She didn’t even blink. They probably trained them at teacher school. She just looked at me as if I was the enemy. As if I was the classless mother rolling up to school in my Juicy Couture sweatpants yelling and screaming about their darling little thug getting into trouble. Threatening to sue, go to the papers, have her fired. Because I was. I was that parent. She just said, ‘Mrs Morris. I really wouldn’t advise any further media intrusion into your life. You must think of Cassie.’
I gaped at her. All the words I wanted to hurl back like grenades, they were suddenly gone and my mouth was empty. She was right. I’d lost my moral high ground. I could no longer talk about these things – revenge porn, the sexualisation of young girls, rape culture – I couldn’t say a word about it because I was the woman who’d said her raped friend was drunk, wearing a short skirt, flirty.
She seemed to realise she’d bested me, and briskly put Cassie’s file away. ‘Alright. I think you should take her home now, and I’ll arrange to have her sit the exams elsewhere. We will of course try to get to the bottom of the matter, but once these things go viral . . .’ Viral. Like a disease. My Cassie. ‘And if I didn’t say so before, please accept my best wishes for your husband’s recovery.’
Outside, Cassie’s ragged sobs went on and on, a sound as repetitive and deadening as the hum of air conditioning. I had to leave now. I had to take her and slink away, ashamed, dirty. Beaten.
‘Sweetheart, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we have to.’
Cassie slumped in the car beside me, weeping. Her face was red and swollen, her hair limp.
‘How did he get the picture?’
I wanted her to say, He made me. It was how I pictured it. Aaron, wanting sex, putting pressure on. Making her send him a photo to prove her love, then sharing it round his mates in the locker room. Disgusting.
‘Cassie, if he took it, that’s a crime. We can go to the police, get him to stop this. Have it all deleted.’ Although I knew it didn’t work that way, that the picture had already spread from phone to phone like cold sores, that it was maybe even on one of those websites I’d written a piece about. That it would never truly go away.
Her sobs had subsided now, and she hitched in breath. I thought how much she’d had to deal with in these short weeks. Her father on trial, then bleeding in the street. Finding out her best friend was her brother. And now this.
‘Please, honey. Just tell me your side, and I promise I’ll make it go away.’
Cassie took in a long breath. Her eyes stared dully out the window and when she finally spoke, her voice was cold. ‘He didn’t make me, Mum. He dumped me. So I – I wanted him back. I didn’t know it was against the law to send it.’
It took me a few long moments to understand what she was saying. ‘You took it yourself? You sent it – he didn’t ask you to.’
‘No.’ She stared at her hands. ‘He doesn’t want anything to do with me.’
In that moment, I could have killed Aaron. Already so self-assured, confident of his trajectory to Oxford, then some City law firm. How dare he make her this sad, force her to these degrading lengths. I thought briefly of myself, offering my virgin body to Mike, trying to hang on to him with all I had. Pathetic.
‘Did you see it?’ Cassie pleaded.
I started the car. ‘No, darling. I didn’t see it. Let’s go home.’ I only saw the picture once, in the blink of an eye. I’d pretend I hadn’t until my dying day, because I knew it would kill her, to know I’d seen her like that. It wasn’t so much her exposed breasts, small and delicate. It was the look in her eyes. A million miles from sexy – the eyes of a cornered dog, a trafficked sex slave, a girl forced into something she had no wish to do. And I found myself wondering if that was how Karen’s eyes looked now as well.
Cassie said, in a small voice, ‘Mum? Can we go and see Dad? I – I want to see him.’
Mike
The world had been grey for a long time. It wasn’t gone exactly – he could make out vibrations, sounds, flashes of light – but it was behind a thick grey curtain. His head hurt, a lot. His body felt numb, shot through with points of pain. At times he was confused, thinking he was diving, the surface a bright-lit oval far above. Whenever he approached it, the realisation came – something bad had happened. Shame. Guilt.
Karen.
