I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  The discussion takes off immediately.

  ‘The girl let him come into her room. She was consenting.’

  ‘But if she was too wasted to say no, then she wasn’t able to give consent. I’d say he raped her.’

  ‘They obviously already knew each other, had been out drinking together, so that’s not rape.’

  ‘That’s so offensive! The girl didn’t give consent, so it’s rape. You can’t assume someone wants sex just because they’ve had a drink with you and you know them.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I mean, the way she was dressed, he would have assumed she was up for it, especially as they had been boy- and girlfriend.’ It’s one of the boys making this comment, of course. ‘She should have thought about that before she asked him up to her room.’

  ‘That’s slut-shaming.’

  ‘What would be in it anyway,’ someone asks, ‘for the guy? If she was genuinely out of it?’

  ‘That’s not the point. He was taking advantage and that’s assault. Boys have to learn they can’t just fuck who they want when they want.’

  The boys at the back snigger.

  ‘The girl obviously wanted it too,’ one of them says. ‘She was just too wasted to tell him.’

  The rest of the discussion revolves around whether the girl had capacity to say yes. If she didn’t, was it OK for the boy to assume he could sleep with her, based on their history together? The workshop has been a success, in so far as it’s got the students thinking and questioning and talking.

  I make no attempt to direct the discussion as I sometimes do. Because to my horror, thoughts I’ve never had before worm their way into my mind as I listen to the students argue, and I’m shocked to find myself half sympathizing with the boys at the back. Wasn’t it understandable that the boy assumed it was a come-on when the girl let him walk her home? How else was he to know she wanted sex, other than the fact she let him into her room in her skimpy outfit? How are boys supposed to know? Girls can be so convoluted, so devious. The nuances of the drama suddenly seem murky, far less clear-cut than usual. I apologize to Hanya and hurry away, my own doubts goading me as I walk back to the station. Girls are so hard to read! It’s so easy to shout, ‘Rape!’ Such a slick way of targeting a boy all your friends have got it in for.

  The intrusive thoughts won’t be silenced. They whisper relentlessly in my ear, unsettling me, driving me mad.

  However, I’m regretting insulting Saffie by the time I get off the train that evening. It’s dark as I walk from the station through the village. The only lights come from the blue flicker of televisions behind windows that face straight onto the narrow pavement. I hadn’t predicted when we moved here how long the winter nights would be. I curse the black Fenlands. This is when I miss the city most, when the village has closed down for the day by five. I miss pubs and restaurants, the illuminated statues and bridges along the river, the lights on the boats. People sitting outdoors – even in winter, by candlelight – amid London’s jumble of walls and squares, courtyards and buildings. While here everyone is hidden, boxed away within their houses. (I choose to forget London’s traffic jams and crowded Tubes. The polluted air. The constant ear-splitting sound of police sirens and traffic.) London is my home. Not these dark, silent fens. Or maybe I’m just angry with Jules for dumping this story about Saul on me. I’m taking my fury out on the village she encouraged me to move to.

  I reach my front door. The house, too, is in darkness, though I know Saul should be home. I wish Pete were here. I need another adult perspective on what Jules told me. But Pete’s not back from Bristol till later. And anyway, Saul’s my son, not Pete’s. I’m the one who should deal with it.

  ‘Saul?’

  I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I need to look at him. See whether I still know the son I’ve borne and raised more or less single-handedly since he hit puberty. Or whether I’ve missed something. Some detail that suggests he’s capable of raping my best friend’s daughter while we were out enjoying Prosecco at a gastropub.

  Saul doesn’t answer, so I dump my bag of files on the floor, peel off my coat, sit down at the kitchen table, my chin in my hands. I try to picture Saffie through Saul’s eyes. To imagine what would have gone through his head when he popped his head round her room. Caught her half naked, from what Jules implied. Saffie’s pretty well developed for her age, anyone can see that. How might it feel to be a teenage boy with his hormones raging who finds himself alone in a house with a girl he has known since he was tiny, who is now beginning to resemble, in body shape, women he’s probably seen on the internet? Does Saul watch porn? I think of him alone in his room. Any kid with a smartphone has access to it, I know that. And whatever my objections to the way the industry presents women, airbrushed, silicone-enhanced, waxed to the nth degree (views I’ve made Saul aware of in discussions over dinner), Saul has to live in the modern world. I have to give him space, as Pete is always reminding me.

