What You Did

by Claire McGowan

  The lawyer Jodi had found was a young and perky solicitor called Anna McCrum. Northern Ireland, I thought, her voice forthright and loud. She wore a trench coat and black trousers cropped at the ankle, neat and composed on this Sunday afternoon. We should have been cleaning up the dinner party now. Settling down with the Sunday lunch Mike had promised to cook. Drinking red wine. Laughing ruefully at how hungover we were. Then waving our guests off, getting back to our lives, ready for work and school tomorrow. Now I didn’t know what would happen. The mere act of ushering Anna into the living room, trying to find a cup and coffee and milk, almost finished me off, and I stood in front of the fridge for a full two minutes, staring blankly at the contents. Someone had put the leftovers away, neatly covered in cling film. Jodi, probably. Funny how I’d never seen the value of her before, her careful ways, her attention to detail, but she was the only one doing anything practical to help. It was the details that mattered when the entire world had fallen apart. Like was there any milk or clean cups and had someone loaded the dishwasher. I felt a wave of guilt that I’d never made more effort with her.

  ‘It’s Ali, yes?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Everyone else had called me Mrs Morris, as if I was Mike’s mother, someone old and fragile. Oh God – someone would have to tell his parents, ring them at their villa in France. I knew that I absolutely couldn’t face it just now. ‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’

  Anna folded her foot, neat in a ballet pump, over her leg. ‘Right so. As you might know, they did find semen in Ms Rampling, consistent with sexual intercourse. They’re trying to rush through the DNA testing on that I believe.’

  ‘But he . . . he told me they’d had sex earlier that day. Consensual. So they might . . . find something from that.’ My mind shied away from it. Was he saying they hadn’t used a condom? That small extra betrayal sent a flare of rage through me, burning my oesophagus like acid. How could he. How could she?

  I watched Anna’s face to see if she was judging us, the mess of our lives, but she gave nothing away. ‘Hmm. That does make it a bit complicated.’

  ‘What about the bruising? They can match it to his hands or something? I mean it wouldn’t match, of course.’

  ‘They can try, but that’s not always conclusive. Now, Ali, we need to make sure we have all Mike’s clothes from last night. He mentioned a jumper?’

  I pictured it, bright red and glowing. The Hugo Boss one he’d left lying on the decking. ‘He didn’t have it when they took him in?’ I remembered going up to him in the swing seat, noticing the gooseflesh on his arms. ‘No, he wasn’t wearing it, I remember now. He took it off. I don’t know where it is.’

  She tapped her pen against her notebook. It had owls on the cover, I noticed. A thing that a child might use to write their sums in. ‘OK, well, we need to find that jumper. If any of his clothing’s gone it’ll seem dodgy. Now. They’ve made a decision to charge him, as you know, so that means it goes to the magistrates’ court tomorrow.’

  ‘Will he get bail?’ I was realising how little I knew about this process.

  ‘Most likely, yes. Even with the suggestion of violence it’s rare not to.’

  ‘So . . . he comes home?’

  ‘Sure. Then you wait until the trial. Your husband is a lawyer?’

  ‘Corporate, yes.’

  ‘So, it’s likely he wouldn’t be allowed to work until cleared in the trial.’

  ‘What?’ I’d spoken too loudly.

  She blinked. ‘It’s standard procedure, Ali. You can’t practise law if you’ve a criminal record. Most companies would at least suspend an employee accused of something this serious, if not start disciplinary action.’

  I thought of our bank accounts. I hadn’t even looked at them for years now, too scared of the sums involved. Mike assured me it was all OK, we spent a lot but he made a lot too. He’d pay off the house move in a few months, and then his Christmas bonus would come. But now – the kids had school fees. I was barely earning. What would we do if he lost his job? Could they do that when he hadn’t been convicted of anything? It occurred to me how this really was a case of her word against his. I’d never fully understood it before, for all my knowledge of rape. The same act between them could have been consensual or a crime, depending on the point of view. Was it possible he’d thought she consented a second time? But then again I thought of the grass stains on her face, the bruises round her neck. How could someone not know?

