Asking for It

by Louise O'Neill

  And it would be all my fault.

  ‘So, Em, are you heading out this weekend?’ Bryan changes the subject.

  I pretend to give this some consideration. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not this weekend.’

  ‘I met Maggie at Centra earlier, and she said she and Jamie are going to hang out at Ali’s later, watch a movie. Nothing too hectic, she said, because of –’ he hesitates – ‘the, eh, Leaving being so close now, you know. Anyway, she said that she’d tried to text you to ask if you wanted to come, and she phoned too but she couldn’t get on to you.’

  ‘Oh, wait.’ My mother slams her hand down on the table. The knife jumps off her plate and hits the floor with a clatter. I jerk back in fright. ‘She rang the house phone earlier looking for you.’

  ‘And why didn’t you tell Emma?’ my father asks. ‘Why didn’t you pass on the message?’

  ‘I forgot. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re forgetting a lot of things these days,’ my father mutters.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘I’ll ring her later,’ I say. The girls had come to visit at the beginning, filing into my room like mourners at a wake. I could tell a small part of them loved this, the drama of it all. ‘Yes, she’s my best friend,’ they could say. ‘Yes, I was there that night.’ ‘Yes, I know what’s happened. Emma talks to me. She trusts me.’

  Maggie had been distraught, her eyes welling up, constantly reaching out to hug me. (I didn’t want to be touched.) I was stiff, my arms stuck to my sides. She broke away, embarrassed, apologizing over and over again for leaving the party without me, for not insisting that I go home with them, for being mean to me in school.

  ‘But I didn’t know, Em,’ she had said. ‘I didn’t know about all of this. I thought you had fucked Ali over, and with the whole Eli thing . . .’ I stared at her and she flushed. ‘Well, you did kiss him, Emma. Not that it matters now, obviously, but can you understand why I was cross with you? Even a little bit?’

  I turned to watch Ali tracing her fingers over the Polaroids I had glued to my vanity mirror, and I knew she was counting to see how many she was in.

  ‘Ali,’ Maggie had hissed at her. She joined us on the bed, sitting with her legs curled up underneath her, telling me she forgave me for sleeping with Sean. She was restless, uncomfortable. She wanted things to go back to normal.

  So did I.

  ‘Wait, are those my sunglasses?’ she said, picking up the Warby Parkers. I remember taking those. I remember thinking she could afford a new pair, I remember feeling it wasn’t fair, why weren’t my parents rich too? I remember caring about stuff like that.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t even feel embarrassed.

  ‘Ali, for fuck’s sake.’ Maggie’s face was turning red. ‘Will you just cop on?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. And it didn’t. None of it mattered.

  We were silent for a few moments. Silence follows me everywhere these days.

  ‘But are you sure, Em?’ Ali blurted out. ‘You were pretty wasted.’

  ‘Ali.’

  ‘What? Mags, I have to ask. Sean is a good guy, I just want Emma to be, like, totally sure.’ She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. (I didn’t want to be touched.) ‘You know I’m on your side, right? I was just asking if it was, like, rape rape.’ (I don’t want to hear that word.)

  ‘Do you want to go out?’ I said. ‘I heard Dylan’s throwing a party in his place.’

  ‘What? Why would you want to go—’

  ‘Or we can just go out,’ I said. ‘Do you want to go out for a few drinks?’

  ‘Eh, sure,’ Maggie said, looking at Ali in confusion. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  I wanted things to go back to normal.

  Ringing the doorbell of Dylan’s house. Walking into the kitchen to put our beer in the fridge. Silence. We go into the living room. One person leaves. Another. And another. It is only Maggie, Ali and me left. Sarah Swallows saying, ‘I think you had better leave. Dylan doesn’t want her here.’ We go to Reilly’s. I drink and I drink and I drink. I try to forget my shame. (I can’t remember.)

  Maggie and Ali came to the house again the next day, wanting to ‘discuss last night’. We couldn’t find you, someone said you went down that alleyway, who was that guy, Emma?

