Asking for It

by Louise O'Neill

  I stood there in silence, staring out the window. This view is amazing, people used to say when they came to my house. You can see the entire bay. You are so lucky.

  People used to say I was lucky.

  Conor just tells me funny stories and silly jokes, and he keeps sending the emails, despite the fact that I have never answered. He never mentions Sean or Fitzy. He never said that Dylan has dropped out of school and had to get a job in a local garage. Your father refuses to go there now, my mother told me, he goes all the way to Kilgavan to get his petrol. It was as if she was trying to prove my father’s love for me when really it is just one more reason for him to resent me.

  I wonder if Conor knows how grateful I am for these emails. I wonder if he knows that they’re the best part of my day.

  Hi Emmie, the email message starts, and I can’t believe I ever found that nickname annoying –

  I was looking through old photos on my laptop the other day and I found some of you and me. I’m pretty sure that they were taken after my eleventh birthday party. Do you remember? Mom took us to the cinema to see the first Iron Man movie and you threw such a tantrum Mom said her eardrums were still ringing when we got home. After Caoimhe had driven all the other lads home, you and I watched Home and Away and ate leftover birthday cake, and you said that you were glad it was just us again.

  I had wanted to see some other movie, the name of which I can’t even recall now. Iron Man is for boys, I pouted, and Conor had said that he didn’t mind, we could go to whatever I wanted. That didn’t last long, Fitzy and Eli kicking up such a fuss that Dymphna had to split us up, making Conor’s oldest sister, Caoimhe, take me while Dymphna brought Eli and Fitzy to see Iron Man. Conor had come with Caoimhe and me. He said his birthday wouldn’t be the same without me there.

  I’m looking at one photo of us, side by side on that crappy old couch we used to have, you know the one, with cream and pink and yellow swirls that you said looked like melted Neapolitan ice cream, and I’ve got chocolate stains all over my mouth and I look like such a baby sitting next to you. Even then, Emmie, you were so beautiful. It’s easier to say that to you by email, when I don’t have to look at you. But you are, you know. You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known. And I miss you.

  I delete the email and place the iPhone carefully on my locker. I don’t like these types of emails as much as the other ones he sends. When he tells me I’m beautiful, it feels as if he’s saying that this was all my fault, that if I didn’t look the way I did then this wouldn’t have happened to me.

  I turn the light off. I used to have glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling. My father spent hours painstakingly arranging them in the exact shape of my favourite constellations. Anything for my little princess, he had said.

  I scraped them off a few months ago. I wanted everything to be clean. I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.

  It’s too early to ask my mother for my sleeping tablet. I will the clock to move faster, for it to be 10 p.m. That is the time that my mother has deemed suitable for bed. Normal.

  I live for bedtime. Some days it is all I can think about. That blissful moment when the sleeping tablets start to kick in, when I can feel my mind going loose, when there are no edges to hurt myself on and I can fall into my dreams. For that moment I can pretend that I’m dying, that I’m letting go of all this, slipping into the next world, whatever that might be.

  That’s what I want to believe death will be like. I want to believe it will be as simple as falling asleep.

  Friday

  ‘And what time do you call this?’ my mother demands as I sit down. The dining table wobbles. My father keeps saying he’ll take a look at it. He says he’ll do a lot of things. I shake some Alpen into a bowl.

  ‘Where’s the milk?’ I ask her.

  ‘I forgot to get any,’ she says. I sigh and she bristles. ‘That’s neither here nor there. You’re an hour late for school.’

  ‘I’m not going.’ I walk into the kitchen and rummage through the bread bin. I find the heel end of the sliced pan, and put it in the toaster, filling up a pint glass with water and gulping it down.

  ‘Emma, you’re going to have to start going in. You’re in sixth year, remember?’

  Exams. Points. Books. Studying. I remember when it all seemed to matter.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me then?’

  ‘I . . . I, well, I . . .’ She’s flustered. ‘. . . well, that’s not really the issue, is it? Ms McCarthy rang again this morning, wanting to know where you were.’