  I realised Anna was looking at me expectantly. ‘Your phone?’

  It was ringing. I hadn’t even noticed. By the time I’d fumbled it out, it was on voicemail. Giving the solicitor a tight polite smile, I keyed into it, hearing Vix’s cool, confident voice. ‘Ali, it’s me. Trying to reach you. If you have time, can you swing by the office, please? I’ll be there.’

  Chapter Ten

  Since when did Vix work Sundays? Sundays were for roasts and films and walks in the woods, not the office. Or maybe I was hopelessly out of touch and wrong to nag Mike when he checked his emails over the weekend or went up to London on Saturdays. Maybe this was expected now. I made a distracted note to bring it up in her next supervision.

  I shouldn’t have gone out. I should have been at home, tidying and smoothing and caring for the kids, trying to restore our home to itself, not a crime scene, not the place where all this happened. Where my husband had slept with my best friend. But I just had to get out, even for an hour, breathe some air that wasn’t full of secrets and lies. I left Cassie looking after Benji and she seemed relieved, as if she too wanted me gone. Knowing, maybe, that we’d have to have a talk about her sneaking out, that I’d have to discipline her in some way. Usually I would have asked Mike to do it, since she was far less likely to fly off the handle with him. But he wasn’t here. That was something to be dealt with later, when this crisis was averted. Because it had to be, surely. I still didn’t believe it would go to trial. The magistrate would see it for what it was, ridiculous.

  Benji had looked so miserable when I went, I asked him to look for Mike’s jumper, as Anna had suggested. A project. He loved rooting around in the garden, and this would give him something to do. I wondered, though, why the police hadn’t found it when they searched the place. If someone had come into the garden, as I still hoped might be the case, could they have taken it with them? It didn’t make sense. Probably it was in the house somewhere, carelessly tossed aside.

  I put in the code for the office doors, concentrating hard. If you got it wrong three times the police were called automatically. We had to be careful. The office was empty, the air conditioning humming gently. Vix was not at her desk but in the lobby, on the sofa we’d had put in there to make it warm and welcoming. Two cups of coffee in cardboard holders were on the low table. I thought if I drank any more caffeine my heart might pump its way right out of my chest.

  ‘Ali. Are you alright?’ I saw from her face that she knew what was going on.

  ‘How did you find out?’ Naïvely, I’d thought we could contain this, that only the police and the six of us knew. Nine, including the kids.

  She indicated her phone, which was also on the table. ‘You haven’t seen? It’s already on Twitter.’

  ‘What? How?’

  She shrugged one shoulder. ‘These things get out. And because of your . . . profile, it’s attracting some attention.’

  ‘I’d no idea people even knew who I was.’ I sat down, remembering too late that the chairs were always a bit lower than you imagined. ‘Oh God. It’s a nightmare. I honestly don’t know what to do.’

  She smoothed her skirt over her knees, looking out at me from her little dark-rimmed glasses. ‘This is . . .’ She paused. ‘Ali. I’m really sorry you’re going through this. Obviously there’s no way to hide that it’s happened, or your position with us. But there’s a chance to turn this situation into something positive.’

  How the hell could anything about it be positive? ‘It seems unlikely, given how things are at the moment,’
I said, wobbly.

  ‘No. Of course. I just meant from a PR point of view. You have a platform, Ali. You’ve spoken out on this issue and now it’s affecting you. Whatever you do next sends a message, about how we treat victims of rape. I’m afraid the MRAs are all over this one already.’ She’d told me this meant Men’s Rights Activists. The kind of guys who didn’t really believe rape existed, except as a lie women told to persecute them.

  ‘But I mean . . . he hasn’t been convicted.’

  ‘The allegation has been made, yes? He’s been charged?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Our policy as a charity is to believe any allegations that are made in the first instance. So. If you’re up to it, we can get you on the news again tonight.’

  I was bewildered. ‘But – you want me to say every allegation is true, straight up? I can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Vix was so calm. I couldn’t imagine her ever being rattled. ‘But Ali, you know how hard it is for the woman in this type of case. When it’s acquaintance rape, and they’ve been drinking, as your friend was?’