  The next time they came to visit, I refused to see them. And the next time, and the next. They had too many questions, and I didn’t have any answers.

  I never heard from Jamie. Maggie told me that she was just so busy, I know she wants to see you but things are crazy for her at home, and she’s still working, and she’s studying her ass off because she’s been offered a scholarship dependent on her results.

  I wish I could tell Jamie that I did her a favour. I wish I could explain to her that she is the lucky one. If I could go back, pretend like nothing had happened, I would.

  ‘You should go meet them,’ my mother says to me, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge door. ‘When was the last time you saw the girls?’

  ‘I think it’s nearly time for The Late Late,’ I say, and she checks her watch, gasping when she sees the time, shooing all of us out, leaving the table laden down with dirty dishes.

  In the TV room, the four of us stand, unsure of which seats to take, which combinations to follow. Bryan sits down first, on the sofa, pulling me down beside him. I can smell his aftershave, and nausea shudders through me. I shift away. My mother sits on the edge of the sofa, on Bryan’s side.

  ‘This is nice, isn’t it? It’s nice for all four of us to be at home together,’ she says as my father folds himself into the recliner chair. He puts the leg-rests up, gesturing impatiently at her.

  ‘Yes, Denis?’

  ‘Remote.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Can. You. Give. Me. The. Remote. Control.’

  Bryan digs it out from under his seat and leans forward to pass it to my father. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said, Denis?’ my mother says again.

  ‘Well, good evening and welcome to The Late Late Show!’ the presenter says, smiling into the camera. ‘Coming up on the programme, we have rising star Sasha Peters here to sing a song from her debut album, described by Hot Press as the “best Irish record of the last three years”; best-selling author Roisin Flewett will talk about her newest release, Did You Ever Really Love Me?; we’re going to meet the man who’s swapping horses for tractors; and we’ll be talking to one of the greatest rugby legends this country has ever produced.’ A photo of Padraig Brady flashes on the screen. ‘We’ll also be discussing the Ballinatoom Case. One year on, what happens next? We have legal expert Sean O’Reilly here, as well as child psychologist Suzanne Meade, and Lorna Sisk from the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin to debate whether—’

  My father pushes himself out of the recliner and leaves the room. My mother slams her glass on the coffee table, jabbing at the buttons of the remote until the screen cuts out. I close my eyes, something heavy coursing through my veins, grating against my bones.

  I need something sharp to cut it out with.

  ‘It’s disgraceful,’ Bryan says, his fists clenching. ‘Fucking disgraceful. I’m going to make a complaint, I’m going to write an email to RTÉ tomorrow and tell them that they can’t just do that, it’s traumatizing for people, there have to be trigger warnings. Right, Emma? Shouldn’t they have put a trigger warning before it?’

  When did we all become fluent in this language that none of us wanted to learn?

  ‘It’s not cool, they can’t just do that, what about other victims of rape, what do they think?’

  Was there always this much of (don’t say the word, don’t say that word ever again) before, on TV and on the radio, and in songs and in movies and in the papers and I just never noticed?

  ‘Well,’ my mother says, ‘I’m not in the form for The Late Late anyway.’ She picks up a copy of the RTÉ Guide from the coffee table and leafs through it. ‘Look, there’s a fi
lm on Channel 4, some romantic comedy. That’ll do, won’t it?’

  Neither Bryan nor I says anything.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks me, but I can’t look at him. (He has seen the photos. He has seen me, pink flesh, slut, whore, bitch.)

  My mother turns the TV back on. ‘I hate the term chick-lit, I find it pejorative,’ the red-headed author is saying while the presenter nods. My mother switches channel.

  ‘Here we are,’ she says. ‘This is better now, isn’t it?’

  It’s about fifteen minutes into the film, but it’s easy enough to catch up. It’s about a girl, petite and pretty, whose younger sister is getting married before her, and everyone acts like this is a terrible tragedy. At the hen party the women, all emaciated with sleek hair, start talking about their ‘numbers’.

