Jules understood why Saffie didn’t want Rowan to know, given his temper. His daughter hadn’t seen the worst of it – he’d once put a man in hospital – but she had recently witnessed his reaction to some random guy in the street who had made a lewd comment about her burgeoning figure. Jules had barely been able to prevent him from going over and punching the man. If Rowan knew she’d been assaulted – no, raped – what kind of a rage would he fly into? But Jules had to talk to someone.
As she absently wiped surfaces, she rifled through a mental list of her friends. Tess had a daughter who was the same age as Saffie. But their conversations often became competitive, each trying to trump the other’s child’s achievements. Tess was not someone to whom you could confess self-doubt or failures. She was the last person you would tell that your daughter had been caught shoplifting, or smoking, or staying out later than she should. The last person in the world to ask for advice about your child being raped by a friend’s son. As for the others – Samantha, Jenny, Fiona – Jules didn’t feel, lovely as they were, that she knew them quite well enough to have such an intimate conversation. There was Donna, of course, but the GP had often complained about people using her out of work hours as a sounding board for their problems.
That just left the group of local mums she went to boot camp with. She could not trust any of them with this kind of confidence. Gossip flew around this village. People often knew what you were about to do before you knew it yourself. And you couldn’t second-guess opinions. Some of them, the most sympathetic-seeming, could be very judgemental in unexpected ways.
Of course, the first person Jules would have phoned for guidance in any other circumstance was Holly. Not just because Holly was Jules’s oldest, closest friend, her go-to person for emotional or moral advice, but also because Holly often said she thought of Saff as the daughter she never had. Plus, of course, Holly’s discussions at her university about rape and consensual sex put her in the ideal position to deal with this. Holly would be just as concerned as Jules about what Saul had done. Might do again. Holly would want to know. She would be furious if she discovered Jules hadn’t told her. She would want to get the truth out of Saul before he got into deeper trouble. Which was what would happen if Jules overrode Saffie’s panicked plea and did what her instinct told her to do and reported him to the school, or to the police even. It would be better all round if she and Holly could deal with it quietly by themselves.
And so Jules had made the decision, that morning, to go and see Holly. Away from either of their homes, where they could both be detached. Holly would know exactly how to approach this. They would talk to their children without involving anyone else, as Saffie had requested. A boy who could assault a girl in her own home had something more than chronic shyness up with him. Holly would have to deal with Saul, seeking professional help for him if necessary. And Jules would get Saffie seen by Donna and ask for some counselling. And then they would all move on. They would sort it out without drawing anyone else in. Not the school. Not the police. Not the men. As Saffie had asked.
Woman to woman.
Mother to mother.
Odd mother to odd mother.
*
Saffie reluctantly agreed, when Jules explained her reasoning, that Jules would have to talk to Holly. And that in this way, they could deal with it without telling anyone else.
‘You’re to leave everything to me. And you’re not to worry anymore. Promise me?’
What inadequate words! How could Saffie not worry . . . and yet Jules knew that the only way to keep her daughter from breaking down was to remain calm herself. Jules phoned Hetty, her shop assistant, and asked her to hold the fort for the day. When Rowan came in, she told him Saffie was off school with a stomach upset, needed quiet and was lying in bed watching a DVD. Rowan said he’d keep an eye on her, and Jules, telling Rowan she had a buyer to meet, had taken the next train to London.
As she neared the university buildings that lunchtime, however, Jules wondered if she’d be able to trust herself to speak to Holly in the measured way she planned to. Calmly, without bias.
Once, soon after Holly and Saul had moved to the Fens, Jules had tentatively suggested that a shorter hairstyle might help Saul fit in – she was actually quoting Rowan and regretted it immediately – and Holly had snapped at her: how did she know what was best for her son? Jules had realized it was fine for Holly to express concerns about Saul, not fine for Jules to agree; that Holly did not accept any criticism of Saul that didn’t come from Holly herself. And until now, apart from that one slip-up, Jules had respected this. The two women had always reassured each other when they were concerned about their children. They did not want or need affirmation of their anxieties from each other. It was a tacit understanding they had always abided by. Now Jules was about to break it, by telling Holly what her son had done to her daughter and that he was therefore more troubled even than Holly feared.