  Is it possible that Saul, aroused, asked Saffie if he could kiss her and she’d agreed to it, curious herself? And then, perhaps, he pleaded, ‘I want to know what it’s like. We’ve known each other since we were children. Come on, let’s try it.’ In which case, Saffie may have gone along with it, only afterwards regretting it. Afraid of what her bitchy peer group would say if they knew. And so decided to call it rape.

  But Jules said Saul went uninvited into her room. He’d even accused her of ‘asking for it’ when she told him to leave. What if Saffie is telling the truth? I quickly dismiss the idea because it doesn’t bear thinking about.

  When I volunteered for Rape Crisis as a student, all the things you hear about rape were confirmed for me. We heard of rapes at home or on public transport, in dark alleyways or brightly lit hotel rooms, at night or in broad daylight. Women and sometimes men came to us. Some had been raped at knifepoint by strangers, others in their own beds by their husbands, or by boyfriends or by exes. Some had been gang-raped. Some involved members of the victim’s own family. All were terrified to report what they’d gone through. For fear of not being believed, or of retribution, or because they blamed themselves. Some came many years after the rape, when the full trauma of what they’d experienced continued to limit what they were able to do, or had come back to haunt them. I learned how hard it was to get men who raped convicted, how biased the criminal justice system was. Still is, judging by recent media cases.

  So I am going against everything I know and believe by assuming Saffie is lying. I do my best. I try to envisage every possible scenario in which Saul might have assaulted Saffie. But I cannot believe her. Saul might be six foot, but he’s little more than a child himself. A year ago, he was still coming to the cinema and for Wagamama noodles with me. Asking me to drive him back to see his friend Zak in London at the weekends so things could be like they used to be, eating pizza with him in front of Gavin & Stacey. He’s a child himself, for goodness’ sake.

  I stand up, go to the cooker and stare at the couscous and almonds I put out this morning, ready to accompany the autumn casserole I’ve made to welcome everyone home for the weekend. Five minutes later, I’m still there.

  I make a decision. I’ll ask Saul to account for every minute of that night. Then I’ll prove to Jules he couldn’t have raped Saffie and persuade her to discover why she said he did. What motivated her to target my son in this way? Because this is what I believe Saffie has done. Although ostensibly the bullying may have stopped, I’ve seen how they all avoid Saul on the green. He’s the victim of some kind of vindictive campaign. And somehow, Saffie, in her naivety, has got caught up in it. I’ve just reached this conclusion when there’s a voice behind me and I look up, startled.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  Saul has come into the kitchen and yanked open the fridge door. A carton of milk falls onto the floor as he rummages through the shelves. He picks it up, leaving milk pooling under the cupboards, then stares into the fridge. He’s become so clumsy recently, as if he doesn’t know where his limbs be
gin and end. His trousers, which can’t keep up with the rate he’s growing upwards, hang off his skinny frame. A small exposed area of flesh reveals his bony spine, vertebrae like marbles under his skin. I try to imagine him coordinating the gangly body that he can barely control even in the kitchen in order to have sex with an unwilling partner. Knocking things over and bumping into things because he’s growing faster than his brain can register. I can’t picture it, because it’s beyond imagination.

  ‘I said, there’s nothing to eat.’

  ‘I haven’t cooked yet. There will be.’ I fetch the mop, wipe away the spilt milk.

  ‘There’s never anything to eat when I get in from school. Jules’s cupboards are full of food you can snack on. Ours are bare. I’m fucking starving.’

  I’m absurdly affronted that he’s comparing me with Jules when I’ve been silently defending him against her. ‘There’s bread. You can make yourself a piece of toast. Don’t think that’s beyond even you. I’m making a casserole and couscous for later.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About seven thirty.’