  ‘What’s your number?’ a bitchy girl asks the main character, the other girls at the hen party giggling in anticipation.

  What’s your number? What’s your number, Emma?

  (Remember you’re under oath.)

  Does it count if you can’t remember? Does it count if you didn’t want it to happen in the first place?

  Saturday

  I can hear my parents arguing as I come downstairs for breakfast. I tiptoe nearer to the door, pressing my ear against it. It’s the only way I can find out what’s happening these days.

  ‘It’s just not good enough, Denis. Beth says that—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, will you stop talking about Beth? Beth this, Beth that. Where the fuck is Beth?’ My breath shortens. My father never swears. ‘Have we seen her since all of this happened? No. All we get are phone calls giving us bloody PR advice.’

  ‘You can’t blame Beth for this, Denis. It’s not like she’s the one leaking Garda information. “A source in the local Garda station says that the alleged victim was well known locally for her promiscuous behaviour.” Why are they bringing it up anyway? Didn’t Aidan Heffernan say that they’d have to make a special application to bring up any of that sort of thing?’

  ‘I’d say it’s fairly likely they’re going to apply for that, isn’t it? Have you seen what the papers are saying about her? How did you not know what she was up to, Nora? You’re her mother for God’s sake. Christ, I feel as if we never knew her at all. I’m just glad my parents aren’t still alive to see all this. The shame would have killed them.’

  I hear a low sob, and then my father saying, ‘Please, Nora. Please. Don’t cry. I can’t . . .’

  When I first changed my mind and decided I had been that word, Joe Quirke had come to the house. He was wearing plain clothes, driving the ‘undercover’ cop car whose licence plate every kid in Ballinatoom had memorized by the time we were fourteen. A big man with thinning grey hair, he always seemed to have a sheen of sweat on his brow. He wanted to talk to Nora and Denis, he said, he would bring the ban-garda the next time to speak with me in private. It wasn’t usual, he said, to do this in people’s homes, and he would have to do it again in a more formal setting, but his sister Bernie had asked him to help out so he was prepared to bend the rules a little. Just for us. I was told to leave, to go upstairs, and I did, making a big show of banging my bedroom door so they would hear it downstairs. Then I had crept back down, wincing as the wooden boards of the stairs creaked, and listened in to the conversation. My father’s answers had been monosyllabic, ‘Yes. No. Yes. No. I don’t know. Are we done here, Joe?’

  (I started to log in to my father’s email account, scan through his text messages when he wasn’t looking. I needed to see what he was saying about me, what he was thinking. If he thought this was my fault. I check them again and again, each time bracing myself for the worst. But my name is never mentioned. It as if I have been erased.)

  Then my mother began.

  Please give me your name for the tape recorder: Nora O’Donovan.

  Where were you the night of the alleged attack? We, sorry, that is Denis and I—

  Who is Denis? Joe, you know who Denis is, for God’s sake—

  Please, tell me who Denis is, for the tape recorder. Oh, right. Sorry, Joe. Denis is my husband. Emmie’s father. Denis and I had gone to Killarney for the night. Bryan, sorry, Emmie’s brother Bryan, had given us a voucher for a deal for a hotel down there. For our anniversary.

  Continue. Well, we’d had a lovely night, but Denis was anxious to get home. He had a few meetings on the Monday that he wanted to look over his notes for, and you know what he’s like. And it was such a gorgeous day. I mean, who’d want to be in a car on a day like that is beyond me—

  Can we please stick to the relevant information. Sorry, Joe. So we arrived home, and I saw something on the porch, but you know, my eyesight isn’t the best, so I asked Denis. I said, ‘Denis, what is that on the porch, it looks like a black plastic bag or something,’ and he stopped the car, well, stalled really, and I went flying forward and I was giving out to him, I was saying, ‘Denis – for God’s sake, Denis – are you trying to give me whiplash?’ and he said, ‘Shut up, Nora.’ And then he said, ‘That’s Emmie.’