Jules arrived at Holly’s university in the early afternoon. The receptionist gave her a visitor’s badge and directed her up to the English department, where the corridors smelled of books and dusty paper. It struck Jules that Holly’s work world and hers couldn’t be much further apart. Hers was all about profits and losses and money, and involved frantic sorting of orders and dealing with deliveries, accounts and invoices and stock checks, while Holly’s involved intelligent conversation with quiet students, books and quotes and deep thoughts. Jules trusted that Holly’s ability to think objectively, as she had to when constructing a lecture, or when running her consent discussions, would make all this manageable.
She arrived at Holly’s office, but the door was locked. Jules could have texted her and warned her she was coming, but she couldn’t think how to explain her visit and in the end decided it was best to catch her in an unguarded state. She sat on a chair outside the office and waited for her friend. Opposite her on the wall was a poster.
Ask First. Consent is Hot. Assault is Not.
Underneath, it gave a date and a time for the next discussion on sexual consent. Consent. Holly’s favourite subject, Jules thought sourly. But she had not to let such thoughts intrude. Poor Holly had no idea that the very words she had pinned up outside her door were about to smack her full in the face.
At last Jules could see Holly’s tall, slim figure coming towards her down the corridor, past the closed mahogany doors of studies. Holly was deep in thought, a takeaway coffee in a cardboard sleeve in her hand, her slightly knock-kneed walk so familiar, her intelligent, thoughtful face, her pale, freckled skin, a strand of flyaway chestnut-brown hair caught over what Jules had once joked was an aristocratic nose. Straight and narrow and elegant. Like the rest of her frame. They used to say, as students, that she looked like her muse, Virginia Woolf. Her clothes were always effortlessly stylish, loose grey linen jacket, simple blue A-line jersey dress, flat soft leather boots. A small, unconscious smile played on Holly’s lips. She was happier these days, since she’d moved out of London. Since meeting Pete. How beautiful she is, Jules thought, and felt like weeping.
In the event, however, Holly’s reaction was worse even than Jules had feared. But it was when she declared that Saffie had become ‘a devious little troublemaker’ that Jules knew the conversation had nowhere else to go. Reporting a crime dispassionately was one thing, but the bottom line was that mothers did not insult each other’s children. And so, as much to protect Holly from her fury as to nurse her own feelings, Jules had left.
Now, on the train home, as she neared the village, and the land flattened out, and Jules felt the relief she always experienced when she reached the countryside after being in the capital, as if she could breathe again, she fingered the cellophane wrapping of the pregnancy test in her pocket. The little tube of plastic within was the only thing that could make Holly retract what she’d said. It would provide solid proof that Saffie was neither devious nor out to make trouble. If it was positive. Which of course Jules prayed that it wasn’t.
*
‘Is Dad in?’
‘He popped into the village for beer. Said he’d be back by six.’
Saffie was in her room, sitting on her bed with her iPhone. Two red dots on her cheeks betrayed the fact she’d been crying again. Jules sat down on the duvet next to her.
‘How are you feeling?’ Jules asked.
‘OK. What did Holly say?’
‘She’s going to talk to Saul.’
Saffie took in a breath, paled. ‘He’s never going to admit to it.’
‘It depends how we approach it,’ Jules said, her words ineffectual, even to her own ears. ‘Holly and I will make sure we are very sensitive about it. Holly’s used to dealing with this kind of thing. She does it all the time at work. Now, can I get you anything?’
Saffie shook her head.
‘I got us a test,’ Jules said.
‘Oh, Mum. I’m scared.’ Saffie’s face crumpled again. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be positive . . . What will we do if it is? What will I tell people?’
‘You don’t have to tell anyone. We’ll deal with it straight away, with as little fuss as possible.’ You shouldn’t be having to go through this.