  Ms McCarthy came to the house a lot at the start. The doorbell would ring, and the three of us would tense. There had been problems. Phone calls. Anonymous letters. A bag of dog shit left on the front porch. Harmless pranks, the guards said. Keep track of it. Contact us again if it escalates. We were nervous. We stared at one another, wondering who would crack first. My father would push himself out of his chair as I rushed upstairs, hissing at my mother to tell whoever it is that I’m not in. I always kept my bedroom door open so I could listen though, the low murmur of voices from downstairs as my mother made tea, offering biscuits and cake. Afterwards, there were study notes left behind and brochures from UCC and UL, shiny kids with American-style white teeth on the cover, clasping books to their chests.

  ‘What did you tell her?’ I say.

  ‘I told her you were getting through the curriculum at home.’

  I nod. That was the right thing to say.

  ‘You missed a call from Beth as well.’

  ‘Did I?’

  My aunt phones every week, giving me pep talks on how I need to create public sympathy and how this is all about how other people perceive you, you have to spin it the right way. She keeps promising to visit, because she wants to give my poor goddaughter a big hug, but there never seems to be a good time, what with work, and her friends, and her agreeing to participate in the London Marathon and her need to train properly for that because she’s running for the Cork Rape Crisis Centre, darling, I want you to know that. I’m doing this for you.

  My mother sighs as she hands me the two pills.

  The toaster pops and I start.

  ‘It’s just the toaster, Emma,’ she says. ‘Deep breaths, OK?’

  I take the slice of toast, grab the marmalade from the fridge and sit back at the table. She follows me. ‘Wait. Show me, Emma.’

  I ignore her, opening the jar.

  ‘Emma. Show me, I said.’

  I stick out my tongue. ‘See? Gone.’

  ‘Good girl.’ She sits beside me, still grasping a mug in her hands. Her bob is frizzing, sprinkled with coarse white hairs around the hairline. Oh, I don’t see the point in getting my hair done every week any more, she told me a few months ago. It just seems like a waste of money when I can do it myself. She slurps her tea, loudly, and I cannot cope with how disgusting she is, disgusting, and I want to knock the cup out of her hands.

  (You’re so like your mother, aren’t you?)

  (Oh, you’re the image of your mother!)

  ‘And remember,’ she says, ‘your therapist session is at five.’

  ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ There’s a shadow of something in her eyes, a glimmer of panic forming. ‘Your appointment is at five. And you will be there, Emma.’

  My parents are insistent I go to the therapist every week. They seem to think that it keeps the problem contained in some way, that it stops it from touching them, their lives. What is ‘it’? the therapist asks me. Use your words. It is nothingness. It is a desire to sleep forever. My parents are afraid that if I stop taking the tablets, if I stop going to see the therapist, I might start talking instead. I might start to remember.

  They need not worry.

  I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.

  ‘And we have a meeting with the solicitor at two.’

  ‘What’s th
e point? He can’t take my case anyway.’

  ‘I know, Emma, but Aidan said he’d meet us anyway. Just to discuss the news from the guards.’

  What is there to discuss? I am a life ruiner.

  ‘It’s important to get an expert opinion,’ she says. ‘So remember – two o’clock.’

  ‘Why did you schedule an appointment in the middle of the day if I’m supposed to be at school?’ I ask. She stares out the window. She doesn’t like it when I ask questions like that, when I go off script. My mother gives out to me for not going to school, and I pretend that I’ll go next week, and my mother mentions a tutor, and I nod, and my mother gives me the new batch of college brochures that Ms McCarthy has sent, and I take them to my room, promising to look at them, and I throw them in the bin, and the next morning the bin has been emptied, but my mother never mentions the discarded brochures, and on and on and on it goes, and my world gets smaller, wrapping itself around me.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ she says. ‘Be ready.’