  ‘She was hammered.’ My voice sounded flat.

  Vix flicked a black eyebrow at that, but said nothing. ‘I know it’s difficult. I get that, I really do. All you have to do is say there’s an investigation and you fully cooperate with it, even though this is your husband. That all victims should come forward, as your friend has, and let the police do their job. They’re trying to change. It’s up to us to support them.’

  ‘But I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t . . .’

  ‘Ali.’ She set down her coffee and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I never disclosed this to you, but there’s a reason I do this job. I was raped at university. A friend of a friend spiked my drink, I think, and when I woke up he was having sex with me.’

  ‘Oh my God. Did you report him?’

  She shook her head. ‘I knew him. I’d been drinking – not enough to pass out, but some. I tried to talk to a few friends but he was popular, and they didn’t believe me. But then a few weeks later he did it to another girl. I felt so guilty. If only I’d come forward, maybe he’d have been arrested and none of that would have happened.’

  I could see where she was going with this, but followed to its conclusion it meant Mike was dangerous. That if we didn’t deal with this now, my husband might attack someone else. And that was ludicrous. Mike was a good man. I had married a good man – I had been so very careful to.

  She went on, ‘If you could bring yourself to, you could just say that victims – I mean, alleged victims – should come forward. That’s all. They aren’t allowed to discuss any details anyway before the trial.’

  For a moment, I considered it – clawing back control, being Ali Morris the Chair, the media personality, the campaigner – but then I was standing up, so quickly I spilled coffee on to my skirt. Images were flickering through my head like a crazed magic-lantern show. Mike, in that tracksuit in a dingy little room, the fear in his voice as he’d begged for my help. Karen in the kitchen, shaking, the blood running down her thigh. Karen. Mike. The two of them having sex in our house. But then there was Cassie, and Benji, crying for his dad. I knew what I had to do. I had to protect them, at all costs.

  ‘I can’t. He’s my husband. I . . . I’m not going to say anything publicly at all.’

  Vix stood up too. I saw her eyes harden. ‘In that case, Ali, I’m afraid we have no choice but to ask you to stand down as Chair. The board are in agreement – we had a conference call earlier. I’ll draft a statement saying you’re out.’

  Benji

  Everything was horrible. Since the moment he’d woken up in the night, and seen all the adults standing about in the kitchen or outside, his mother shouting and Auntie Karen crying harder than he’d ever seen a grown-up cry, things were horrible. His dad was at the police station and no one would tell him why, just that Auntie Karen was saying he’d hurt her, and he didn’t understand why everyone was fussing round Auntie Karen but no one seemed to notice Cassie had her black eye stuff smeared all over her face, like she’d been crying too. Hurt her how? he kept asking. How did Dad hurt Auntie Karen? But no one would tell him. Now his mother was gone too and it was just him and Cassie, and she’d locked herself in her room to tap at her phone, all she ever did these days. He knew she’d got up that night, gone out – he’d felt her stepping over him, trying to be quiet. He knew there were things she wasn’t telling Mum. They were supposed to be having Sunday lunch right now but everything was wrong. He couldn’t even go in his room because his things were all put away still for Bill to stay, his Minecraft bedspread replaced with the boring striped guest one.

  He thought about the night before – waking up, hearing everyone shouting. He’d gone on to the landing, and the door to his room had been open. Bill wasn’t in there, and Benji could hear his voice downstairs. Bill’s bag, a sort of canvas one like an adventurer might have, was open on the floor, and Benji just couldn’t resist. There might be anything in there. Guns. Fishing rods. Maps. Mum had made Bill sound a bit like Indiana Jones. So he’d gone in, just for a second. And that was when he’d seen the person.

  Looking out the window of his room, into the woods (which sometimes scared him a bit, when he was alone at night, though he’d never have admitted it), he saw there was a man. Benji couldn’t see who it was in the dark, but he was wearing a black jacket, like some kind of raincoat with a hood, and staring up at the house. It was only for a second, and then he disappeared into the trees. Benji didn’t know if he should have told Mum, or if he’d get in trouble for being nosy in Bill’s things. Probably it was someone walking their dog, stopping because they heard the sound of Auntie Karen crying.