It wasn’t true. What she’d said. It was all such a jumble. Sex that day, in the hot stuffy room above the garage, her familiar smell, the pull of desire and shame. Telling her it’s over, we can’t do this to Ali. Seeing the snap of pain in her eyes. Impossible not to care for her, after years of intimacy. Missing her, even, on nights beside Ali on the sofa, watching yet another Scandi drama with subtitles.
What did he remember of that night? So little. The dinner in the garden, Ali going off to bed, mealy-mouthed, and pregnant, puffy Jodi. The four of them, Karen always one of the boys, laughing too loud, resting her feet on Bill. Trying to make Mike jealous maybe, and perhaps it had worked. The soft caress of the night air, the beautiful house and garden he’d worked so hard for, he’d earned.
After that it was a blur, with large spots that he just didn’t remember at all. The weed, the alcohol, it was all such a bad idea. Feeling ashamed about Karen, maybe, wanting to drown the guilt and the tick of anxiety that he’d slept with her in Ali’s house, that she would find out, that their shame would ooze somehow between the walls of the building. Wanting to impress Callum, and show Bill he was still young and cool. Aware that Bill had wanted Ali for himself, more than Mike even, and a vague sense of shame there too, that he’d known he was leading her on at university, should have let her go. That he’d stood in the way of her and Bill. And he’d have ended it too, that night of the ball, or he’d have let it fizzle once he moved to London, knowing Ali didn’t have the money or connections to get there right away. Everything could have been so different, if he hadn’t needed her that night. If Martha had lived. Or who knew. She’d seemed to like him that night, laughing at his jokes, tossing her white-blonde hair. Maybe she’d have been his wife instead. Everyone would have seen him with this beautiful glowing woman. A different life. No Cassie or Benji. He couldn’t imagine that.
Voices above his bed. ‘I’m afraid—’
‘No change—’
‘Transplant list—’
He knew he had to wake up, but also that what he’d wake up to was not his life. Not the life he might have had, not at all. That had died over twenty years ago, on the lawn of an Oxford college.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Mum, of course I’ll do it! God, do you mean all this time I could have helped Dad and you didn’t tell me?’
My heart sank. There was no getting away from it – Mike was getting worse. I could see that even without the doctor’s grave words. His skin was the colour of ash, stubbed-out cigarettes. His eyes were shrunken in his shrivelled face; he’d aged twenty years in a week. Something had to be done – and that meant testing Cassie. When she saw him, she had started to cry, hunched over his bed.
‘I said I hated him.’
‘I know you didn’t mean it.’
‘I don’t hate him – I just, I don’t understand how he could do all these bad things.’
‘Neither do I. I think – we can’t know until he wakes up, and can explain it to us himself.’
‘But what if he doesn’t wake up?’ Her face was red and shiny. ‘That could happen, right? He’s really sick!’
I thought about it for a long time, resting a hand on Cassie’s head, which for once she didn’t shrug off. ‘There is a way we can help him, darling.’ And so I’d told her. I’d tried to make the liver donation sound awful, painful and bloody, but I’d forgotten who I was dealing with. Cassie, who, when she’d sliced her toe to the bone as a child, wading into the sea where some idiot had smashed a beer bottle, had set her chin in determination. Mummy, it doesn’t hurt. Although it must have, a lot. It seemed this news had lifted her from the slump she’d been in since Mike was injure
d. Cassie was fifteen. She’d had a sheltered life until now. The chance to be part of the drama, to gain a scar, maybe even atone for her suspension from school, for saying she hated her father – of course she’d take it. I’d handled this all wrong.
‘Dad wouldn’t want you to.’
She gave me that look, like I was the most stupid person in the world. ‘He wouldn’t want me to save his life? Sure, he’d rather just die, never see me or Benji again.’ She made a loud noise. ‘Benji. Christ, what would I tell him? He’d never forgive me if I could save Dad and I didn’t!’
‘It’s not as simple as that!’ I was getting angry with her too, with the US-teen-soap way she saw the world. Where everything was a story, where you offered a sacrifice and it actually made any difference at all. ‘It doesn’t always work, his body might reject it, and you might not be a match anyway . . .’