‘Can we wait? I think I’ll die if it’s true. Like you said, periods can be late for lots of reasons – it might come soon. It might come tonight. Let’s wait at least another day. Please, Mum . . . please.’
Jules took Saffie’s hand. She could feel her daughter’s fear, and could understand her not wanting to know the result if it was positive. But if it was negative, that would remove a huge burden of worry from both of them.
‘We’ll give it another day,’ she said at last. ‘If that is what you want. And meanwhile I’ll phone Donna, book an appointment, just in case.’
*
‘Dr Browne’s on annual leave until Friday,’ the receptionist said, when Jules dialled the surgery, and she felt her heart drop. ‘If it can’t wait, I can put you in with Dr Alwin.’
Jules didn’t want to take Saffie to Dr Alwin, the only male GP at the surgery. He had a reputation in the village for being tactless and impatient. The thought of her little girl explaining the rape to a doctor at all was ghastly enough. She made an appointment with Donna for Friday.
‘If you change your mind,’ the receptionist said, obviously curious now as to what the problem was, ‘you can phone for an emergency appointment with one of the locums in the morning.’
Saffie seemed relieved when Jules told her they couldn’t see Donna for a week, and Jules allowed this to reassure her for the time being.
When Rowan came in, it was difficult not to blurt out everything to him. Rowan had walked from the village and was in high spirits, his face pink with fresh air. He tore his fleece off at the front door.
‘How are my beautiful girls?’ he asked, spreading wide his arms, enveloping Jules and planting a kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ve done my exercise for the day and I’ve earned me a beer and some crisps. D’you want a wine, honey?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jules said. ‘I’ll wait till we eat.’
‘Saff,’ Rowan yelled up the stairs, ‘are you better, baby? Come and give your dad a hug.’
Rowan went into the sitting room, slumped on the sofa, opened his beer.
Saffie came down from her room when she heard her father but shook her head at the offer of crisps. Rowan caught hold of her and dragged her onto his lap. Saffie looked far too big for this, Jules thought, swamping Rowan like a baby bird whose ruffled feathers make it appear bigger than the parent. Rowan put his arm round her anyway, and squeezed his daughter close.
‘Is your tummy better, gorgeous?’ he asked.
‘I’m OK,’ Saffie said.
Jules watched her, admiring her plucky attempt to behave as normal.
Then Rowan lifted a lock of her silky blonde hair and kissed her on the neck. The two had always been close, but Jules flinched as she witnessed the physicality between father and daughter given everything Saffie had been through recently.
‘If you’ve finished your homework,’ he said, ‘we could catch up on an episode of Sherlock?’
‘I don’t really feel like it, Dad.’
‘I’ll even suffer Call the Midwife if you prefer.’
Bloody hell, thought Jules, this couldn’t get more ironic. Rowan usually point-blank refused to watch the series about 1950s nurses coping with pregnancies, including unwanted teenage ones. She almost opened her mouth to say, ‘Not Call the Midwife, Rowan,’ but stopped herself in time.
‘What’s for dinner, Jules?’ Rowan asked. His hand, Jules couldn’t help noticing, had found a resting place on Saffie’s hip.
Jules hadn’t thought about food. It would have to be something quick and easy.
‘Pasta and pesto,’ she said, going to the cupboard to get out a packet of penne. It was Holly who’d taught her to make that when they were students together, she remembered, miserably. Pulling the seal apart with her teeth. Trying to look normal. Wondering how normal looked. It wasn’t something you thought about when you weren’t trying to hide anything.
‘Mum, I don’t think I’ll have pasta.’ Saffie had climbed off Rowan’s lap and come into the kitchen. She tugged at Jules’s sleeve. ‘My tummy’s still upset.’
Jules looked at Saffie. Her heart tilted at the sight of her frightened face.
‘It’s OK, darling.’ Jules kissed Saffie on the hair. ‘You don’t have to eat.’
‘I think I’ll go back to my room.’
‘That’s fine. I’ll pop up and see you in a minute.’
‘You’re not going to tell Dad?’ Saffie whispered, her face contorted with anxiety.
