by Wendy James
‘They’re going to like that, aren’t they?’ The girl giggled. ‘The fact that I managed to get out, that I’m resourceful. I’m literally girl power in action, aren’t I?’ She’d looked so pleased with herself that Honor wondered if she was actually beginning to believe her own fabrication.
But it was still not enough. They needed another angle. Something big. Bigger than big. Something to get the public sharing and tweeting in outrage.
‘What if we say that they were raping me? That would be gross, wouldn’t it? Women raping a young girl? People would love that.’
Honor considered it, but only for a moment. Displaying the appropriate level of trauma might be difficult for Ellie – who wanted badly to get on with the rest of her life – to sustain. And perhaps it was too grotesque to be media-friendly in the long term.
‘Or what if I suggest that the bloke’s involved? That could work? The other two would look like victims, too, and I could be singlehandedly kicking the patriarchy’s ass. That way the story would be more . . . relevant, don’t you think? And it’d be nice for you, too.’
Her idea was good. It was so tempting, so zeitgeisty in these #metoo days, but it was dangerous enough as it was – making him central would only complicate things. And perhaps implicate Honor. She was going to inflict pain on him, it just wouldn’t be direct.
In the end it was Honor who came up with it – the accusation that would provide both motivation and sensation, and with an ironic twist, an impossibly elegant coup de grace, that would make her revenge all the more satisfying. All the sweeter.
It was easier than Honor had ever imagined. So much of it only depended on Ellie’s word – and who was going to question her seriously when there was all the DNA evidence to substantiate what she said? No one ever argued against that shit these days. And even if they tried, there was too much – clothes, bodily fluids, hair. It was irrefutable. And then there were Ellie’s own memories of her time in captivity, the details that were surely unknowable otherwise.
It was too much, too compelling, and there wasn’t even a hair’s breadth of doubt. No one would be speculating about whether the whole thing was a set-up – not even the flat-earthers on the net. No one seemed to be talking conspiracy, inventing ways in which Ellie could have set the whole thing up. Because why would she? It had been established, and confirmed by Suzannah herself, that she’d never even met Suzannah before. There was no question of revenge, of spite, of payback for past injustices.
Getting the nurse onside was an unexpected bonus. Sally O’Halloran had been at school with Honor. She remembered her as weak, the type of girl who collapsed into defensive whiny tears when challenged. A coward, easily persuaded.
Honor hadn’t been expected at the nursing home, had arrived unannounced, and earlier than usual – she had other plans for the afternoon, the evening. There’d been no one at reception, so she’d headed straight to her father’s room without bothering to sign in.
The door to her father’s bedroom was ajar, and she’d pushed it open further without a sound. There was a nurse in the room, but she hadn’t noticed Honor, had her back to the door, her attention on her patient, who was lying on his bed. Honor couldn’t see her face, but she’d recognised Sally O’Halloran’s greying bob, her narrow shoulders. She’d recognised, too, the frozen horror of her father’s expression.
You filthy old bastard. Sally had hissed the words, but Honor had no trouble making them out. You dirty old man. What did I say to you yesterday? That if I had to clean up your disgusting mess one more time I’d be rubbing your face in it. I ought to make you eat it. You’ve got a bell, you stupid prick. Why don’t you try ringing it next time?
Honor’s first instinct had been to intervene, to shout at the woman, to report her, see that she was dismissed, deregistered. Arrested. But Honor rarely operated purely on instinct. She knew that even the worst moments could be turned around, put to good use.
She took her phone out of her bag, clicked the video function on, zoomed in. She watched the woman hold the shit-laden sheet close to her father’s petrified face, listened to her taunts and threats, heard her father’s desperate moans, witnessed his fear.
She backed away, quietly pulling the door closed. She felt vaguely guilty. Perhaps she should have intervened, saved the old man this indignity, but she knew the feeling would pass eventually. Honor had long recognised the importance of holding her fire, biding her time; she understood the way past misdemeanours could provide future advantage.