‘But we can find out! We have to at least find out!’
‘You could get sick too—’
She made the noise again. Half-anguish, and half a kind of fevered excitement. ‘Mum!’ I tried to understand how she was feeling. The loss of control that I did – all these things happening, Mike arrested then almost dying, Jake in prison, Karen weeping and bloodied, her own nude picture shared around school – but worse, because she was a kid in a woman’s skin, who couldn’t even vote or drive or drink. The rage that must have been in her, with nowhere to go, like a body hurtling forward in a car crash, stopping fast against a wall. ‘We can find out! I’m going to find out. You can’t stop me. You just said that we won’t ever know what happened unless he wakes up – he has to wake up!’
I could stop her, of course, it was just bravado of Cassie to say that. But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t take this away from her. ‘Alright. We’ll get the test.’
All I could do was pray it wouldn’t work, that they wouldn’t be a match. That this wouldn’t be the way my husband was saved.
‘He’s dying.’
Bill watched my face, trying to read me. It was so long since Mike had properly looked at me that I found this strange, part intoxicating, part suffocating. ‘It won’t come to that. They’ll find a way.’
Briefly, I rested my head on my arms as I sat at the kitchen table. It was late; it had been such a long day. Thank God again for Bill, making dinner, taking care of Benji. ‘Slicing up Cassie? I don’t think he would even want that.’
‘The transplant list, then. It’s designed to save people like him.’
But I knew people died all the time, waiting for organs. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t dump this on you.’ I’d no idea what Bill must be feeling, watching me fight for my husband. ‘I have to do everything I can for him. He can’t speak for himself and – for Cassie, Benj . . .’
Bill made an impatient gesture, as if to say I’d no need to explain. I felt he was waiting for something from me, the same feeling I’d so often had in college, when the frazzle of dawn would interrupt our long nights spent talking over cheap red wine or Nescafé. Back then I’d always ignored it – always gone running when Mike called. I couldn’t do the same again. We hadn’t talked about what was happening with us, the nights we’d spent together in the same bed, the fact he was now ensconced in my house, cooking my meals and caring for my children.
I looked up; Bill was standing in front of me with the air of a man about to say something important. ‘If Cassie’s not a match, I think you should ask Jake to get tested.’ I blinked. He said, ‘I know it’s crazy, but Mike is going to die without a donation.’
‘Jesus, Bill. Are you serious?’
‘I mean, the circumstances aren’t ideal. But Jake’s looking at some serious prison time, and if he donated to Mike the CPS might go easy on him, or even drop the case. I’ve been looking into it. He was under eighteen when it happened, so with time already served and various pleas, he could end up doing no time at all. And Karen – I know you two had words, but she can’t have honestly expected you to support her over Mike. You were in an impossible situation. I think you did the best you could. She’ll see that eventually, I think.’
How I wished that was true, that I’d risen above the tidal wave that had engulfed us all, handed things over to the courts to decide, done my best for Mike while at the same time sending all my good wishes to Karen, who was clearly suffering, even if she hadn’t told the whole truth. But I hadn’t.
‘That’s not entirely true,’ I said.
When I finished telling him what I’d done, Bill was staring at me. His skin had gone pale and his hands were shaking. ‘Ali, are you serious? You – you told the police Karen slept around? That she lies?’
‘She does! Bill, you’ve been away for years, you don’t know. You remember how she was in college – well, it never stopped. There’ve been so many men. Married ones, even. She slept with my husband for twenty-five years!’
Something had frozen between us. That feeling I’d always had, that Bill saw me as good and beautiful and important, it had receded.
‘Ali. You saw her. The blood, the way she was – shit, can you really believe she wasn’t attacked?’
‘We don’t know anything for sure. She was drunk . . .’
‘Ali.’ He almost didn’t believe me, the way he said it. ‘Listen to yourself.’
