black-and-white logo. She doesn’t take it.

  ‘My dad doesn’t like your newspaper.’ She sniffs. ‘He says it’s a rag. That it twists things.’

  I nod, shoot her a rueful smile. ‘It does sometimes,’ I admit. ‘But I don’t.’

  ‘He reads the Guardian.’ She eyes me carefully, goading me, wanting to see if I’ll react.

  ‘My dad reads the Guardian too,’ I say truthfully. ‘I’m a bit of a disappointment.’

  She considers this. Looks down at my card.

  ‘You’re here every day.’ She sighs. ‘And all the others are blokes.’

  I nod. Finally, she takes the card. Holds it between her fingers, as if she isn’t sure how it works.

  ‘Listen,’ I say. I take another tiny step towards her. ‘You need to concentrate on the trial. But afterwards, if you did want to … tell your story, I could help you do it in a way you were happy with. We could write it together.’

  She looks up, a sceptical expression on her face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I could send you the whole thing. Before we published. You could read it, and if you didn’t like it, we could change it.’ I look at her. ‘I swear. No twisting.’

  I hold her gaze, try to ignore the roar of blood in my ears. Copy approval, that’s what I’m promising. Something we never promise, we never agree to. I hear the screams of my boss, Hugh, in my ears. But surely this is different. Surely Hugh will understand.

  ‘If I did it. You would pay me?’ She looks at the ground as if she is ashamed for asking. ‘It’s not about that,’ she mutters. ‘I just … we’re not rich.’

  We are in dangerous territory now. I should not be having this conversation. Not while the trial is still
going on. But she has sought me out. And I might not get another chance.

  I take a deep breath. ‘We could pay you. But we shouldn’t really discuss that now.’

  As I finish my sentence, the speakers in the corner of the toilets blast into life. The clerk’s voice is calling us back into court. The girl takes a deep breath.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘You’ve got my card. If you want to, when it’s all finished, call me. It’s my mobile on there – you can call me any time, day or night. I won’t mind. And we can discuss the idea of an article and I can answer any questions you have. No obligations. OK?’ I pause. ‘If you don’t want to go through with it, that’s absolutely fine. Even if you decide to go with another paper, I can try and help, give you advice on all that, if you want.’

  Hugh’s voice is still screaming. What the fuck are you saying, Wheeler? You might as well give her the number of the fucking Guardian! I silence him. Concentrate on the girl. She is still holding my card.

  ‘But if you did want to go ahead, that’s how it would work with me. We’d do it together. You’d be in charge. And if it would make you feel better, you could bring someone. A friend. Or the detective could be there with you. DCI Carter. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

  She looks up at me. I have guessed correctly; he has been kind to her, won her trust. At the mention of his name, she has softened. I take a deep breath, try to ignore DCI Carter’s voice in my ear now, asking me what the hell I’m doing, getting him involved in a media interview.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I might.’

  34 WEEKS

  HELEN

  The builders have gone for the weekend. Daniel, home early again, is in a good mood, humming as he mixes a Seedlip and tonic for me. I’m determined that this time we will have a nice evening.

  I had been looking forward to celebrating our anniversary this year, before the baby comes. In truth, I think we need it. We’ve been snapping at each other more than normal – about the building work, about the antenatal classes, about money. We need time, I have decided. Proper time, just the two of us.