  Just lying on the porch? I’m surprised none of the neighbours found her before that. Well, they couldn’t have. There’s no way they would have just left her there. We look out for each other on the estate.

  OK. What happened next? For a moment, all I could think of was that she was dead, that she must be dead, sure why else would she have been collapsed on the porch like that . . .

  Take your time. Do you want a glass of water? No, Joe. Thank you. I’m fine. So I ran out of the car, I can’t remember the last time I ran that fast, until I got to her, and she was so sunburnt there were blisters forming around her hairline, and her dress was on back to front, I remember that distinctly because I kept thinking, did she go out with her dress like that, and she, and she . . .

  Yes? You’re OK, Nora. This is all confidential? You won’t tell Bernadette?

  Of course. It’s just that, Emma wasn’t, she wasn’t wearing any . . . underwear. And I pulled the dress down as quickly as I could before Denis could see it, and her skin was so hot, she was burning up. And she wasn’t making any sense, she was talking gibberish, and she was like jelly, she kept falling over, and her knees and hands were bleeding, gushing blood, it was like something out of a horror film.

  What did you do then? Denis said that we’d better bring her to SouthDoc, that she must have sunstroke. It was just a coincidence that Jimmy was on duty. And sure, we’ve known Jimmy for years, he went to school with Denis, he was Denis’s best man, you know that. He’s like family. He said Emma had sunstroke all right, and that she wasn’t the first he’d seen that weekend, that so many people lost the run of themselves with this heat. And I tried to tell him that Emmie wasn’t like that, that Emmie was obsessed with taking care of her skin, that she wore factor fifty on Christmas Day.

  Did you tell Dr Fitzpatrick about your concerns? Did you ask him to run any other tests? No. No. I didn’t even think, how would I have thought that . . . I don’t know. But with his son being implicated . . . Not that he would have known that at the time. Not that we—

  And what about Emma? What about Emma?

  Did she say anything at this time that might be of relevance to the case? No. We kept asking her . . . We kept asking her questions but . . . she just kept saying she felt sick, that she couldn’t remember what had happened, how she got home, that she didn’t know why she was lying on the porch. But—

  But what? Joe, you should have seen her there, on that porch. Just lying there. It was as if she was a bag of rubbish, ready to be thrown away.

  I was crammed full of rubbish, of shit, of the stuff that was no use any more, that no one wanted, or could ever want again. I was dirty. (I should be thrown away.) And as I listened it was as if I could feel myself crack into two, me and her, and now it was she who was Emma, Emma O’Donovan. I was the Ballinatoom Girl.

  The female guard had arrived two days afterwards, wearing jeans and a white shirt. As soon as she came in the door of the TV room
I recognized her – she was one of Susan Twomey’s best friends. (Elaine? Tracey? Jess?) She had been with her after that match, had snickered when Susan had pulled at my top and told me to cover myself up. She was polite, refusing my mother’s offer of tea and biscuits, waiting until my mother said, OK, I’ll let you alone so. I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need anything. She had been businesslike, talking me through the questions briskly.

  ‘It’s all a misunderstanding,’ I told her again and again. ‘It was all a joke. I was pretending to be asleep.’

  Afterwards, once more refusing my mother’s baking, she asked if I had taken the morning-after pill, if I had gotten tested for any sexually transmitted infections. ‘Sure, why would she need to do that?’ my mother had interjected. ‘They were all good local boys, from good families.’ The guard raised an eyebrow.

  Then the blistering began. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to so I grabbed a hand mirror, holding it up so I could see myself (pink flesh) (splayed legs) and (the photos, the photos, Bryan saw those photos, Conor saw those photos, my father saw those photos) I could see open sores, oozing. I dropped the hand mirror. I should take a pair of scissors and cut it off, and get them to sew it back up. What would it matter? It didn’t belong to me any more anyway.