‘She’s trying to destroy us! He ended things with her, she was hurt, so she made it up. That’s what I think. I know it doesn’t happen all that often, a false accusation, but it does happen! Why not this time?’
Bill was shaking his head. ‘I’ve never seen anyone in such a state. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it – hearing those screams, then going downstairs, and the blood on her – the look on her face. She was broken.’ He stared at me. ‘Ali. You don’t mean it? Tell me you didn’t do this.’
But I couldn’t. And I knew then that this thing between Bill and me, it had not escaped the slow erosion of everything, and that even when you think you’ve lost it all, there is still more that can be taken from you.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Where’s Bill?’ Benji woke me at seven, bleary-eyed, his hair sticking up in the exact configuration of Mike’s. ‘He didn’t make breakfast.’
Bill had left in the early hours of the morning, the roar of his bike no doubt waking the elderly neighbours. I didn’t know where he’d gone. Maybe to Karen. Maybe back to Leeds. There it was. I’d done a terrible thing to Karen, and he couldn’t feel the same about me any more. ‘He’s gone, honey.’
‘What?’ Benji gaped and I felt a surge of irritation. How entitled were my children, that they took it for granted a total stranger would move into their house and wait on them hand and foot?
‘He’s gone. He was only visiting! We have to manage on our own now, so I need you to be a grown-up boy and get dressed for school, OK?’
‘But Bill makes eggs.’
‘Benji! Now isn’t the time for the spoiled little brat routine, OK? Make yourself cereal. You’re ten years old, for God’s sake – I was cooking dinner at that age.’ A small exaggeration – at the most I’d heated spaghetti hoops – but I was sickened with myself for making my kids so dependent, so lacking in resilience. And me too. After my childhood, you’d think I would have been prepared for hard times. I’d been spoiled, and blind.
I got up, knotting my towelling robe around me, bundling my hair above my head. What had I been playing at, wafting around Bill in perfume and silk? It was pathetic. We had things to do. I hammered on Cassie’s door. ‘Get up!’
‘I’m suspended!’ she yelled. ‘Why would I get up?’
‘Because, we have to go to the hospital. And you’re going to study. You’ll be taking those exams, sooner or later.’
Benji had followed me out into the hallway, bewildered at the loss of Nice Mummy. ‘Mum, it’s not fair!’
I could feel the phrase rise in my throat, and I leaned into it. ‘Life’s not fair. Now stop whining and get your uniform on.’ And it felt good, to yell at my children, to stop treating them w
ith kid gloves. This was the real world, and it was time they learned about it.
‘I’m so sorry. Cassie isn’t a match.’ There it was again, that doctor’s sorry. Sorry-not-sorry, as Cassie and her friends would say, with the cruelty of teenage girls. Cassie was crying again, a harsh sobbing sound coming out of her mouth, her hand pressed in front of it but doing nothing to keep the noise in. The doctor had to raise her voice over the din. ‘. . . We’d have had to go to court anyway to get the permission so it was a long shot . . . he’ll go on the transplant list now. There’s always the chance of altruistic donation and . . .’
‘How long does that take? Waiting for a donor?’ I was watching Cassie from the corner of my eye, the way she was doubled over. The front of her white polka-dot top was already wet. She loved her father, despite what he’d done, despite declaring she hoped he went to prison. I’d forgotten what that could feel like, the kind of love that isn’t even dented no matter what someone does to you. The kind that, it turned out, I did not have for Mike.
‘Four years is the average.’
‘Four years? Can he . . .’ Could Mike survive that?
Cassie got up and ran out, slamming the door behind her. A thought was forming in my mind, cold and heavy as a bullet. I hadn’t wanted to let it in. There were other options – the transplant list and . . . But four years. Jesus Christ.
The doctor had looked at the wall clock several times. She was coming to the end of her ‘compassionate time with the family’. She had other people to see, other lives to glue back together. ‘So those are the options, I’m afraid. Unless a family friend wants to donate, it’s wait for the transplant list. And they might not match, of course. We’re out of blood relatives, I take it?’
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