  When I next look, he’s holding up his phone, and grinning.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What does that say to you, Mum?’

  The photo on his screen shows a lollipop man in a high-vis jacket holding up his yellow ‘Children Crossing’ sign. Behind the man is a rainbow, arching from one side of the fen to the other. The fluorescent jacket and sign against the perfect rainbow create a tableau like an archetypal children’s drawing.

  I laugh. ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘I caught it at the exact moment that he stepped out to stop the traffic. When the rainbow was at its brightest. Just as the sun and the rain were at the right angle to one another. It’s only because the land’s so flat here I could catch the whole arc of the rainbow. But what does it say to you?’

  ‘It says happiness. It says innocence. It says synchronicity.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It’s a great photo, Saul.’

  ‘I know. And I’ve heard about this arts college where you don’t have to do A levels – you can do photography B Tech. Mr Bell says this could win a prize. He says to put it in my portfolio and he’s pretty sure I’ll get in.’

  It’s the first time I’ve seen Saul enthused about anything in months. Enthused by a photo that speaks to him of childhood, of innocence. Of nostalgia for simpler times. Because he’s still a child at heart. I rest my case, I whisper, inwardly.

  I refrain from telling him he’s capable of doing A levels, that he could do English literature – look at the way he’s taken to John Donne. Saul hates school and anything that excites him must be encouraged. I wipe my hands on a tea towel, hug him, marvelling again that I have to widen my arms to get them round him, noticing the breadth of him, the fine bones, the way he is so thin even while he’s got so tall, so broad. And he hugs me back. It’s something that has surprised me about having a teenage son, that he can still be demonstrative with me. He still shows affection when he’s at ease, when he’s happy.

  ‘All I’ve got to do is apply. I can start my life at last.’

  ‘I’m thrilled for you, Saul.’

  I look up at him, at the little boy’s grin under the curtain of hair over his spotty face.

  ‘Saul . . .’ I rinse the mop. Return it to the cupboard.

  I have to get this business out of the way, so that he can indeed start his life, as he puts it. I fold my arms, lean against the work surface. ‘Jules came to see me today.’

  I wait for a response.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I just want to ask you. What did you do the night you came with me to Jules’s? The night she and I went out?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He’s taken two slices of bread and is piling a selection of fillings onto them. Peanut butter, cheese, avocado, grapes. He takes a jar of chilli flakes and sprinkles them on too.

  ‘Did you talk to Saffie at all?’

  ‘You already asked me that. I didn’t see her. She went up to her room after you left.’ He puts the second slice of bread on the top and pushes it down. Picks the whole thing up and takes a bite. He turns his back to me.

  ‘So what did you do all evening?’

  I sound sharper than I mean to because I’m angry that I’m forced into the position of questioning my own son.

  ‘What is this?’ He turns and scowls. ‘I was on the internet.’

  ‘You were upstairs when we came in . . .’

  ‘Yeah. When you weren’t back by midnight, I began to think I’d be there all night. So I lay down in one of Jules’s fuck-off spare rooms. Because you were drinking and I know what you’re like when you get wasted.’ He gives a kind of half-grin.

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘It’s true. You get talking; you get drunk and forget the time. So I figured I might as well go to bed. But then you came in.’ He takes another mouthful of sandwich.

  ‘You didn’t check Saffie had gone to bed as Jules asked you to?’

  ‘Oh yeah, like she’d love it if I checked up on her,’ he says, spraying crumbs. ‘She’d really thank me for treating her like a kid. Her light was off around eleven so I left her to it.’

  ‘How do you know? If you didn’t check up on her?’

  My heart’s racing. I’m afraid of catching him out.

  ‘Derr. There was no light shining under her door. What time did you say dinner was ready?’

  ‘As soon as Pete and the girls get in.’

  ‘Cool.’

  Saul turns and I hear his feet thump up the stairs.

  And I am left none the wiser.

  My phone pings the minute Saul’s gone. The tweet from the Stag reads, @Hollyseymore hopeyougetraped #feminazi #consentworkshops

  I switch off my phone and bang it face down on the counter.