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
*
Jules knew if she kept busy, cooking, clearing up, getting things ready for the morning, she could distract herself from blurting out to Rowan, once they were alone, the real reason Saffie hadn’t felt up to going to school. As she grated the Parmesan to sprinkle over Rowan’s pasta, she reminded herself that Rowan’s attitude towards Saul would make telling him about the rape, and expecting a measured response, impossible.
‘Saul looks like a bloody stoner,’ Rowan had once said to Jules after an evening at Holly’s house in which Saul had barely said hello. ‘He’s obviously got access to drugs from his London contacts. I don’t want him mixing with Saffie. Giving her a bad name. Influencing her and her friends.’
Jules argued that Saul was not a stoner and shouldn’t be judged by his image alone. And even if he did smoke a bit of weed, it didn’t mean he was going to foist his habits onto the youth population of the Fens.
‘You have a selective memory,’ she’d teased her husband. ‘Remember what we took in the good old days, before Saffie? When we were both working in the City?’
‘We weren’t sixteen, Jules. We were in our twenties; we knew what we were buying, what we were taking.’
‘Anyway, I don’t think Saul’s antisocial behaviour has anything to do with drugs. He’s had a very tough time, as you know,’ Jules said. ‘Since his dad died. It’s been a struggle for Holly getting him through it alone. And he’s suffered. He had anxiety and school phobia when he first moved here.’
‘School phobia?’ Rowan had snorted. ‘Who coined that phrase? Slacker, more like. Holly overindulges him. Always has. She’s so anxious about fucking him up him she pussyfoots around him. He needs a firm hand. A haircut and a decent diet and some regular exercise. And until then I’d rather Saffie didn’t mix with him.’
‘You can’t say that, Rowan. He’s my godson. And since I’m the main reason they’re living in the village, it’s only fair to welcome them with open arms.’
Jules was determined to be loyal to Holly and Saul in the face of the hostility they aroused in her husband. That was why she had agreed to employ Saul as a Saturday assistant in her shop; she’d wanted to help get Saul out there into the real world. To give him some work experience that he cou
ld put on his CV. And it was why she had agreed that he could come over and use their internet connection the night she and Holly went out for Tess’s birthday drinks. Now she wondered if she should have listened to Rowan after all and refused point-blank to have Saul in the house. Ever.
3
HOLLY
I sit for some time after Jules leaves my study, grappling to make some kind of sense of what she’s told me. I need time alone to process it all, but Luma appears and reminds me I’m due to attend the consent workshop at three. I open my mouth to say I can’t face it. Before I can speak, however, she reminds me that Hanya’s now received some unpleasant tweets too, accusing her of being a feminazi. Hanya is only nineteen. Luma is right that she needs back-up.
I climb the stairs to the lecture theatre where Hanya is screening her film. The workshop has attracted a collection of mostly young women, a couple of those who don’t like to have their gender defined and just three boys. Jerome hasn’t shown up, as I might have guessed. Neither has Mei Lui, who I managed to give a leaflet to the week before. I sit at the back of the room while Hanya introduces the drama.
‘We hope everyone will join in the discussion about what you think is really going on,’ she finishes, then clicks the mouse and the film comes up on the screen. A girl dressed in short skirt, high heels and bomber jacket stumbles drunkenly into a studenty-looking bedroom: single bed, clothes strewn about the floor, takeaway carton on a bedside table. A boy holds the girl steady. She collapses on the bed and all but passes out. The boy lies down next to her. The camera pans back; you don’t see what he actually does, but the implication is that he has sex with the girl while she’s barely conscious. The girl is shown making some half-hearted attempts to shove him off.
Jules’s distraught face telling me Saul raped Saffie comes back to me. I try to imagine Saul behaving like the actor in the film but cannot. The voiceover tells us the boy is an ex of the girl. That she’d asked him to walk her home. But that there was no invitation for him to get into bed with her. ‘Do you think the boy was within his rights to assume she was consenting?’ Hanya asks, as the credits come up.
I Thought I Knew You Page 6