  *

  ‘Nora. And Emma. Come in, come in.’ Aidan Heffernan waves us into his office, winking at the middle-aged secretary sitting at the desk outside his door. My father had been determined to hire Aidan Heffernan. ‘He’s the best solicitor in Ballinatoom,’ he kept saying. ‘We need to get him before the O’Briens do.’ Not that it had mattered. ‘I can’t take her case, I’m sorry to say,’ Aidan told us the first time we came, me, my mother and my father sitting in his office. He didn’t look very sorry, probably afraid that the golfing trips to the K Club with Ciarán O’Brien would disappear into thin air. ‘Under Irish law, Emma doesn’t have the right to separate legal representation. The DPP –’ he broke off – ‘I’m sorry, the Director of Public Prosecutions – will bring the accused to court and prosecute on behalf of the state. Not on Emma’s behalf per se. The only time you’ll be entitled to a solicitor is if an application is made to bring up Emma’s sexual history.’

  ‘They won’t do that though, will they?’ I said, and my father had looked sick. My mother began to babble: ‘We don’t need to worry about that, Emmie is a good girl, we raised her to know better than that.’ I tried to look like a good girl while I counted my sins.

  (How many boys?)

  (What were you wearing?)

  (How much did you have to drink?)

  My father spoke again, ignoring the secretary’s offer of Scottish shortbread. ‘And what about those boys?’

  ‘They’ll get to choose their own solicitor,’ Mr Heffernan said. ‘The accused’s right to legal representation is safeguarded under the Irish Constitution.’ We left soon after. The bill for a consultation had arrived the very next day, my father wincing as he opened the envelope. It must cost a lot to keep a man in fancy biscuits.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us,’ my mother tells Aidan as he sits down in his burgundy leather chair, gesturing at us to sit in the two chairs opposite the oak desk, which is covered in mounds of files and paper and a PC. There are framed certificates on the bottle-green walls, and one large window that runs from ceiling to floor, a beige sash blind covering it.

  ‘You’ve a fabulous colour,’ she says, and he waves a hand at her in denial. ‘Did you have a nice time?’

  ‘Three weeks of sunshine and Margaux, how bad.’ He fiddles with the cufflinks on his crisp white shirt. ‘Have you any holidays planned this year yourselves?’

  My mother simpers at this, as if we’re planning an all-inclusive trip to the Maldives for the whole family.

  ‘Did . . .’ she hesitates, ‘Sheila enjoy the holiday too?’

  ‘Oh, she did,’ Aidan says. ‘She was well in need of a break. Did she not phone you?’ My mother shakes her head. ‘Oh. I know she meant to. It must have slipped her mind.’ There’s an awkward pause. ‘Anyway.’ He opens a cream-coloured file on his desk and looks through some pieces of paper. ‘I see we’ve had some news while I was away. The DPP has decided to prosecute.’

  ‘Yes, the guards contacted us last week,’ my mother says.

  ‘You must be thrilled.’

  This case will be on their permanent record forever. Fitzy won’t get into his course at that place in Rhode Island, and what did he do? they say. He didn’t take part, not really. I can’t remember. Their lives will be ruined. (I am ruining their lives.)

  ‘Oh, we are. We’re delighted,’ my mother says. ‘Although to be perfectly honest, I don’t understand why it has taken them this long.’

  ‘Nora, I know it seems that way, but a year isn’t that long I assure you. Not in a case this complicated. And of course, there was some difficulty in getting all the evidence together.’

  The guards had asked anyone who was at the party to come forward and to give their statement. No one did. The guards asked anyone who had photos saved to their phones or computers to email them to the station. I don’t think anyone did that either, except for my brother, who had had the foresight to save them all to a flash drive. Lucky, the guards said. Very lucky that he did that. Lucky. Does Bryan think of those photos when he looks at me now? Does he see pink flesh, splayed legs? Have I ruined his life as well?

  ‘It could take another two years for this to come to trial, you know. That wouldn’t be unusual,’ Aidan says, and my mother blanches. ‘It’s just a shame that Emma was over eighteen at the time or they could have prosecuted them for possession and distribution of paedophilic images. So much easier to prove than the issue of consent.’ (Yet another thing that I’ve done wrong.) He shakes his head while he speed-reads through the file. He drops the file on his desk. ‘But still. It’s good that the DPP has decided to prosecute. They don’t do that very often, you know. Rate of conviction is terrible low in this country.’