SUZANNAH: JANUARY 2019
THERE WAS NO WAY TO AVOID THE MEDIA SCRUM AS WE EXITED the courthouse. Hal made a brief statement, emphasising my innocence, the elaborate nature of the hoax, the cruelty of the perpetrators, the amorality of elements of the press. He was confident there would be an investigation into the crime committed against me. It was clear that there were several persons of interest, including the so-called victim, but at this point the most important thing was that I would be able to resume my interrupted life and career, enjoy my pregnancy, try to forget all about this nightmare.
Chip, Mary and I stood beside him, blinking into the flashing bulbs.
Questions were shouted, but Hal shook his head. ‘That’s all I’m going to say for now. My client will make an official statement in the next day or two, but for the moment that’s it.’
I heard the buzz of their voices as we pushed through the crowd. Chip had one arm around my shoulders, his other hand gripped Mary’s elbow.
Suzannah, have you got anything to say . . . Suzannah, how does it feel? Suzannah, are you going to sue? What’s next, Suzannah? How do you feel, Miss Squires? Mary, have you got anything to say?
Mary wrenched her arm out of Hal’s grip and stepped forward dramatically. She glared out into the crowd, raised an imperious hand to silence them.
‘If they’d listened to me in the beginning, we’d never have had to put up with any of this shit.’
‘What do you mean, Mary? What did you tell them?’
‘I told them that little bitch had my Chanel pyjamas, but I never said she stole them. That was the other one. They weren’t listening properly, were they?’
The crowd laughed.
Mary kept going, encouraged. ‘And I always knew that little bitch was lying.’
I grabbed her arm, hissed, ‘Oh God, Mary, can you just not?’
‘How did you know that, love?’
I knew what was coming next, but short of throttling her there was nothing I could do.
‘The way she . . .’ Mary’s mischievous smile faltered. ‘The way . . .’ She stared out at the crowd, her face blank, gaze unfocused. She looked exhausted suddenly, and very, very old. She moved close to Chip, clutched his hand.
‘Can we please go home now?’ Mary’s voice was tremulous, small. ‘I’m tired.’
I had glimpsed Honor as we walked out of the court, and could just make her out now, trying to push her way through the onlookers gathered at the bottom of the courthouse steps. I was free, my life and my reputation had been restored. I should have been happy to get out of there, start afresh, move on, forget. But there was still so much I didn’t know, that I needed to know, if my – our – life was ever going to return to something resembling normalcy. While Chip and Hal helped a slow and uncertain Mary to negotiate the stairs, I hurried past them, ignoring Chip’s surprised words of caution, as well as the avid curiosity of the crowd, then rushed along the footpath, propelled as much by a desire for information as by rage.
‘Honor.’
She paused, turned slowly, her reluctance evident.
‘Suzannah.’
‘Why? Why the fuck, Honor?’
There was the sound of feet pounding. ‘Oh Christ.’ Chip was behind me, his hand on my shoulder.
‘You don’t need this right now, Suze.’ His voice was low, urgent. ‘We can do this some other time, some other way.’
‘She only wants to know why. I think that’s reasonable after what she’s been through.
’ Honor’s voice was like ice.
‘What you’ve put her through, you crazy bitch. Jesus Christ. What you’ve put us both through.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What I’ve put you through?’ She laughed, shook her head sorrowfully. ‘I take it you haven’t told her, have you, Chip?’
HONOR: OCTOBER 1986
HIS REACTION TO HER NEWS WASN’T AS SHE’D IMAGINED IT.
The pregnancy was a disaster, on every level. What else could it be? No sane person could think it was anything but a disaster. Honor wasn’t even eighteen yet, he was only just. They both had their whole lives ahead of them. She’d been prepared for him to be shocked. Panicked. Had expected a degree of fear even.