  Now, alone and bored and confused, Benji mooched into the garden. Maybe he could be the one to find the jumper Mum mentioned, and maybe that would help Dad. Though he didn’t understand how. He’d seen the police crawling over the garden early that morning, in white suits like on TV. But maybe they didn’t know all the places to look. It was so big in the new house’s garden there were still even corners he didn’t know, dark and overgrown. He poked around, looking under bushes and in the hedge. Nothing, though he did find a bird’s nest with a clutch of blue eggs. He wished Dad was here to show.

  The shed was locked up as always – only the gardener, Andrej, Benji’s hero, ever went in there. Behind it was a pile of leaves and branches and grass and things. Usually Andrej made a big heap and burned them, but he hadn’t come the week before. Benji saw something in among the greens and browns – a flash of red. He looked around – he wasn’t meant to go behind there, he knew that – but there was no one to tell him not to, that it might be dirty or dangerous. No adults at all. He bent and pulled at it, and it came out, knocking over twigs and rubbish. It was Dad’s jumper. How did it end up in the rubbish pile, all covered in bits of leaves and dirt? Benji hesitated. He remembered seeing a TV programme about detectives, where it said you shouldn’t move evidence. He crawled back out, and went inside, up the stairs to Cassie’s room. He’d left leaves and mud on the stairs, and Mum would be cross. He knocked. ‘Cassie?’

  She didn’t answer for a while, and when she did her voice sounded like she had a cold. ‘What?’

  ‘You know Mum said to look for Dad’s jumper?’

  He heard her footsteps, then she pulled the door open. Her face was red and swollen. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she said. ‘If they find it, they’ll use it to make Dad seem guilty.’

  ‘They will?’

  ‘Think about it. They’ll say he hid it somewhere, even if he just, like, lost it.’

  Benji didn’t think the jumper could have got in the pile by mistake. After Cassie shut the door in his face, he went back across the garden and stared at it, beneath the twigs and branches and leaves waiting to be burned. Andrej came on Mondays, usually. That meant he would find it the next day. Was Cassie right – would Dad get in more trouble if it was hidden?

  He wished there was s
omeone to tell him what to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bitch

  What a fucking hypocrite

  Calls herself a feminist, don’t see her commenting on her husband being a rapist

  ‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ said Bill soothingly. He’d been there when I got back from the office, and without asking he’d made dinner from leftovers, and then washed up and fielded the kids while I sat numb, unable to do anything. I should have asked him how Karen was, I knew that, but my mouth felt stopped up. I was still reeling. In front of me, my phone spouted bile. Somehow, Mike’s name had got on to Twitter, and the glee was hard to bear. I’d spoken out about rape, I’d scolded and berated, and now here I was, supposedly protecting my abusive husband. The urge to fight back, to shout that he’d never do a thing like that, that it must be a mistake, was almost overwhelming. I had just enough sense left to know that would only make things worse. I’d already had to call Mike’s parents in France, because even they were on Facebook, then listen to their bewilderment, his mother’s tears, all the while wanting to burst into some of my own. I wondered if my mother had heard. What she might say – well, Alison, you’ve made your bed. I wasn’t going to call her.

  Bill and I were now sitting at my kitchen table, glasses of whisky in front of us. I hadn’t touched mine. It was so strange to have him there, to know that all I had to do was stretch out my hand and I could reach him, touch him, after all these years. I tightened my grip on my phone. The house didn’t feel like my own. It had a discarded, dirty air, after all the strange feet that had tracked through it, the tears that had been shed. I realised I was sitting where Karen had when she stumbled in from the garden. I looked over towards the door; the drop of blood was still visible on the slate tiles. I wondered where that jumper of Mike’s was – there was no sign of it around the decking, where I’d last seen it dropped. The last thing we needed was something else that made him look guilty. I’d cancelled Andrej for the next day, on the police’s request, in case they wanted to search the garden again. Irrationally, I worried about who would cut the grass. I didn’t know how to use the mower.