  What’s the point then?

  ‘Yes,’ he laughs, and I realize that I’ve spoken out loud. ‘I guess you could say that.’ My mother’s lip starts to quiver and he says quickly, ‘But this is great news. Great news altogether. The Book of Evidence must be very strong.’

  ‘What’s the Book of Evidence again?’ my mother asks him. I could have told her. The lady in the Rape Crisis Centre explained it all to me when I finally went there. It’s not your fault, she kept telling me. My mother picked me up after the appointment, but she didn’t ask me how it went, or what they were like, or if I was feeling OK, or if I thought it had helped me. She didn’t say anything at all.

  ‘It’s the evidence compiled by the Gardai,’ Aidan explains to her. ‘It’s the charges made against the accused, a list of witnesses, statements, any physical evidence that is going to be introduced at the trial, that sort of thing. There would normally be forensics, of course, but since Emma refused to go for tests in the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit . . .’

  That was in the very beginning when I didn’t want to be in a waiting room with other girls who had been . . . that word. I kept saying that I had been pretending to be asleep in the photos, that it had all been a joke. I still thought it might go away then.

  ‘Well, we’ve plenty of other physical evidence.’ My mother sniffs. ‘All those photos.’ Those photos are all I see. They are my thoughts and my daydreams. They are my nightmares and my memories. ‘Surely it’ll be an open-and-shut case once the judge sees those,’ she says.

  ‘Well,’ Aidan says, ‘we don’t know if they’ll be admitted.’

  ‘What?’ My mother’s head snaps up. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Aidan spreads his fingers out and presses them into the dark wood. ‘This is all unprecedented, Nora. It’s a whole new world, all these camera phones and Facebook pages and whatnot. I have no idea whether the judge will allow it.’

  ‘Can’t you check? Can’t you check this book thing and see if the photos are in it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nora.’ He shrugs. ‘Only the prosecuting solicitor, the accused and their representation will be allowed to see it.’

  ‘What? But if it’s all about Emma—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Aidan cuts her off. ‘That’s just the way it
is.’

  I can’t be told too much, the woman at the Rape Crisis Centre explained. We can’t talk about what evidence you will give in court, she said. Otherwise, they could claim I coached you about what to say. But I can’t help but try and imagine what the court case will be like. Will it be like what they show on Law and Order: SVU? Will I have to swear on a Bible, stand in front of Paul and Sean and Fitzy and Dylan and their families, all of them staring at me, hating me, whispering under their breath, slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore?

  ‘You had how many drinks?’ their barrister would ask, the jury gasping when I told them. (Would there be a jury?)

  ‘There were reports you took MDMA, a Class A illegal substance,’ he would say (surely it would be a he, no woman would be so cruel, right?). ‘What do you say to this? You claim that Mr O’Brien gave it to you? Mr O’Brien – an upstanding citizen and exceptional athlete, who was on track to play football for Cork senior team – you’re trying to tell us that he gave you Class A drugs? Have you ever taken drugs before? Remember you’re under oath.’ (That’s what they always said on TV: Remember you’re under oath.) ‘We have statements from your friends that swear that they saw you taking illicit substances on numerous occasions before then. And you admit that you had sex with Mr O’Brien voluntarily? You admit that? And why did you change your story? In your initial statement to the Gardai, you said that you were pretending to be asleep, is that correct? I have that statement here. In it you say that those boys were your friends, that they would never have done that, that this was all a huge mistake. Why did you change your statement? You were afraid, you say? You were embarrassed? Is that why you changed your statement to say that you had, in fact, been raped? Were you embarrassed by what you had done? Were you ashamed of yourself once the pictures began to circulate? You seem confused to me. You say you can’t remember. Well, I put it to you that it was consensual, that you gave consent, but you can’t remember now. Does that seem fair?’