But she’d imagined too, a degree of concern for herself, thought he’d ask how she felt at the very least. And she’d imagined some acceptance of the mutuality of the whole thing – they’d done this together, now they would sort it out together. She wasn’t expecting contrition exactly, but something like it. Surely they were in this sick-making boat together, even if they were both about to scuttle it and swim back to shore.
Oh, she hadn’t imagined fanfares or marriage proposals, declarations of undying love. She wasn’t stupid. (And she didn’t want that anyway – she was going somewhere, she was going to be someone.) But she hadn’t imagined this blank disavowal of responsibility, of complicity, either. And she could never have imagined him saying what he’d said – his eyes hard, voice cold. He’d looked right through her as if they were strangers, as if what they’d done, what they’d been, had meant nothing to him.
‘Why the fuck,’ he’d asked, ‘aren’t you on the pill?’
He hadn’t even bothered to wait for her response. ‘You can’t keep it,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want a kid. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is bullshit.’
They weren’t in the same boat at all. They weren’t even sailing on the same ocean.
‘And, anyway, how do I know it’s mine?’
At that she’d vomited on his shoes. And just for a moment she’d felt better.
SUZANNAH: JANUARY 2019
‘WHAT HAVEN’T YOU TOLD ME, CHIP? WHAT’S ALL THIS GOT TO do with you?’ He tried to pull me closer, but I stepped away.
He looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. ‘Honor got pregnant. To me. She had . . .’ He faltered, started over. ‘She had an abortion.’
Honor laughed again, but this time it sounded more like a cry.
‘I was . . . we were just kids, Suze. There was nothing else we could do.’ His eyes met Honor’s. ‘I couldn’t know, could I? I couldn’t know what was going to happen.’
HONOR: 2006
WASN’T THIS THE WAY THE UNIVERSE WORKED? IT WAS SOME sort of law, surely. Murphy’s law? Sod’s law? The law of if-I-can-fuck-you-over twice, three times, four, even, I will. There was some immutable natural law that meant it was always going to happen, that it was always going to be exactly like this, and against such forces, Honor never stood a chance.
There had been no grief when she’d aborted that baby. Maybe a pang for a future she could glimpse from the corner of her eye, just – a chimera: one where she and Chip raised the child together, where she was welcomed with open arms into the Gascoyne clan, where Honor became one of them, his mother melting into a soggy pile of grandmotherly gratitude when introduced to their baby boy (and this baby would be male, natch; people from those families always had their boys first: hale, hearty, full of that born-to-rule vim and vigour). It had been a ridiculous fantasy when she actually thought about it. The reality was that his parents would have been quietly horrified. They weren’t snobs, not exactly – his mother was matronly, decent; his father genial, boozy, a little too fond of women – but they wouldn’t have wanted their boy’s future curtailed, constrained in such a way.
So that fantasy didn’t really have traction, even if Chip himself hadn’t been so resolute. And there was no complementary fantasy about being a single mother. She’d never fooled herself about that. Her own family wouldn’t have welcomed a baby. Not without a father. Oh, they would have supported her, there was no doubt about that. But to see the disappointment in her parents’ eyes – it didn’t bear thinking about. Honor had a bright and glorious future ahead of her, her smarts a ticket out and up.
There was only one solution. At the time, it had meant relief from the constant sickness, the headache, the anxiety. There were no real regrets. Not then.
The regrets came later. When she was in her late thirties, and that clock she’d dismissed had begun to tick progressively ever more loudly, had chimed the hours, the halves, the quarters. She’d suddenly begun peering into prams, looking enviously at women with swollen bellies, had begun thinking that there would be something nice about taking time off, time out, devoting herself to someone who wasn’t after fame and fortune, who wanted nothing and everything from her, who might even return something more tangible than fifteen per cent. And of course there was Dougal. He had felt the same way – had wanted kids from the start, had been waiting more and more impatiently for her to agree. He was old school to the core, and back then she’d loved that about him too, his unapologetic conventionality. He was homo suburbianis in the flesh, and the thought of finding herself barefoot and pregnant had become ever more appealing.