  To distract myself until Pete and the girls arrive, I put Leonard Cohen on and pour a glass of chilled white wine. I try to lose myself in his gentle lyrics, remembering how, as students, Jules used to hate his gloom-laden melodies as much as I loved them. I brown meat in the pan, and the aroma of coriander and cumin rise into the kitchen. Should I have pressed Saul further? I wonder. Asked him directly if he’d tried to sleep with Saffie? But he’d have been devastated that I could even entertain such a thing. At last, when I’ve finished the couscous with a sprinkling of flaked almonds, put a lid on the pan to keep it warm and dumped five forks and plates on the kitchen table, I hear a key in the lock, the familiar thump as the front door bangs back. A blast of cool damp air rushes in, there’s the sound of girls’ voices, and then the smell of wet coats and the bustle of bodies coming into the kitchen and my heart lifts, warms. I love having the girls over. When Pete and I got married, we converted the attic so they had somewhere to stay; I want them to think of this place as their second home.

  Thea, only ten, puts her arms round me and I kiss the top of her head, her cool, silky black hair catching in my mouth as I do so. Freya, thirteen, lets me give her parka-clad figure a hug, blotting my pale grey cardigan with raindrops. She takes off her coat and flings it on the back of a chair. Pete comes over to me, kisses me on the cheek, his lips lingering a little longer than necessary while his hand rests for a moment on the small of my back and moves downwards. A shock of desire bolts through me. I’ve missed him. A lot.

  ‘Just what I like to see,’ he teases. ‘A good woman at the stove. Getting the tea on the table.’

  I smile.

  He squeezes me to him. ‘It’s been a hell of a week. I would’ve cooked, of course, if I could’ve got back earlier.’

  ‘Your turn tomorrow, honey!’ I say, my stomach churning. How am I going to tell him what Jules has dumped on me? He gives a brief look that says he’s in the mood for sex later. I wish I could return it as I usually would, that we could share that delicious complicity that makes our relationship work so well.

  ‘Fucking hell. It’s mingin’ i
n here!’ Saul’s come down again at the sound of voices. ‘Smells like a brothel.’

  ‘Saul!’

  ‘It does. It’s contaminating the dinner. Who’re you trying to pull, Freya?’ He looms over his stepsister and cuffs her on the head. Freya blushes and backs away from him. Thea tugs at Saul’s long hair and he grabs her, making her cry out, squealing with delight at the same time.

  ‘You smell delicious,’ I reassure Freya. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Juicy Couture,’ she says, blushing again. ‘Mum bought it for me.’ Freya’s come over to the cooker and is lifting lids, peering into the pans. She’s the same age as Saffie, but nowhere near as developed, her frame still boyish beneath her short T-shirt and high-waisted jeans. She’s got tall lately, and has started to wear mascara, but she’s still more child than adolescent, gawky and awkward. The thought of a child her age having sex – even willingly – is abhorrent. I shudder inwardly and put my arm round her.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I say, though the tropical-fruit notes are overpowering.

  ‘Have you told Pete about your course?’ I ask Saul, who is slumped at the table.

  ‘What’s that?’ Pete asks.

  ‘It’s a B Tech arts course I’m applying for. You can do photography.’

  ‘Sounds good. I’d like to hear more about it. Meanwhile, guess what, mate?’ Pete prises the lid off a bottle of beer. He nods at it. ‘Have some.’

  ‘Cheers, Pete.’

  ‘I got us tickets to go and see Slaves at the Forum in March.’

  Saul’s face lights up. ‘Sick!’

  ‘Thought you’d be made up.’

  Pete grins and his rosy cheeks fill out and his eyes crinkle. His delight in pleasing Saul is one of the first things that made me love him. Right now, it makes me love him all the more. We’ll sort this thing between us. I know we will.

  ‘I should have thirty quid by tomorrow night so I can pay for the tickets.’ Saul sloshes some of Pete’s beer into his glass as he sits down at the table.