Honor had waited a full year before checking, that was what everyone advised. It was always going to take a while, after all that time on the pill; just relax and let it happen naturally, they’d said. She had waited, done her best to relax, but there’d been nothing, not even a scare. Every month she was as regular as clockwork. Tick tock. So after a year she’d visited the doctor. He was married to a high-profile model she’d agented years before, who’d since left and had her own little brood – twin girls and a boy – in her mid-forties. Honor had been encouraged by her success. Her husband obviously knew what he was doing.
But her faith hadn’t changed his blunt diagnosis: she would never have children. She’d told him about the pregnancy, of course, and the abortion. Had there been any complications, after the procedure? She’d thought back. She could remember that the aftermath had been much worse than she’d expected, than she’d been told to expect. She’d had some pain, heavy bleeding – but how much was too much? She remembered that she had felt unwell – her whole body aching, her temperature high – for a week or so after, that she had stayed in bed, had told her mother that it was nothing, just a bad cold, that she didn’t need to see a doctor. How could she tell anyone? At the time the potential shame of discovery had seemed far worse than any possible future ramifications. And in a way she had welcomed the illness; it felt right – a physical manifestation of her barely acknowledged grief over Chip’s desertion. But by the end of that week, not only was she three kilos lighter, it was as if the sadness had burnt away.
The doctor’s nod was solemn, perhaps slightly judgemental. That could be it. It’s not uncommon. Weren’t you warned? You should have seen a doctor immediately. ‘But maybe,’ he’d added, as if to lessen the blow, ‘maybe that early pregnancy wouldn’t have gone to term anyway. Perhaps there was damage even then.’ It was difficult to tell when the damage occurred, or why. And there was no point worrying, really. Her insides were a mess; she would never have a baby. She should consider a hysterectomy to avoid possible complications down the track.
She’d made the arrangements then and there.
Dougal had cried when Honor broke the news, but she didn’t tell him that once upon a time she’d been capable. How could she hit him with that?
But she told Chip, by God she did. It was years later, just after they’d begun their affair. She’d watched with something close to pleasure as he lowered his eyes, shamed by the behaviour of his younger self, his young man’s hardness, his obliviousness.
‘Jesus, Honor,’ he’d said, ‘I was a little shit. But it would have been impossible then, wouldn’t it?’
Looking back, she had thought maybe not, that maybe there were ways they could have done
it, ways they could have made it work, that there was a whole alternative life they could have been living had they decided to keep that child. Who knew whether what either of them had now was better? Who could ever know? But at least he too had been denied the pleasures of parenthood. At least the universe had granted her that.
And then it hadn’t.
HONOR: JANUARY 2019
HONOR DROVE A FEW BLOCKS FROM THE COURT, WELL AWAY from the slowly dispersing crowd. She pulled over and parked under a tree, tried to regulate her breathing, calm her mind. She needed to call Dougal. Ellie would have to be told too – her exposure had been more damaging than Honor’s – but for the moment she was safe on her media-free resort. Honor needed to talk to Dougal first to see if he could see some way out – for both of them. His advice had been invaluable over the years, whenever her clients’ fuck-ups had proved too much even for her; he was knowledgeable when it came to legal ramifications and the myriad ways around them. And he had the contacts, would know who could help her make it all go away. Even if he wasn’t all that keen on helping Ellie, there was no way he would refuse to support Honor.
She wasn’t looking forward to telling him about the questions surrounding her own behaviour, but was certain he would believe her version of the story. She had already worked out how to frame it: she would admit to visiting Suzannah’s, but claim they were mistaken about the dates. And her visit to Sally O’Halloran, that could be easily explained too. Honor had had some concerns about her father’s treatment, wasn’t it natural that she would visit an old classmate, get her private opinion of the nursing home? The idea that this proved collusion, conspiracy was ludicrous.